Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship - autonomous ...

social sadism made explicit
then Argentinian artists responded to and questioned this valorisation of
fi rst- hand immediacy, and combined this with opposition to the US- backed
dictatorships, in which peaceful political protest was abolished, and social
trust shattered in a climate of constant suspicion. This led to the production
of situations that deploy two contradictory impulses: to bring art and life
closer (mapping the two onto each other by using people as a medium)
while at the same time incorporating distanciation from both (be this
through a Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt or the critical reader exemplifi ed
by Barthes’ Mythologies). The result of these contradictory impulses leads,
on the one hand, to a reifi cation of the human body in live installation
(Masotta, Bony) and on the other to the production of alienating events in
which the viewer plays a role within an unannounced but predetermined
situation (Ciclo de Arte Experimental, Boal). Although the Argentinian
work shares with its Western counterparts an emphasis on active spectatorship,
this is overtly steered towards coercion: people are used as an artistic
material, and this stands as a consciousness- raising weapon against an even
greater brutality (the dictatorship). It is not unimportant that this work is
informed by an early reception of French theory (far sooner, for example,
than in an Anglophone context), since this creates a distinctly existential
and psychological tenor, compared to the pragmatic rationalism of North
American art of this period. 81
One could therefore argue that these Argentinian examples are both
non- Western (in their response to the specifi c historical conditions of the
dictatorship) and ultra- Western (in their use of European theory). They
set an important precedent for the present- day uses of participation while
also questioning the assumption that participation is synonymous with
democracy. At the same time, these artists also developed a directly
confrontational approach to public space and an increasingly precarious
relationship with art institutions. This position was articulated most clearly
at the National Encounter of Avant- Garde Art, held in Rosario in August
1968, where several of the conference papers – particularly those by Nicolás
Rosa and León Ferrari – asserted that political commitment alone was not
enough; an effective artistic revolution was essential to supplement their
cause. At the point of reception, they argued, a work of art should have a
similar effect to a political action: ‘If the contents are to be expressed in a
revolutionary manner, if the work is to make an effective impact on the
recipients’ consciousness, it is essential to deal with the material in a shocking,
disquieting, even violent way.’ 82 The artist León Ferrari took this
sentiment the furthest: ‘Art will be neither beauty nor novelty; art will be
effi cacy and disturbance. An accomplished work of art will be that which,
in the artist’s environment, can make an impact similar to the one caused by
a terrorist act in a country struggling for its freedom.’ 83 Importantly, this
‘terrorist’ approach did not involve a suppression of art – as we fi nd in the
Situationist model – but maintained the inextricability of a political and
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