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

the social under socialism
Jiří Kovanda, Untitled (I arranged to meet a few friends ... we were standing in a small group on
the square, talking ... suddenly, I started running; I raced across the square and disappeared into
Melantrich Street...), 23 January 1978.
prevailing political stagnation. The next generation no longer put so
much emphasis, if any, on individuality.’ 69
The most telling break with this generational orientation towards
subjective experience is the work of Ján Budaj in Bratislava. Not trained
as an artist, and working as a coal heating engineer, Budaj undertook
gestures in public space with particularly vivid means. He is unique
amongst artists in Czechoslovakia at this time in consciously addressing
his work to the public as a random sector of the population rather
than to a trusted group of friends. The Lunch (1978), for example,
involved relocating his kitchen table, chairs and a meal to a prominent
spot in the parking lot of the Dubravka housing estate, and framing the
composition with white tape to increase its visibility to people living in
the upper storeys. 70 Budaj invited friends to eat a meal with him, and
amplified their discussion with microphones and speakers. The action
seemed to reinforce (one might even say overidentify with) the absence
of privacy under state socialism, offering a domestic scene in exaggerated
exposure to surveillance; at the same time, it also sought to invent
an idea of public space and to occupy it with eccentric non- conformity.
Unlike Kovanda, Budaj’s photo documentation is clearly secondary;
the live experience is the event, and spectatorship is no longer privatised.
And not unlike Knížák’s early assaults on the general public,
Budaj also sought to provoke, but through gently assertive parody: his
organisation, the Temporary Society of Intense Experiencing, produced
a Week of Fictive Culture (January–February 1979). The group placed
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