Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship - autonomous ...
Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship - autonomous ...
Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship - autonomous ...
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artificial hells<br />
Khatib’s ‘Attempt at a Psychogeographical Description <strong>of</strong> Les Halles’<br />
(1958). The essay pays attention to <strong>the</strong> area’s diurnal <strong>and</strong> nocturnal ambience,<br />
<strong>the</strong> main routes <strong>of</strong> access <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> use <strong>of</strong> particular areas, <strong>and</strong> makes<br />
constructive suggestions for rethinking this central area <strong>of</strong> Paris as a space<br />
for ‘manifestations <strong>of</strong> liberated collective life’; in <strong>the</strong> meantime, Khatib<br />
suggests, it would do well to serve as ‘an attraction park for <strong>the</strong> ludic education<br />
<strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> workers’. 6<br />
I begin with this discussion <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> dérive because, in Guy Debord’s<br />
contribution to <strong>the</strong> SI’s seventh conference in 1966, he observed that <strong>the</strong><br />
group’s strategies <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> dérive <strong>and</strong> unitary urbanism had to be understood<br />
in terms <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>ir ‘struggle’ with utopian architecture, <strong>the</strong> Venice Biennale,<br />
<strong>the</strong> Happenings, <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> Groupe Recherche d’<strong>Art</strong> Visuel (GRAV). 7 In<br />
keeping with his suggestion, this chapter will examine three forms <strong>of</strong><br />
open- ended participatory art in Paris during <strong>the</strong> 1960s, contrasting <strong>the</strong><br />
<strong>the</strong>ory <strong>and</strong> practice <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> Situationist International to <strong>the</strong> ‘situations’ <strong>of</strong><br />
GRAV <strong>and</strong> to <strong>the</strong> eroticised <strong>and</strong> transgressive Happenings <strong>of</strong> Jean- Jacques<br />
Lebel. It should immediately be acknowledged that, art historically, none<br />
<strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>se fi gures are canonical: in an Anglophone context, <strong>the</strong>re is little literature<br />
on GRAV, while Lebel has only recently become <strong>the</strong> focus <strong>of</strong><br />
attention (most notably in <strong>the</strong> work <strong>of</strong> Alyce Mahon). The SI cannot be<br />
considered straightforwardly as artists, <strong>and</strong> especially not as producers <strong>of</strong><br />
participatory art, even if today’s proliferation <strong>of</strong> neo- Situationist activities,<br />
which frequently denigrate art <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> aes<strong>the</strong>tic, all dem<strong>and</strong> a re- visitation<br />
<strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> SI’s activities from an art historical perspective; in this case, it is one<br />
that places <strong>the</strong>ir claims for participation alongside a laboratory model <strong>of</strong><br />
artistic experimentation <strong>and</strong> an eroticised <strong>the</strong>atrical counterculture. 8<br />
Despite <strong>the</strong> mountain <strong>of</strong> literature on <strong>the</strong> SI produced within Cultural<br />
Studies, <strong>the</strong>re have been very few attempts to contextualise <strong>the</strong> group<br />
within artistic tendencies <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> period. 9 More usually, writers defer to <strong>the</strong><br />
SI’s self- proclaimed exceptionalism <strong>and</strong> distance from mainstream artistic<br />
activities, particularly following <strong>the</strong> controversies occasioned by <strong>the</strong>ir fi rst<br />
museum show in 1989. 10<br />
This chapter picks up a number <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong>mes outlined in previous chapters:<br />
<strong>the</strong> tension between collective <strong>and</strong> individual authorship, <strong>the</strong> cultivation <strong>of</strong><br />
multiple audiences, <strong>and</strong> <strong>the</strong> confl icting dem<strong>and</strong>s <strong>of</strong> individual agency <strong>and</strong><br />
directorial control. Once again, <strong>the</strong>atrical metaphors are prevalent: Lebel<br />
was infl uenced by Antonin <strong>Art</strong>aud’s Theatre <strong>of</strong> Cruelty (from The Theatre<br />
<strong>and</strong> Its Double, 1938), while an early tract by <strong>the</strong> French section <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> SI is<br />
titled ‘Nouveau théâtre d’opérations dans la culture’ (1958). Each <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong><br />
groups presents a different solution to <strong>the</strong> problem <strong>of</strong> visualising ephemeral<br />
participatory experiences: GRAV leave us with sculptures <strong>and</strong> (more rarely)<br />
installations; Lebel <strong>and</strong> his contemporaries <strong>of</strong>fer partially drafted scores <strong>and</strong><br />
photographs to be re- interpreted; while <strong>the</strong> SI h<strong>and</strong> down fi lms, discursive<br />
tracts <strong>and</strong> architectural models, which serve primarily as suggestions or tools<br />
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