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EXPOTHESIS waking up from the nightmare series in art research and public space of participation Expothesis is an outcome of the collaboration of Expodium Wake up from the Nightmare of Participation! This and MaHKU, the Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and book presents a platform for the development of proac- Design. It investigates the significance of artistic knowl- tive engagement and aims to fuel an agonistic debate edge production in regard to art and public space. Each among theorists and practitioners from various fields of year Expodium and MaHKU invite a prominent author to knowledge, cultural backgrounds and political positions throw light on these issues. about the central thesis of Markus Miessen’s recent Waking Up from the Nightmare of Participation is the sec- publication The Nightmare of Participation – Crossbench ond publication in the series. Praxis as a Mode of Criticality. WAKING UP FROM THE NIGHTMARE expothesis no.1: This book does not look for approval or consensual Politics, Identity and Public Space. Critical Reflections PARTICIPATION OF deliberation, but seeks for an agile examination of a in and Through the Practices of Contemporary Art, proposed post-consensual (spatial) practice, formulat- Mika Hannula, 2009. ing the necessity to undo the innocence of participation while promoting a conflictual reading of participation ICIPATION as a mode of proactive first person singular engage- 2 ment: a step towards a state of acting and an individual, OWRATNIK OWRATNIK 2 2 2 2 OM THE propositional practice. no no no no no ART OL P sis None of the contributions were content-edited; no con- K sis sis sis sis E — P FR E E E E sensual or editorial constraints were imposed on any of th the contributors. U th th th th N O KUS MIESSEN IN O O O O A VALERIE VALERIE A & M EXP AR AR EXP EXP EXP EXP KUS MIESSEN K M OL OWRATNIK OWRATNIK Nina Valerie Kolowratnik is an architect educated in VALERIE VALERIE & AKING Graz and Helsinki, who is currently involved in ‘Critical W Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture’ at HTMARE OF Columbia University, New York. INA IG N Markus Miessen is an architect, researcher and writer, N who runs Studio Miessen. He practices and teaches in- ternationally and is now a professor for Critical Spatial Practice at the Städelschule, Frankfurt. EXP O th E sis no 2 WAKING UP FROM THE NIGHTMARE OF PARTICIPATION — NINA VALERIE KOLOWRATNIK & MARKUS MIESSEN CONTENT 6 EXPODIUM PREFACE 10 NINA VALERIE KOLOWRATNIK & MARKUS MIESSEN ON THE PROTOCOLS OF INVITATION 30 CARSON CHAN EPILOGUE 36 NINA VALERIE KOLOWRATNIK SUBJECT: CONTRIbuTION TO MARKUS MIESSEN’S FORTHCOMING PubLICATION WAKING UP FROM THE UP FROM WAKING 42 PATRICIA REED ECCENTRIC SPACE: DEMOCRACY AT ALL COST AND THE INDISCIPLINARY PARTICIPANT 58 TIRDAD ZOLGHADR PuNK MACHT DICKEN ARSCH N IGHTMARE OF 2 61 SCHORSCH KAMERUN ART GROUP OF CHEERING PERSIANS P 64 AKADEMIE C/O ARTICIP AKADEMIE C/O'S LETTER TO BERLIN'S LEADING POLITICAL CANDIDATES, 2011 ATION 70 MARIA FUSCO POOR IT IS 75 LIAM GILLICK IMMOLATION 79 MIKA HANNULA IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR HONEY, DON’T GO OFF KILLING ALL THE BEEs – THE QUEST FOR THE COMMON GOOD AND THE PARTICIPATORY COMMUNITY 89 PHILLIP ZACH 'WE WILL BREATHE LATER' 95 ANGELIquE CAMPENS CAN I NOT PARTICIPATE, OR WHAT IS GENEROUS ART TODAY? 98 SuHAIL MALIK JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO PARTICIPATE AGAIN – COMMUNISM, ITS RECURRING NIGHTMARE 111 MICHAEL HIRSCH PROFESSIONAL AMATEURS, OUTSIDERS, INTRUDERS – ON THE UTOPIA OF TRANSDISCIPLINARY WORK IN THE CuLTURAL FIELD 118 JAN NAUTA THE ECONOMY OF PARTICIPATION 123 FEDERICA BUETI DRILLING YOUR EARS 135 DIETER ROELSTRAETE ON STANDING STILL 3 CONTENT 138 KRISTINA LEE PODESVA ON ART, ETHICS, AND PARTICIPATION OR HOW DO WE PARTICIPATE? 148 EYAL DANON SOME NOTES FROM AN ENCIRCLED SOCIETY* 160 MELANIE O'BRIAN THE NIGHTMARE OF PARTICIPATION (CROSSBENCH PRAXIS AS A MODE OF CRITICALITY) EVALUATION 163 JEREMY TILL THE KING IS DEAD! LONG LIVE THE QUEEN! 168 LuIGI FASSI IN THE MIDST OF THE DISCONSOLATE MODERN WORLD 175 MORTEN PAUL & FELIX VOGEL PARTICIPATING POLITICALLY 189 DAN PERJOVSCHI PARTICIPATION, 2011 193 NINA MÖNTMANN ON THE IMPORTANCE OF ETHICAL DECISIONS IN PARTICIPATORY ART 198 Hu FANG THE HUNGER ARTIST 204 URBAN SUBJECTS THE SPACES AND TEMPORALITIES OF DUAL POWER AND AUTOGESTION IN GRAMOVEN, CARACAS 215 MARK VON SCHLEGELL THE UP FROM WAKING MEANWHILE, OFF URANUS 221 ADNAN YILDIZ THE SUBURBS, CURATORS BATTLE, AND A LONG NIGHT 233 MARK FISHER N IGHTMARE OF 4 HOW TO NOT PARTICIPATE 236 EvA TUERKS & MAGNUS NILSSON P ARTICIP 238 ASHKAN SEPAHVAND HE LEFT WITH HIS SIGHT, YET HE CANNOT SEE ATION 246 WOLFGANG ZINGGL BREAD AND PARTICIPATION 249 STEFAN HEIDENREICH BEYOND REPRESENTATION 254 CAN ALTAY A LETTER TO TWO FRIENDS, STILL AWAITING A REPLY 262 JULIA MORITZ NOTES ON INSTITUTIONAL CRITIQUE IN SPACES OF CONFLICT 268 ANDREA PHILLIPS A SHORT PLAN FOR ART INSTITUTIONS POST-PARTICIPATION 274 NIKOLAUS HIRSCH, MICHEL MÜLLER, CYBERMOHALLA ENSEMBLE WHEN SOMETHING EXPANDS, IT EATS INTO SOMETHING ELSE 281 JAN VERWOERT NOTES ON COLLABORATIVE PRODUCTION 288 BIOGRAPHIES 302 COLOPHON 5 CONTENT WAKING UP FROM THE NIGHTMARE OF PARTICIPATION THE UP FROM WAKING N IGHTMARE OF P ARTICIPATION M U XPODI EFACE E PR 6 This book is the second publication in the Expothesis series, an initia- tive of Expodium and MaHKU, the Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Arts and Design. The Expothesis series investigates the significance of artistic knowledge production in regard to art and public space. Expodium intervenes in the city. Through a series of long-term projects and energetic actions, Expodium draws attention to urban problem- atics of our time, confronts groups of young, international artists with current tendencies and phenomena in the urban environment, and seeks to help them utilize possibilities for breaking through en- trenched patterns of thought. Expodium surprises, irritates, provokes and stimulates the city's us- ers, to crank up the conversation about their surroundings. It was through the publications Did Someone Say Participate? (2006), and The Violence of Participation (2007) that we got interested in Miessen’s work. Especially when The Nightmare of Participation (2010) was in the making, we felt close connections between Miessen’s ideas and experiences and Expodium’s own practice and visions. M The Nightmare of Participation attracted our attention in particular U because of Markus Miessen’s introduction of ‘crossbench praxis’ as 7 a mode of criticality, the ‘uninvited outsider’ as someone who could EXPODI create conflict in order to instigate a productive process. We found this approach appealing because it relates directly to our own mode of operation. Questions arose about how the idea of the crossbench practitioner could be concretized in an art practice. What would that look like? And how do you create a place of conflict that goes beyond the idea of compromising, and instead aims for innovation and new strategies? There is an unstable equilibrium that is constructed through an art practice in public space, the main aim of which is to function as a ‘spark plug’ that seeks to stimulate dialogue and thinking on urbanism. We challenge artists to become the generic force behind that ‘spark plug’, and to undergo a series of successive conflicts as the subsequent ‘offspring’ of that challenge. We trust in their autonomous capacity to shape that conflictual space, and argue that their outcome will be pro- ductive for all parties involved. There is an inevitable connection between engaging with public space, the way that it is shaped, and dealing with users of that space. There are multiple levels of participation taking place during that process, layers that call for an artistic practice that goes against being educational, invasive and patronising, an artistic practice that instead activates and mobilises people to think about, and be concerned with their own habitat. We invited Markus to write Expothesis no.2 as a follow-up to The Nightmare of Participation, elaborating more on the notions of par- ticipation as false nostalgic desire, conflict versus compromise, con- sensus as collective passivity and the artist/art institution as uninvited outsider. The end result exceeded our expectations. Markus Miessen, together with Nina Valerie Kolowratnik, shaped this publication into a collec- tive platform of critical thinking and reflection. Waking Up from the Nightmare of Participation is an amalgam of thirty- seven contributions that constitute a true space of conflict, question- ing, disproving, endorsing and taking further the critical participatory THE UP FROM WAKING practice suggested in The Nightmare of Participation. It opens up a much wider field of discussion, including the question of the outsider, disciplinarity, democracy, political correctness, institutional critique and more. We thank Markus Miessen and Nina Valerie Kolowratnik for their N IGHTMARE OF 8 collaboration, commitment and massive efforts on making this book, and we express our utmost gratitude to the contributors who so generously offered us their thoughts, reactions and creative input. Furthermore we thank CLEVER°FRANKE for being in charge of the P design, Don Mader for the English text editing and Ben Ferguson for ARTICIPATION the German-English translations. And of course, a major thank you to MaHKU, Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design, for co-producing the book with us. Expodium EXPODIUM 9 NINA VALERIE KOLOWRATNIK & MARKUS MIESSEN ON THE PROTOCOLS OF INVITATION WAKING UP FROM THE UP FROM WAKING N N IGHTMARE OF IGHTMARE OF 10 P P ARTICIP ARTICIPATION ATION NINA VALERIE KOLOWRATNIK: One of the first things we were speak- ing about in our initial talk was the title of the book, Waking Up from the Nightmare of Participation, which you already had clearly in mind before we even started with the actual work on it.

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