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

incidental people
Artists Placement Group, ‘Inno70’, 1971. View of ‘The Sculpture’.
exhibition, to the sound of an eight- hour steel- making process from Ebbw
Vale in Wales. 19 Reviewers complained that the noise of this exhibit was
too deafening to endure for any length of time.
The third type of space in ‘Inno70’, ‘the Sculpture’, was the most prescient
in terms of contemporary exhibition models: a boardroom hosting daily
meetings between APG and members of invited organisations. A large
area demarcated by a long white wall (like an art- fair booth) contained
shelving units, an information desk manned full- time by Steveni, a large
table and chairs. The meetings throughout the exhibition were recorded
and archived although, contentiously, the public were not allowed to
participate; indeed, they were separated from the boardroom by a clear
plastic curtain. 20 The catalogue for the show also harbingers the self-
refl exivity of contemporary curatorial projects: beginning in 1970, seven
inserts were placed in the magazine Studio International, imitating the
format of the Times Business News with fake news items, photographs and
collages. 21 With such a cryptic and temporal unveiling, the ‘catalogue’
served more as a long- term trailer advertising the show than as a coherent
summary of what was exhibited within it. 22
The exhibition aimed to be polemical and accomplished this, prompting
harsh reactions from a number of critics and artists, including some who
had participated in the placements. The main focus of complaint was the
exhibition’s dry impenetrability and corporate appearance. ‘Andrew
Dipper’s photographs taken on board an Esso tanker may have some
pattern behind them, but on the visual evidence look no different from
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