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 />
non- aligned former Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito (1943– 80), where<br />
internationalism was embraced, along with greater ease <strong>of</strong> travel to <strong>and</strong><br />
communication with <strong>the</strong> West. These geographical variations must in turn<br />
be cross- referenced with a chronology <strong>of</strong> cultural policy changes in<br />
Moscow itself: Nikita Khrushchev’s partial de- Stalinisation (1953– 64) was<br />
followed by <strong>the</strong> hardline conservative backlash <strong>of</strong> Leonid Brezhnev (1964–<br />
82), although policy oscillated even within <strong>the</strong>se respective regimes. A fi nal<br />
point to note is that <strong>the</strong>re are no easily drawn lines <strong>of</strong> artistic communication<br />
between East <strong>and</strong> West, since <strong>the</strong>se depended on individual relationships<br />
between specifi c critics <strong>and</strong> artists ra<strong>the</strong>r than on general international<br />
alignments. However, one can cautiously claim that <strong>the</strong> most infl uential<br />
artistic communication took place between individual artists <strong>and</strong> specifi c<br />
centres in Western Europe (especially Paris <strong>and</strong> Cologne) ra<strong>the</strong>r than<br />
between neighbouring countries in <strong>the</strong> Eastern bloc; <strong>the</strong> relative isolation<br />
<strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>se parallel histories is, among o<strong>the</strong>r things, revealed in IRWIN’s East<br />
<strong>Art</strong> Map (2007). 3<br />
In <strong>the</strong> present chapter, I want to focus on two moments <strong>of</strong> socially<br />
oriented, performance- based actions in <strong>the</strong> 1960s <strong>and</strong> 1970s: <strong>the</strong> fi rst in<br />
former Czechoslovakia (with two distinct scenes in Bratislava <strong>and</strong> Prague),<br />
<strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> second in Moscow from <strong>the</strong> mid 1970s to mid 1980s, focusing on <strong>the</strong><br />
Collective Actions Group. <strong>Participatory</strong> art is rare in <strong>the</strong> Soviet bloc, <strong>and</strong><br />
<strong>the</strong>se two contexts form an important exception. Unlike some <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Latin<br />
American artists discussed in <strong>the</strong> previous chapter, for whom social participation<br />
in art denotes <strong>the</strong> inclusion <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> working class, or at least everyday<br />
non- pr<strong>of</strong>essionals (ra<strong>the</strong>r than <strong>the</strong> artists’ friends <strong>and</strong> colleagues), <strong>the</strong> political<br />
context <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> examples in this chapter rendered such distinctions<br />
redundant. The contemporary impulse to collaborate with disenfranchised<br />
communities was an alien concept: under Cold War socialism, every citizen<br />
was (at least nominally) equal, a co- producer <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> communist state. Class<br />
difference did not exist. 4 Finding participants for one’s art was <strong>the</strong>refore a<br />
question <strong>of</strong> selecting reliable colleagues who would not inform on one’s<br />
activities. In an atmosphere <strong>of</strong> near constant surveillance <strong>and</strong> insecurity,<br />
participation was an artistic <strong>and</strong> social strategy to be deployed only amongst<br />
<strong>the</strong> most trusted groups <strong>of</strong> friends. Most <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> case studies that follow <strong>the</strong>refore<br />
break with this book’s criterion for inclusion, since <strong>the</strong>y are concerned<br />
almost solely with participation as a device to mobilise subjective experience<br />
in fellow artists <strong>and</strong> writers, ra<strong>the</strong>r than with <strong>the</strong> general public.<br />
The restrictions <strong>of</strong> life under Cold War communism do more than<br />
simply affect who participates in art, <strong>the</strong>y also govern <strong>the</strong> appearance <strong>of</strong><br />
<strong>the</strong>se works: materially frugal <strong>and</strong> temporally brief, many <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>se actions<br />
<strong>and</strong> events were located in <strong>the</strong> countryside, far away from networks <strong>of</strong><br />
surveillance. The fact that many <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>se actions do not look like art is less<br />
an indication <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> artists’ commitment to blurring ‘art <strong>and</strong> life’ than a<br />
deliberate strategy <strong>of</strong> self- protection, as well as a reaction to <strong>the</strong> state’s own<br />
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