Artificial Hells
Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship
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١٫٠ - ١ تقييم
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- 9٫99 US$
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- 9٫99 US$
وصف الناشر
This searing critique of participatory art—from its development to its political ambitions—is “an essential title for contemporary art history scholars and students as well as anyone who has . . . thought, ‘Now that’s art!’ or ‘That’s art?’” (Library Journal)
Since the 1990s, critics and curators have broadly accepted the notion that participatory art is the ultimate political art: that by encouraging an audience to take part an artist can promote new emancipatory social relations. Around the world, the champions of this form of expression are numerous, ranging from art historians such as Grant Kester, curators such as Nicolas Bourriaud and Nato Thompson, to performance theorists such as Shannon Jackson.
Artificial Hells is the first historical and theoretical overview of socially engaged participatory art, known in the US as “social practice.” Claire Bishop follows the trajectory of twentieth-century art and examines key moments in the development of a participatory aesthetic. This itinerary takes in Futurism and Dada; the Situationist International; Happenings in Eastern Europe, Argentina and Paris; the 1970s Community Arts Movement; and the Artists Placement Group. It concludes with a discussion of long-term educational projects by contemporary artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn, Tania Bruguera, Pawel Althamer and Paul Chan.
Since her controversial essay in Artforum in 2006, Claire Bishop has been one of the few to challenge the political and aesthetic ambitions of participatory art. In Artificial Hells, she not only scrutinizes the emancipatory claims made for these projects, but also provides an alternative to the ethical (rather than artistic) criteria invited by such artworks. Artificial Hells calls for a less prescriptive approach to art and politics, and for more compelling, troubling, and bolder forms of participatory art and criticism.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Since the early 1990s, there has been significant global artistic interest in participation and collaboration in conceptual and performance art. In this critically astute and provocative study, City University of New York art historian Bishop (Installation Art: A Critical History) analyzes the meaning of what results from participatory art rather than solely emphasizing its artistic process. Bishop divides her incisive and meticulously researched study of participatory art into three sections: a theoretical introduction to the genre, contextualizing it in the Italian Futurists, Russian proletkult, and Dada; case studies in participatory art such as the Situationist International, Argentinian art of the late 1960s led by Oscar Masotta, and Brazilian director Augusto Boal's theater of social change; and contemporary art performance and pedagogy. Bishop's arguments are convincingly supported and potentially very contentious. She suggests that participatory art makes the ethics of interpersonal interaction more important than politics and social justice concerns, and that activist art is not enough for social change other institutions are necessary. A critically challenging work of vital scholarship, the book will be of greatest interest to art historians, art theorists, artists, and cultural critics.
