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 />
describe art in <strong>the</strong> 1990s: <strong>the</strong> ‘project’. Although <strong>the</strong> term ‘project’ was used<br />
by conceptual artists in <strong>the</strong> late 1960s (most notably by <strong>the</strong> Amsterdam-<br />
based gallery <strong>Art</strong> <strong>and</strong> Project), it tends to denote a proposal for a work <strong>of</strong><br />
art. A project in <strong>the</strong> sense I am identifying as crucial to art after 1989 aspires<br />
to replace <strong>the</strong> work <strong>of</strong> art as a fi nite object with an open- ended, post- studio,<br />
research- based, social process, extending over time <strong>and</strong> mutable in form. 2<br />
Since <strong>the</strong> 1990s, <strong>the</strong> project has become an umbrella term for many types <strong>of</strong><br />
art: collective practice, self- organised activist groups, transdisciplinary<br />
research, participatory <strong>and</strong> socially engaged art, <strong>and</strong> experimental curating.<br />
By focusing on <strong>the</strong> last two <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>se tendencies, it is hoped that <strong>the</strong><br />
trajectory mapped in this chapter will provide a counter- narrative to <strong>the</strong><br />
mainstream commercial <strong>and</strong> institutional history <strong>of</strong> art since 1990, which<br />
has tended to celebrate identity politics, <strong>the</strong> apo<strong>the</strong>osis <strong>of</strong> video installation,<br />
large- scale cibachrome photographs, design- as- art, relational<br />
aes<strong>the</strong>tics, conceptual painting, <strong>and</strong> spectacular new forms <strong>of</strong> installation<br />
art. 3 My key point, however, is less to defi ne a new tendency than to note<br />
that <strong>the</strong> word chosen to describe <strong>the</strong>se open- ended artistic activities arrives<br />
at a moment when <strong>the</strong>re is a conspicuous lack <strong>of</strong> what we could call a social<br />
project – a collective political horizon or goal. The fraught relationship<br />
between <strong>the</strong> artistic project <strong>and</strong> a political project is <strong>the</strong> central thrust <strong>of</strong><br />
this chapter.<br />
When surveying art since 1989, it quickly becomes apparent that <strong>the</strong><br />
interest in participation <strong>and</strong> social engagement that we now consider to be<br />
a characteristic tendency <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> last twenty years was in fact ra<strong>the</strong>r slow to<br />
emerge. The early years <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> 1990s are best characterised, perhaps<br />
unsurprisingly, as a continuation <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> 1980s, unaffected by <strong>the</strong> newly<br />
opened border to <strong>the</strong> East or <strong>the</strong> non- Western purview <strong>of</strong> Jean- Hubert<br />
Martin’s ‘Magiciens de la Terre’ (1989), billed as <strong>the</strong> ‘world’s fi rst global<br />
art show’. Documenta 9 (1992), for example, included only a h<strong>and</strong>ful <strong>of</strong><br />
non- Western artists (in deference to <strong>the</strong> precedent <strong>of</strong> ‘Magiciens’), but<br />
was still an exhibition <strong>of</strong> European <strong>and</strong> North American sculpture <strong>and</strong><br />
painting, focused on <strong>the</strong> twin centres <strong>of</strong> New York <strong>and</strong> Cologne. By<br />
contemporary st<strong>and</strong>ards its curatorial rhetoric seems irremediably dated,<br />
evoking <strong>the</strong> romantic spirit <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> individual producer. 4 Between Documenta<br />
9 <strong>and</strong> Documenta 10 (1997) lies an aes<strong>the</strong>tic <strong>and</strong> intellectual chasm:<br />
Ca<strong>the</strong>rine David’s interdisciplinary approach to <strong>the</strong> latter exhibition<br />
included an 830- page catalogue pointing to a renewed interest in art’s<br />
social <strong>and</strong> political orientation. Supplementing art historical essays with<br />
texts by philosophers, urbanists <strong>and</strong> anthropologists, David posited political<br />
philosophy <strong>and</strong> sociology as <strong>the</strong> new transdisciplinary frameworks for<br />
contemporary art. 5 At <strong>the</strong> same time, it is telling that Documenta 10 as an<br />
exhibition did not refl ect many <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> collective, activist <strong>and</strong> documentary<br />
practices that had already begun to emerge in Europe (<strong>and</strong> whose promotion<br />
would be <strong>the</strong> task <strong>of</strong> Documenta 11).<br />
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