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

former west
The artists were asked to meet in both Stockholm (1994) and Moscow
(1995) over the three- year planning process to formulate the exhibition as
a collective. Ostensibly, then, we have a continuation of the ‘social’ understood
as conviviality that can be seen in Troncy’s shows of this period.
However, the geopolitical stakes were higher in the case of ‘Interpol’, since
Misiano notes that both Sweden and Russia were experiencing the ‘end of
socialism’ in different ways: for Northern Europe, in the dismantling of the
welfare state, and for Russia, in the transition to deregulated neoliberal
capitalism. This was further refl ected in ideological and artistic differences
between the two regions: state protectionism guaranteed a good livelihood
and prestige for Swedish artists, while in Russia the arts were marginalised
and without institutional support. Indeed, Misiano argued that being an
artist in Russia was a result of ‘moral self- identifi cation’ rather than
‘common sense’, since there was no possible career to be made from this
decision. 56
The curators hoped to fi ll the hangar- like space of Färgfabriken with a
total installation, but cultural rifts formed early on: Misiano reports that the
Russian artists had clearly articulated ideas that they wanted to discuss,
while the Swedes were dismissive of the idea of discussion. The Europeans
resented the Russians for shirking responsibility for their projects, while the
latter felt that they received no help or support from Stockholm. Many of
the artists began to request to work alone, collaborations shifted and
dissolved and a few participants (such as Lotta Antonsson) quit before the
exhibition was fi nalised. Increasingly, East/ West prejudices set in, so that
when it came to the time of installation, dialogue had all but broken down
into hardened stereotypes. On the night before the opening, Dmitri Gutov
executed a performance entitled The Last Supper, in which both curators and
all the artists participated in a dinner; Gutov urged them to discuss the artistic
co- operation leading up to the show and videotaped the proceedings. 57
During the meal, the Russian artist Alexander Brener stated that the project
was a failure, and expressed scepticism that a participatory structure could
itself be the content of the show, with no further guidance or position from
the curators. 58 This open- endedness had of course, worked successfully in
Troncy’s shows, since the artists – already in dialogue – had risen to the
occasion. But when there were ideological differences (particularly over the
centrality or otherwise of dialogue in making art), it led to confl icts between
the participants, and a disconnected, incoherent exhibition.
Mirroring ‘Interpol’’s participatory structure, several of the artists’
contributions sought to involve the audience directly. Vadim Fishkin
proposed a work in which each of the participating artists would have a
mobile phone, on which visitors to the exhibition could reach them at any
point. 59 Carl Michael von Hausswolff and two collaborators organised a
‘sleep in’, comprising a row of mattresses on which the audience was invited
to sleep alongside the artists for the fi rst few nights of the exhibition. As
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