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

notes to pages 141– 2
general of the National Gallery in Prague (1999– 2009), and is viewed
today as a right- wing, nationalist fi gure of the establishment.
36 For an examination of parallels between the 1960s and 1990s generations of
Slovak art see Mária Hlavajová (ed.), 60– 90. 4th Annual Exhibition of SCCA
Slovakia, Bratislava: Soros Center, 1997. Koller is paired with Roman
Ondák, Stano Filko with Boris Ondreička, and Jana Żelibska with Elena
Pätoprstá. At fi rst glance, Koller’s work seems to be participatory, but as
the Slovak critic Tomáš Štraus points out, Koller’s works are ‘pseudo-
performances’, better described as ‘photo- action’ or ‘photo- documentation’,
since they primarily aim at the viewer through photography, rather than
through participants’ fi rst- hand experience. (Štraus, ‘Three Model Situations
of Contemporary Art Actions’, in Works and Words, Amsterdam: De
Appel, 1979, p. 72.)
37 Restany notes that graffi ti was important for showing the ‘active participation
of the viewer’. (Restany, Ailleurs, p. 24.) He also notes the
importance of American neo- Dada and John Cage’s ‘Theory of Inclusion’,
although these are never mentioned by Mlynárčik.
38 The best- known examples here are not necessarily the most interesting
(e.g. Manzoni’s Scultura vivente, 1961); more poetic and poignant is
Alberto Greco’s Vivo- Dito series (1962– 65), in which the artist drew
(and signed) empty chalk circles in the streets that were fl eetingly occupied
by passers- by (discussed briefl y in Chapter 4).
39 Andrea Batorova has argued that these dates were not selected for political
reasons, merely as a suitable time frame: ‘They selected a “natural” time
frame for their projects, one that existed in reality; within this, real people in
their real surroundings and real time could participate in the project.’
(Andrea Bátorová, ‘Alternative Trends in Slovakia’, in Fluxus East, p. 172.)
40 By choosing two offi cial state events as frame and documentation,
Happsoc I lends weight to Boris Groys’s delightfully controversial thesis
that Socialist Realism (and communist society at large) is a ‘total work of
art’, a continuation of the historic avant- garde’s project to fuse art and
life. See Groys, The Total Art of Stalinism, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1992.
41 Alex and Elena Mlynáričk, ‘Memorandum’ (1971), in Restany, Ailleurs,
p. 256, my emphasis. They are citing the Happsoc manifesto, a variant
translation of which can be found in Pospiszyl and Hoptman (eds.),
Primary Documents, p. 87. Like Knížák, Slovak artists rejected the
Happenings for their theatricality, particularly the eroticised spectacles
of Jean- Jacques Lebel.
42 Raoul- Jean Moulin, 1969, cited in Restany, Ailleurs, p. 252.
43 Restany, Ailleurs, p. 22. Over a decade later, Jindřich Chalupecký wrote
that ‘the title [Happsoc] can mislead: in reality Happsoc has very little in
common with Happenings; it is closer to conceptual art which subsequently
appeared’. (Cited in Jana Gerzova, ‘The Myths and Reality of
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