Performance and Participatory Art
Journal Title: Art Inquiry. Recherches sur les arts - Year 2018, Vol 20, Issue
Abstract
The relationship between participatory art and performance is complex. On the one hand, their affinity is recognized, because in both cases we are dealing with emphasizing the role of action, but on the other, this action is understood differently. If the first aspect is taken into account, in museum or gallery press releases the manifestations of participatory art are referred to as “performances” – sometimes accompanied by an adjective. The aim of the article is to take a closer look at this issue. The discussion begins by highlighting the fact that happenings (especially European) from the 1960s are more often considered as a reference point for participatory art than performance art. Claire Bishop points to the conscious socio-political criticism of the consumer society that appears in happenings. The author of the article argues that the structure of these activities may also be an argument. When discussing the rules of public participation in happenings and performance art, she cites Erika Fischer-Lichte’s views that in the latter case a “feedback loop” should be created between the performer and the audience. Such a loop is not formed in the case of happenings and cannot be shaped in participatory art, where the artist is only one of the people participating in the action. The article examines examples of characteristic works based on the principle of participation: Rirkit Tiravanija, Tania Bruguera and Paweł Althamer. In none of them did the artist occupy a distinguished position, she/he did not affect the way the participants behaved, and she/he only created an opportunity for a community. In the first case, its formation was completely free, in the second – there were forms of pressure release from it, in the third – there was encouragement. Nowhere, however, did the artist define the rules of action, did not determine the stake, did not set goals. At the same time, while making the participants the creators of the course of the action, the question “What for?” remains important in participatory art, which lends it a political character.
Authors and Affiliations
Paulina Sztabińska
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP429394
- DOI 10.26485/AI/2018/20/12
- Views 80
- Downloads 0
The “linguistic turn” and twentieth-century possibilities of conducting research on old architecture. Perception and reception of architectural pieces in South America
Language plays a leading role in describing, arranging and construing the social world, which also incorporates broadly understood culture. Research on language and its associated methodology is already the subject of in...
Participation in the Present and the Spacing of Time: On Kawara, Nancy, Levinas
This paper focuses on the close examination of the notions of presence, participation, and time in the conceptual art of On Kawara, in which the rhetorical figure of art works through the spacing of time. In this way, th...
Metaphysics in the shackles of asteiology
Will the dog crush heron’s leg, or will the heron pluck out the dog’s eyes? – an array of possible decodings of this animalistic drama appears in the logical-ontological space of the image. However, an image does not par...
The Aesthetic and Material Implications of Ecoventions’ Ongoing Participatory Demands
In this paper, we assume that participatory art is an artwork, produced either collectively or by one artist, that invites participants to alter either its appearance, structure, and/or function, though not its purpose....
The avant-garde roots of Polish design in the Socialist Realism period. A case study
Due to the pragmatic orientation and continuation of modernist artistic solutions, it is difficult to find explicit Socialist Realist traits in the Polish design of that time, especially as the term “Socialist Realist de...