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

notes to pages 46– 9
14 Michael Kirby, Futurist Performance, New York: E. P. Dutton and Co.,
1971, p. 27.
15 Wassily Kandinsky, ‘Franz Marc’, cited in Cohen, Movement, Manifesto,
Melée, p. 137.
16 Albert Gleizes, cited in Cohen, Movement, Manifesto, Melée, pp. 137– 8.
Gleizes goes on to note the constituency present at the opening day was
not just artists and critics: ‘socialites, genuine art- lovers and picture- dealers
jostle one another, along with the dairyman and the concierge who have
been given an invitation by the artist who is a customer of theirs or lives
in the block’. It is worth bearing in mind these accounts when considering
the quietly respectful crowds at contemporary art exhibitions today,
and the way in which vociferous debates about art are now confi ned to
panel discussions, seminars and symposia at a safe remove from the work
itself.
17 Other events seemed to target a middle- and upper- class audience, such
as Marinetti’s lectures at opera houses (which included attacks on the
passéist values of this art form), including La Fenice in Venice (7 May
1911) and La Scala in Milan (2 March 1911).
18 Marinetti, Settimelli, Corra, ‘The Futurist Synthetic Theatre’, p. 128.
19 Compare this sentiment to Breton’s observation (discussed below) that ‘a
successful man, or simply one who is no longer attacked, is a dead man’.
(André Breton, ‘Artifi cial Hells, Inauguration of the “1921 Dada
Season” ’, October, 105, Summer 2003, p. 141.)
20 Manifesto 1912, ‘Exhibitors to the Public’, cited in Taylor, Futurism: Politics,
Painting and Performance, p. 21.
21 Boris Groys, in Claire Bishop and Boris Groys, ‘Bring the Noise’, Tate
Etc, Summer 2009, p. 33.
22 Francesco Cangiullo, Le serate futuriste, Pozzuoli: Tirena, 1930, pp. 160–
1, translation by Berghaus in Avant- garde Performance, p. 36.
23 For the script of this work, and many others, see Michael Kirby, Futurist
Performance, New York: PAJ Publications, 1986, pp. 290– 1.
24 Enrico Prampolini, ‘Futurist Scenography’ (1915), in Taylor, Futurism:
Politics, Painting and Performance, pp. 57– 60.
25 As Boris Groys provocatively notes, only destruction is truly participatory,
something in which everyone can equally participate: ‘it is clear
that there is an intimate relationship between destruction and participative
art. When a Futurist action destroys art in this traditional form, it
also invites all the spectators to participate in this act of destruction,
because it does not require any specifi c artistic skills. In this sense
fascism is more democratic than communism, of course. It is the only
thing we can all participate in.’ (Groys, in Bishop and Groys, ‘Bring the
Noise’, p. 38.)
26 ‘[Mankind’s] alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience
its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the fi rst order.’ (Walter
297