Participatory art is an approach to making
art in which the audience is engaged directly in the creative process, allowing
them to become co-authors, editors, and observers of the work. Therefore,this
type of art is incomplete without the viewers physical interaction. Its intent
is to challenge the dominant form of making art in the West, in which a small
class of professional artists make the art while the public takes on the role
of passive observer or consumer, i.e., buying the work of the professionals in
the marketplace.
Some works on commission, which have made
known participatory art, are the theater of Augusto Boal's oppressed and the
happenings of Allan Kaprow. An artistic work, which is interactive and
participated, can be defined as participatory art and can also be categorized
with terms such as relational art, social practice and a new form of public
art.Commended works by advocates that popularized participatory art include
Augusto Boal in his Theater of the oppressed, as well as Allan Kaprow in
happenings.
Participatory arts refers to a range of
arts practice, including relational aesthetics, where emphasis is placed on the
role of the viewer or spectator in the physical or conceptual realisation and
reception of the artwork. The central component of Participatory Arts is the
active participation of the viewer or spectator. Many forms of Participatory
Arts practice foreground the role of collaboration in the realisation of an
artwork, deemphasising the role of the professional artist as sole creator or
author of the artwork, while building social bonds through communal meaning and
activity. The term Participatory Arts encompasses a range of arts practices
informed by social, political, geographic, economic and cultural imperatives,
such as community arts, activist art, new genre public art, socially-engaged
art and dialogical art.
Participatory Arts can be artform specific,
such as visual arts, music or drama, or they can be interdisciplinary involving
collaboration across a range of artforms. They can also involve collaboration
with non-art agencies, such as social inclusion organisations, local
authorities and community development groups. The artwork produced can take
many forms and, due to the collaborative nature of Participatory Arts, this may
comprise an event, a situation or a Performance, rather than the production of
an object. The interactions that emerge from these encounters are often
translated into documentary mediums, such as photography, video or text.
Participatory art is a term that describes
a form of art that directly engages the audience in the creative process so
that they become participants in the event
In this respect, the artist is seen as a
collaborator and a co-producer of the situation (with the audience), and these
situations can often have an unclear beginning or end.
Subtypes of participatory art:
Photovoice
Comic Book Project
Create a Comic Project
History
Participatory art has its origins in the
futurist and dada performances of the early twentieth century, which were
designed to provoke, scandalise and agitate the public. In the late 1950s the
artist Allan Kaprow devised performances called happenings, in which he would
coerce the audience into participating in the experience. The French film-maker
and writer Guy Debord, founder of situationism, also promoted a form of
participatory art in that he wished to eliminate the spectator’s position by
devising industrial paintings: paintings created en masse. The contemporary
artist Marvin-Gaye Chetwynd relies entirely on willing participants to create
her performances, as does the activist artist Tania Bruguera. In her work
Surplus Value, participants were asked to wait in line and then randomly
selected into those who could enter the work and others who were submitted to
lie detector tests, in order to highlight the problems of immigration.
The emergence of Participatory Arts is
informed by earlier avant-garde movements such as dada, constructivism and
surrealism, which raised questions with regard to notions of originality and
authorship and challenged conventional assumptions about the passive role of
the viewer or spectator. In doing so they adopted an anti-bourgeois position on
the role and function of art.
The social, political and cultural upheavals
of the 1960s and the perceived elitism, social disengagement and
commodification of art associated with modernism contributed to new forms of
politicised, reactionary and socially engaged practice, such as conceptual art,
fluxus and situationism. The development of new technologies and improved
mechanisms of communication and distribution, combined with the break down of
medium-specific artforms, provided greater possibilities for artists to
physically interact with the viewer. New forms of practice were developed by
artists, who proactively sought out new artistic mediums to shape mutual
exchange through open and inclusive practices. These new forms of practice
appropriated non-hierarchical social forms and were informed by a range of
theoretical and practical disciplines, such as feminism, postcolonial theory,
psychoanalysis, critical theory and literary theory. While questions of
authorship raised concerns about who participates in the definition and
production of art, the relationship of the artwork to its audience became a
central axis for these emerging forms of arts practice.
One of the earliest usages of the term
appears in photographer Richard Ross (photographer)'s review for the Los
Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art journal of the exhibition "Downtown
Los Angeles Artists," organized by the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts
Forum in 1980. Describing in situ works by Jon Peterson (artist), Maura Sheehan
and Judy Simonian anonymously placed around Santa Barbara
In the late 1990s participatory concepts
have been expanded upon by a new generation of artists identified under the
heading of relational art or Relational Aesthetics. This is a term coined by
the French curator Nicolas Bourriaud to describe a range of open-ended art
practices, concerned with the network of human relations and the social context
in which such relations arise. Relational Art also stresses the notion of
artworks as gifts, taking multiple forms, such as meals, meetings, parties,
posters, casting sessions, games, discussion platforms and other types of
social events and cooperations. In this context, emphasis is placed on the use
of the artwork. Art is regarded as information exchanged between the artist and
the viewer which relies on the responses of others to make it relational.
In response to the rapid acceleration of
real time communications in the twenty first century a new term, altermodern,
also devised by Bourriaud, proposes an alternative to the conceptual lineage of
postmodernism. According to Bourriaud, the opening of new market economies and
the mobility of artist and audience has stimulated new models for political and
cultural exchange and participation. Through global distribution systems,
artists can cut across geographic and political boundaries. A new cultural
framework consisting of diaspora, migration and exodus offers alternative modes
of interpretation and understanding of the artwork. The decentralisation of
global culture presents new formats for exchange between artist and audience,
which are continually susceptible and adaptable to readily-available
technologies. Digital technology and the internet's global social networks can
promote a sense of participation without the physical gathering of people in
any one location. This represents a fundamental shift in traditional notions of
community and our experience of artworks.
Influence:
The presumed authorial control of the
artist was challenged in particular by Conceptual artists who placed an
emphasis on the idea or concept rather than a tangible art object. They created
artworks which could be realised by others without the direct intervention of
the artist. Artworks could take the form of a set of instructions, where
participants were directly involved in the co-creation of the artwork.
Instructions were communicated through a variety of media, such as photography,
video, drawing, text, performance, sound, sculpture and installation.
Similarly, Fluxus artists rejected
traditional principles of craftsmanship, permanency of the art object and the
notion of the artist as specialist. Fluxus artists viewed art not as a finite
object but as a time-based experience, employing performance and theatrical
experiments. Fluxus artists were interested in the transformative potential of
art through collaboration. Spectators were encouraged to interact with the
performer, while plotless staged events left artworks open to artistic chance
and interpretation. Artworks were realised in a range of media, including
musical scores, performances, events, publications, multiples and assembled
environments constructed to envelop the observer. These initiatives were often
conceived with workshop characteristics, whereby the artist operated as
facilitator, engaging the audience in philosophical discussions about the
meaning of art. Artworks often took the form of meetings and public
demonstrations, happenings or social sculpture, whereby the meaning of the work
was derived from the collective engagement of the participants. A common goal
of Fluxus, Happenings and Situationist events was to develop a new synthesis
between politics and art, where political activism was mirrored in streetbased
arts practice as a radical means to eliminate distinctions between art and
life.
It is important to point out that there has
been some nominal obfuscation of Participatory Art, causing its appreciation as
a distinct form to be stymied. It is most likely that this occurred
simultaneously with the development of the term "Relational
Aesthetics" by Bourriaud in the late 1990s. Some other art making
techniques, such as 'community-based art', 'interactive art', or
'socially-engaged art' have been (mis)labelled as Participatory art, simply
because the subtleties of distinction are not always clearly understood or
cared about. Participatory art requires of the artist that they either not be
present, or that they somehow are able to recede far enough to become equal
with the participants. This is the only way that participants might be offered
the agency of creation; without this detail, participants will always respond
within the domain of authority of the artist; they will be subjugated in this
way, and the work will fail to be participatory. This detail is centrally
important in asserting Participation as a form in itself, and effectively
differentiates Participation from interactive, community based art and socially
engaged art. Any of these techniques can include the presence of the artist, as
it will not impinge upon the outcome of the work in the same way.
Folk and tribal art can be considered to be
a predecessor or model for contemporary "participatory art" in that
many or all of the members of the society participate in the making of
"art". However, the ideological issue of use arises at this point
because art made in the institutions of art is by default, already part of the
art world, and therefore it's perceived use is entirely different to any
ritualistic or traditional practices expressed by folk or tribal groups. As the
ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl wrote, the tribal group "has no
specialization or professionalization; its division of labor depends almost
exclusively on sex and occasionally on age, and only rarely are certain
individuals proficient in any technique to a distinctive degree ... the same
songs are known by all the members of the group, and there is little
specialization in composition, performance or instrument making.”
In the Fall/Winter issue of Oregon
Humanities magazine, writer Eric Gold describes "an artistic tradition
called 'social practice,' which refers to works of art in which the artist,
audience, and their interactions with one another are the medium. While a
painter uses pigment and canvas, and a sculptor wood or metal, the social
practice artist often creates a scenario in which the audience is invited to
participate. Although the results may be documented with photography, video, or
otherwise, the artwork is really the interactions that emerge from the
audience's engagement with the artist and the situation."
Participatory or interactive art creates a
dynamic collaborati
The development of Participatory Arts
practice has also been informed and shaped by the development of public art
programmes, many of which evolved in the context of large-scale urban renewal
and regeneration initiatives. Participatory Arts programmes with their emphasis
on public engagement and participation can be an important element in both the
consensus-building process and critique of such regeneration initiatives. The
economic downturn and social political turmoil of the 1980s combined with the
alienating effects of capitalism and its impact on community structures,
resulted in an increasing awareness of the potential of the arts as a vehicle
to address social issues, in particular issues of social inclusion. Influenced
by earlier forms of socially-engaged and activist art, many Community Arts
organisations and initiatives emerged during this period. Community Arts
emphasised the role of art in bringing about social aspects of the art
initiative were imperative. Dialogical Aesthetics is a term used to describe
the active role of dialogue in such socially-engaged art. During this period,
state bodies funding the arts began to impose contingencies on their client
organisations, such as museums, galleries, theatres and arts organisations,
with regard to encouraging public participation in the arts, especially on the
part of marginalised or socially excluded constituencies. The utilisation of
the arts to address non-arts agendas contributed to an ongoing debate about the
role of art and its relationship to its audience, which continues to inform
consideration of Participatory Arts today.
Culture has grown to expect instant
gratification and an all-access pass by posting feedback and opinions online.
We are wholly accustomed to interactivity, and art that reflects such
reciprocation and proactive involvement resonates deeply with us. By turning
art viewing into an inclusive experience, the artist strengthens our
understanding of the piece, and perhaps inspires the visitor to spend a bit
longer on each painting or sculpture.
Today’s art museums are wising up to the
benefits of interactivity. Many institutions have adapted to the needs of
increasingly web-oriented, digitally-minded visitors who expect instant access
and involvement both inside and outside museum walls. Such institutions have
begun utilizing iPhone apps and social networking to promote events, online
galleries to inform those at home, and touch-screen technology to guide
perceptions within exhibitions. The savvier museums are also mastering how to
define and regulate issues of conserving, displaying, and owning conceptual
works that conflate art and audience.
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