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

incidental people
Historically dominated by singular expression and clearly defi ned authorship,
both of which are indexed to fi nancial value, visual art was more
diffi cult to reconcile with the community arts agenda. Mural painting as
a popular mode of collective expression seemed somewhat dated by the
1970s, so Inter- Action’s Liz Leyh took a different approach, making
concrete sculptures at the new development of Milton Keynes, the
maquettes of which were created in collaboration with local residents.
The Blackie also tried to experiment with participatory visual art in the
exhibition project ‘Towards a Common Language’, held in the Education
Room of Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery, 22– 28 October 1973. The
show comprised blank canvases, boards and paper attached to the gallery
walls, ready to be painted by visitors, who had the choice of looking at
the completed works or creating one of their own. In one week over
3,475 visitors came to the museum; 301 works were completed by adults
and 642 by children. Visitors could take their painting away, or leave it in
the gallery, where it would be put on display in poster racks. ‘The exhibition
will consist of the blank “pieces” and/ or people at work/ play’,
wrote Harpe in his notes for show, and ‘there will be no “opening” or
private view’. 86
Despite the overlapping ambitions of community arts and contemporary
art in the 1970s, it is conspicuous that the gestures undertaken by
the former remained localised in impact and have fallen out of historical
memory; when similar projects were undertaken by a single artist, such
as David Medalla, a critical debate was formed, established and
defended. 87 Medalla, a London- based Filipino artist associated with
Signals Gallery, connected his installations to emancipatory politics and
Asian ideas of community. His outdoor work Down with the Slave Trade!
(1968– 71) involved the installation of a selection of chairs, coloured
fl ags and a mesh of colourful plastic tubing in a given city square. 88
People were invited to interact and become entangled with the work,
which seemed to serve as a metaphor for oppression, but also as an
opportunity for individuals to be linked (at least visually) in collective
solidarity. A Stitch in Time (also 1968, subsequently shown in Documenta
5, 1972) comprised a large swathe of fabric suspended across the
gallery, onto which the public were invited to embroider designs and
slogans. It is tempting to put Medalla’s work into direct comparison
with The Blackie’s ‘Towards a Common Language’: both are collectively
produced projects whose process is as important as the fi nal result.
But in the case of Medalla, substantial photographic documentation
allows us to connect these images and ideas to an authored corpus of
ongoing interests and visual experiments. The artist produces an object
or installation as container for the participatory process, and moves
away from traditional modes of drawing and sculpture to the slower
activity of embroidery (with its associations of women’s work), whose
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