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

notes to pages 29– 33
56 ‘Suitable political art would ensure, at one and the same time, the production
of a double effect: the readability of a political signifi cation and a
sensible or perceptual shock caused, conversely, by the uncanny, by that
which resists signifi cation. In fact, this ideal effect is always the object of
a negotiation between opposites, between the readability of the message
that threatens to destroy the sensible form of art and the radical uncanniness
that threatens to destroy all political meaning.’ (Rancière, The
Politics of Aesthetics, p. 63.)
57 Rancière, Malaise dans l’esthétique, p. 67, my translation.
58 See David Callaghan, ‘Still Signaling Through the Flames: The Living
Theater’s Use of Audience Participation in the 1990s’, in Susan Kattwinkel
(ed.), Audience Participation: Essays on Inclusion in Performance,
Connecticut: Praeger, 2003.
59 Mike Figgis, director of Leaving Las Vegas (1995) and Timecode (2000),
is a veteran of the community theatre group The People Show. His fi lm
The Battle of Orgreave is distributed by Artangel and Channel 4. Deller’s
book The English Civil War Part II: Personal Accounts of the 1984– 85
Miners’ Strike, was published by Artangel, London, in 2002, while the
Orgreave archive was acquired by Tate in 2004.
60 ‘I was surprised people said it was a healing experience. That wasn’t
really why I did it. I wanted to remind people that something had
happened there – not the locals, because they knew exactly what had
happened. If anything, it was about digging up a hastily buried corpse
and giving it a proper post- mortem.’ (Deller, cited in John Slyce, ‘Jeremy
Deller: Fables of the Reconstruction’, Flash Art International, January–
February 2003, p. 76.)
61 ‘. . . there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and
women, and there are families.’ (Margaret Thatcher, Woman’s Own
magazine, 31 October 1987.) In this notorious soundbite, Thatcher was
referring to her project of dissolving social solidarity in favour of individualism,
personal responsibility, private property and family values.
62 Alex Farquharson, ‘Jeremy Deller, The Battle of Orgreave’, Frieze, 61,
September 2001. The event also replicated a surreal incident from 1984
when an ice- cream van called Rock On Tommy continued to sell ice- cream
even while surrounded by police. See Howard Giles, ‘The Battle of
Orgreave from a Tactical Point of View’, in Deller (ed.), The English
Civil War Part II, p. 30.
63 David Gilbert, ‘Review of Jeremy Deller, The English Civil War Part II:
Personal Accounts of the 1984– 5 Miners’ Strike’, Oral History, 33:1, Spring
2005, p. 105.
64 Deller, introduction to The English Civil War Part II, p. 7.
65 ‘We will require a professional attitude and a willingness to stick to an
agreed script. You will need to conform to a dress code and to look the
part. . . . You will also be asked to sign a standard contract, which will
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