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

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‘No Man’s Time’ catalogue, in which each artist nominated their top fi ve
songs and works of art. For a general audience, such lists offered a way to
know the artists through their preferences, but they also reinforce the
impression that Troncy’s exhibitions were organised by selecting personalities
rather than works; as Tiravanija summarised: ‘The artist is the work.
Invite them and they will make/ or not make’. 48
‘No Man’s Time’, like many of Troncy’s exhibitions, was less a thesis on
society or pop culture than an assertion of the common cultural interests of
that particular constellation of artists. Asserting that ‘we went out of our
way to avoid installing anything defi nitive’, since ‘even the title of our
show places it in interval territory’, Troncy’s self- refl exive elusiveness
epitomised his peers’ preference for opacity and narrative over didacticism.
49 Yet, it hardly undertook the job of mediating this position to an
outside audience, which Troncy readily acknowledged when he noted that
‘while the protagonists may be enthralled by their subject matter, it may
prove boring for some of the public’. 50 The viewer was subject to an experience
of incompletion – of being put in the position, Troncy wrote, of
piecing together the show like ‘fragments which enable the reconstruction
of a crime’. 51 In the case of ‘No Man’s Time’, the ‘crime’ was an invisible
month of social interactions before the exhibition opened to the public, and
to which the latter had only partial access through the oblique and diaristic
narratives of the catalogue.
It has often been remarked that ‘relational’ exhibitions from this period
have the appearance of a non- individualised totality rather than being the
work of many individuals – although in retrospect particular works stand
out as distinctly authored, and fl oor plans indicate quite clearly defi ned
individual areas of display. One of the most notable contributors to this
body of exhibitions, although not included in ‘No Man’s Time’, was Rirkrit
Tiravanija, whose installations and events have done more than any other
artist to propel convivial and open- ended participation into the artistic and
institutional mainstream. Many of his works in the early 1990s were contributions
to the prolonged period of collective gestation leading to the
opening of a show. In ‘Backstage’ (1993), curated by Barbara Steiner and
Stephan Schmidt- Wulffen at the Hamburger Kunstverein, thirty- one artists
were encouraged to interact with the newly opened space, including the
exhibition halls, cellar, storage area, restrooms and the director’s offi ce, in
order to scrutinise the role of the institution. Tiravanija’s contribution,
untitled 1993 (fl ädlesuppe), comprised a table and two benches, with industrial
metal shelving (near the delivery entrance) supporting basic cooking
equipment. It was operational only in the weeks leading up to the show,
rather than during the exhibition itself. One of the paradoxes of Tiravanija’s
practice is that in intensifying convivial relations for a small group of
people (in this case, the exhibiting artists), it produces greater exclusivity
vis- à- vis the general public.
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