Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship - autonomous ...
Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship - autonomous ...
Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship - autonomous ...
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artificial hells<br />
more light- hearted pop sensibility (such as Marta Minujín <strong>and</strong> Rubén<br />
Santantonín’s elaborate installation La Menesunda, 1965), Minujín’s solo<br />
work has an aggressivity belied by her colourful persona <strong>and</strong> fashionable<br />
media presence, in structure if not always in realisation. One <strong>of</strong> her later<br />
works makes a direct link between aggressive forms <strong>of</strong> participation <strong>and</strong><br />
<strong>the</strong> political context <strong>of</strong> Argentina itself: in Kidnappenings, held over three<br />
evenings at MoMA in 1973, ninety participants volunteered to be kidnapped,<br />
blindfolded <strong>and</strong> subjected to a range <strong>of</strong> experiences devised by assorted art-<br />
world volunteers, <strong>the</strong>ir faces painted in <strong>the</strong> style <strong>of</strong> Picasso’s paintings, in<br />
reference to his recent death. 50 This combination <strong>of</strong> glitzy pop chic <strong>and</strong><br />
allusions to a political framework <strong>of</strong> repression is somewhat uneasy, <strong>and</strong><br />
arguably tells us more about Minujín’s self- exploitation for a US audience<br />
than it does about <strong>the</strong> specifi c tenor <strong>of</strong> participatory art produced in Argentina.<br />
In that country during <strong>the</strong> 1960s, <strong>the</strong> combined pressures <strong>of</strong> military<br />
dictatorship <strong>and</strong> an imported European intellectual heritage gave rise to a<br />
singular mode <strong>of</strong> participatory art in that country, which transformed <strong>the</strong><br />
celebratory immediacy <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Happenings into an intellectual framework<br />
<strong>of</strong> mediated constraint, manipulation <strong>and</strong> negation.<br />
III. The Closed Gallery, <strong>the</strong> Scuffl e, <strong>the</strong> Prison<br />
This coercive new approach to participation is played out most vividly in<br />
<strong>the</strong> Ciclo de <strong>Art</strong>e Experimental (Cycle <strong>of</strong> Experimental <strong>Art</strong>), organised by<br />
<strong>the</strong> Grupo de <strong>Art</strong>istas de Vanguardia (Group <strong>of</strong> Avant- Garde <strong>Art</strong>ists) in<br />
<strong>the</strong> city <strong>of</strong> Rosario between May <strong>and</strong> October 1968. The group initially<br />
formed out <strong>of</strong> a desire for autonomy: to have <strong>the</strong>ir own space to exhibit, to<br />
organise <strong>the</strong>ir own shows, <strong>and</strong> to write about <strong>the</strong>ir own work – in short, to<br />
be <strong>the</strong>ir own curators <strong>and</strong> critics, ra<strong>the</strong>r than being dependent on institutional<br />
infrastructures. Although <strong>the</strong> Cycle was developed by <strong>the</strong> artists<br />
working individually, <strong>the</strong> group was in daily discussion, <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong>ir increasingly<br />
ambitious actions refl ect <strong>the</strong> group’s politicisation as <strong>the</strong> year went<br />
on, given impetus by <strong>the</strong>ir opposition to <strong>the</strong> Braque Prize (June 1968), <strong>the</strong><br />
assault on Romero Brest’s lecture (July 1968), <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> National Encounter<br />
<strong>of</strong> Avant- Garde <strong>Art</strong> (in August 1968), which led to Tucumán Arde<br />
(discussed below). 51 Like artists in Buenos Aires, <strong>the</strong> group were voracious<br />
consumers <strong>of</strong> literature <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong>ory, <strong>and</strong> Brecht was a particular obsession,<br />
along with Bar<strong>the</strong>s, McLuhan, Lévi- Strauss, Marcuse, Marx (who <strong>the</strong>y<br />
read in <strong>the</strong> original), <strong>and</strong> Eco’s The Open Work. 52<br />
The Cycle took <strong>the</strong> form <strong>of</strong> a series <strong>of</strong> ten actions, one every fi fteen<br />
days, many <strong>of</strong> which appropriated social forms, behaviours <strong>and</strong> relations.<br />
As Ana Longoni has argued, most <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> events were based on a common<br />
idea: withdrawing from institutional spaces, fi nding new audiences, <strong>and</strong><br />
merging art with <strong>the</strong> praxis <strong>of</strong> life by ‘working on <strong>the</strong> audience as <strong>the</strong> privileged<br />
material <strong>of</strong> artistic action’. 53 The fi rst event in <strong>the</strong> Cycle, by Norberto<br />
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