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

notes to pages 161– 4
98 Kabakov again: ‘This [action] actualised one of the most pleasant and
practically unknown sides of the socius, the socius that is so painful in our
time. Here the social is not antagonistic to you, but instead good- willed,
reliable, and extremely welcoming. This feeling is so unusual, so not
experienced before, that it not only recovers you, but also becomes an
amazing gift compared to everyday reality.’ (Kabakov, ‘Ten Appearances’,
p. 154, translated by Anya Pantuyeva.)
99 One sign of the intensity of this attitude can be found in an interview with
Joseph Beuys undertaken by two Russians, V. Bakchahyan and A. Ur, in
the samizdat magazine A- Ya at the time of his Guggenheim retrospective.
Their questions make explicit their wariness of art having anything to do
with social change, since the work of the avant- garde post- 1917 was so
fl agrantly co- opted by political offi cials: ‘Our Russian experience shows
that to fl irt with politics is dangerous for an artist. . . . Aren’t you afraid
that the artist who’s inside you is being conquered by the politician?’ (V.
Backchahyan and A. Ur, ‘Joseph Beuys: Art and Politics’, A- Ya, 2, 1980,
pp. 54– 5.)
100 An exception to this, and an important point of contrast, would be the
student movement in former Yugoslavia, who in 1968 demanded a more
authentic and equal form of communism. Student Cultural Centres
housed the galleries where experimental art of this period was fi rst shown.
Chapter 6 Incidental People
1 O+I stands for Organisation and Imagination, and is an independent
international artist consultancy and research body.
2 A conference at Tate Britain in 2005 sought to emphasise the relevance of
APG for contemporary artists, including Carey Young, Platform, and
Böhm and Lang. See Art and Social Intervention: The Incidental Person,
Tate Britain, 23 March 2005, available at www.tate.org.uk. More recently,
Douglas Gordon has compared his method in making Zidane: A 21st
Century Portrait (2006, with Philippe Parreno) as ‘part of an extended
practice of a 1960s idea of the Artist Placement Group. We placed
ourselves with the help of many people, but keeping the idea of the Artist
Placement Group, we didn’t construct an event, but included ourselves in
it.’ (Gordon, in Hans- Ulrich Obrist, The Conversation Series: Philippe
Parreno, Köln: Walther König, 2008, p. 116.)
3 Latham remained on the margins of main tendencies in the 1960s, but
participated in the exhibitions ‘New Realists’ (Sidney Janis Gallery, New
York, 1962) and ‘Information’ (MoMA, New York, 1970).
4 Founder members were Steveni and Latham, plus Jeffrey Shaw and
Barry Flanagan; they were joined soon after by Stuart Brisley, David
Hall and Ian MacDonald Munro.
5 Initial board members included the artist William Coldstream, Frank
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