City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Publications and Research CUNY Graduate Center 2006 Participation Claire Bishop CUNY Graduate Center How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_pubs/97 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Particip-05-09-06 7/9/06 11:33 Page 1 Roland Barthes//Joseph Beuys//Nicolas Bourriaud// Peter Bürger//Graciela Carnevale//Lygia Clark// Collective Actions//Eda Cufer//Guy Debord//Jeremy Deller//Umberto Eco//Hal Foster//Édouard Glissant// Group Material//Félix Guattari//Thomas Hirschhorn// Carsten Höller//Allan Kaprow//Lars Bang Larsen// Jean-Luc Nancy//Molly Nesbit//Hans Ulrich Obrist// Hélio Oiticica//Adrian Piper//Jacques Rancière// Dirk Schwarze//Rirkrit Tiravanija Participation Particip-05-09-06 7/9/06 11:33 Page 2 Whitechapel London The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts PART ICIP ATIO N Edited by Claire Bishop Documents of Contemporary Art Particip-05-09-06 7/9/06 11:33 Page 4 Co-published by Whitechapel and The MIT Press Series Editor: Iwona Blazwick Commissioning Editor: Ian Farr Documents of Contemporary Art First published 2006 Project Editor: Hannah Vaughan © 2006 Whitechapel Ventures Limited Designed by SMITH Texts © the authors, unless otherwise stated Printed in Italy In recent decades artists have progressively expanded the boundaries of art as Whitechapel is the imprint of Whitechapel Cover: Lygia Clark, Baba antropofága (1973), Ventures Limited from the series Collective Body. © The World of they have sought to engage with an increasingly pluralistic environment. Lygia Clark Cultural Association, Rio de Janeiro Teaching, curating and understanding of art and visual culture are likewise no All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system Whitechapel Ventures Limited longer grounded in traditional aesthetics but centred on significant ideas, topics or transmitted in any form or by any means, 80-82 Whitechapel High Street and themes ranging from the everyday to the uncanny, the psychoanalytical to electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, London E1 7QZ without the written permission of the publisher www.whitechapel.org the political. To order (UK and Europe) call +44 (0)207 522 7888 ISBN 0-85488-147-6 (Whitechapel) or email [email protected] The Documents of Contemporary Art series emerges from this context. Each ISBN 0-262-52464-3 (The MIT Press) Distributed to the book trade (UK and Europe only) volume focuses on a specific subject or body of writing that has been of key by Cornerhouse A catalogue record for this book is available from www.cornerhouse.org influence in contemporary art internationally. Edited and introduced by a scholar, the British Library The MIT Press artist, critic or curator, each of these source books provides access to a plurality of Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data 55 Hayward Street voices and perspectives defining a significant theme or tendency. Cambridge, MA 02142 Participation / edited by Claire Bishop For information on quantity discounts, For over a century the Whitechapel Gallery has offered a public platform for p. cm. – (Documents of contemporary art series) please email [email protected] art and ideas. In the same spirit, each guest editor represents a distinct yet Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN-13: 978-0-262-52464-3 (pbk. :alk. paper) diverse approach – rather than one institutional position or school of thought – ISBN-10: 0-262-52464-3 (pbk. :alk. paper) 1. Interactive art. 2. Arts audiences. and has conceived each volume to address not only a professional audience but 3. Authorship–Sociological aspects all interested readers. I. Bishop, Claire. II. Series NX46.5.157P37 2006 700.1–dc22 2006044940 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Series editor: Iwona Blazwick Editorial Advisory Board: Roger Conover, Neil Cummings, Emma Dexter, Mark Francis Commissioning editor: Ian Farr Particip-05-09-06 7/9/06 11:33 Page 6 INTRODUCTION//010 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS//018 I WANT ARTISTS’ WRITINGS//094 CRITICAL AND CURATORIAL POSITIONS//158 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES//196 THE BIBLIOGRAPHY//200 INDEX//204 PUBLIC TO BE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS//208 IN SIDE A BRAIN IN ACTION Thomas Hirschhorn, 24h Foucault, 2004 Particip-05-09-06 7/9/06 11:33 Page 8 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS Jeremy Deller The Battle of Orgreave, 2002//146 Umberto Eco The Poetics of the Open Work, 1962//020 Rirkrit Tiravanija No Ghosts in the Wall, 2004//149 Roland Barthes The Death of the Author, 1968//041 Thomas Hirschhorn 24h Foucault, 2004//154 Peter Bürger The Negation of the Autonomy of Art by the Avant-garde, 1974//046 CRITICAL AND CURATORIAL POSITIONS Jean-Luc Nancy The Inoperative Community, 1986//054 Nicolas Bourriaud Relational Aesthetics, 1998//160 Édouard Glissant Poetics of Relation, 1990//071 Lars Bang Larsen Social Aesthetics, 1999//172 Félix Guattari Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Molly Nesbit, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Rirkrit Tiravanija Paradigm, 1992//079 What is a Station?, 2003//184 Jacques Rancière Problems and Transformations Hal Foster Chat Rooms, 2004//190 in Critical Art, 2004//083 ARTISTS’ WRITINGS Guy Debord Towards a Situationist International, 1957//096 Allan Kaprow Notes on the Elimination of the Audience, 1966//102 Hélio Oiticica Dance in My Experience, 1965–66//105 Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica Letters 1968–69//110 Graciela Carnevale Project for the Experimental Art Series, Rosario, 1968//117 Joseph Beuys and Dirk Schwarze Report of a Day’s Proceedings at the Bureau for Direct Democracy, 1972//120 Joseph Beuys I Am Searching For Field Character, 1973//125 Collective Actions Ten Appearances, 1986//127 Adrian Piper Notes on Funk, I–II, 1983–85//130 Group Material On Democracy, 1990//135 Eda Cufer Transnacionala/A Journey from the East to the West, 1996//138 Carsten Höller The Baudouin/Boudewijn Experiment: A Deliberate, Non-Fatalistic, Large-Scale Group Experiment in Deviation, 2000//144 Particip-05-09-06 7/9/06 11:33 Page 10 Claire Bishop noise (factory sirens, motors, turbines, hooters, etc.) performed by hundreds of Introduction//Viewers as Producers participants, directed by conductors signalling from the rooftops.4 These two approaches continue to be seen throughout the multiple instances of participatory art that develop in their wake: an authored tradition that seeks to provoke participants, and a de-authored lineage that aims to embrace collective The point of departure for the selection of texts in this reader is the social creativity; one is disruptive and interventionist, the other constructive and dimension of participation – rather than activation of the individual viewer in ameliorative. In both instances, the issue of participation becomes increasingly so-called ‘interactive’ art and installation. The latter trajectory has been well inextricable from the question of political commitment. rehearsed elsewhere: the explosion of new technologies and the breakdown of One of the first texts to elaborate theoretically the political status of medium-specific art in the 1960s provided myriad opportunities for physically participation dates from 1934, by the left-wing German theorist Walter engaging the viewer in a work of art.1 Less familiar is the history of those artistic Benjamin. He argued that when judging a work’s politics, we should not look at practices since the 1960s that appropriate social forms as a way to bring art the artist’s declared sympathies, but at the position that the work occupies in closer to everyday life: intangible experiences such as dancing samba (Hélio the production relations of its time. Referring directly to the example of Soviet Oiticica) or funk (Adrian Piper); drinking beer (Tom Marioni); discussing Russia, Benjamin maintained that the work of art should actively intervene in philosophy (Ian Wilson) or politics (Joseph Beuys); organizing a garage sale and provide a model for allowing viewers to be involved in the processes of (Martha Rosler); running a café (Allen Ruppersberg; Daniel Spoerri; Gordon production: ‘this apparatus is better, the more consumers it is able to turn into Matta-Clark), a hotel (Alighiero Boetti; Ruppersberg) or a travel agency (Christo producers – that is, the more readers or spectators into collaborators’.5 By way of and Jeanne-Claude). Although the photographic documentation of these example he cites the letters page of a newspaper, but his ideal lies in the plays projects implies a relationship to performance art, they differ in striving to of his contemporary, the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht. As Benjamin collapse the distinction between performer and audience, professional and explains, Brechtian theatre abandons long complex plots in favour of ‘situations’ amateur, production and reception. Their emphasis is on collaboration, and the that interrupt the narrative through a disruptive element, such as song. Through collective dimension of social experience. this technique of montage and juxtaposition, audiences were led to break their These socially-oriented projects anticipate many artistic developments that identification with the protagonists on stage and be incited to critical distance. proliferated since the 1990s, but they also form part of a longer historical Rather than presenting the illusion of action on stage and filling the audiences trajectory. The most important precursors for participatory art took place with sentiment, Brechtian theatre compels the spectator to take up a position around 1920. The Paris ‘Dada-Season’ of April 1921 was a series of towards this action. manifestations that sought to involve the city’s public, the most salient being an By today’s standards, many would argue that the Brechtian model offers a excursion to the church of Saint Julien le Pauvre which drew more than one relatively passive mode of spectatorship, since it relies on raising consciousness hundred people despite the pouring rain. A month later, Dada artists and writers through the distance of critical thinking.