Essay plan-
Part one. 1000 words. History, build up (perhaps less than a thousand words, perhaps even need only mention in biblio)
· Until fairly recently, people were not expected to take part in art in any way other than to look at it. The history of participation in art, or interactive art, or community art.
· Kant’s autonomy of the artist
· Modernism / postmodernism and the idea that there is no creator. industrialisation
· Existentialism, phenomenology, etc-existence precedes essence. Everything is relative
· The spectacle, the society of the spectacle
· The internet, globalisation. The world becomes more specialised (says baudrillard)
· Baudrillard, comments on the society of the spectacle.
Part two-katerina seda. words
· Describe seda’s work. Localised, a combination of social work, community work and art. Utopian, artistic presentation of findings.
·
Part three-placing seda within contemporary art. Criticisms of participation in art
· First define what participation is, what interactive is ( quote definition in ‘participation in contemporary art)
· Participatory art is unscientific, anthropological findings.
· Autonomy of artist gives a lot of freedom, artists are exploring this-relational aesthetics, art is no longer dictating but has the ability (though not always the power or knowledge) to include, and explores the views of everyone, not just artists. Post modern participatory art is a ‘painting’ or collage of viewpoints or actions. The rules of the performance or event are really mostly governed by the artist.
· Some artists (eg deller’s parade, find others) address themselves mainly to the art world. Some, eg Warhol, impact on the public. Seda’s work does connect with a specific section of the public. This is a virtue of seda’s work-many artists focusing on community make general comments and ambiguous gestures. Art Brut is honest. Seda seems to have retained her integrity, she is asking a genuine question in a particular way
· The way in which seda etc asks questions is unscientific, and though art using found objects can be made beautiful, where concept is involved sometimes application of aesthetic values is less than rigorous (as in the situationist magazines). From the knowledge pov, art can even be seen as damaging as the questions it asks are just that, only questions, wrapped in classy packaging and presented to the public, whereas academic works are harder to publicise. There is danger of mass ignorance of a situation-art reassures people that a question has been dealt with in some way when in fact it has not. (knowledge as spectacle)
· The traditional functions of art-to connect with something higher/to communicate higher thoughts (cave paintings were a little religious), to teach, to be revered, to make something beautiful, to challenge the imagination, to perfect a representation of the world, to QUESTION ITSELF? When did art become self conscious? Modernism? And then, to question the effect of art questioning itself. Which is what seems to be happening now, with artists like Sherrie Levine and Carey Young (the quote about intervention vs insertion)
· What good does questioning do?
Part 4. Positive side of participatory art.
· The existentialist idea that in a society each person must independently transcend existing social structures and reconstruct. Phenomenology, the description of wwhaat we see and only that. It is today much easier to gain some insight into an artist’s (or another person’s) life because people are more willing to share things that in the past were seen as inconsequential.
· This resonates particularly for women-feminist art has sought a feminine language, female structures. Social structures are indeed being broken down in that things like relationships, emotions and the moment in time are being put forward for scrutiny, or simply put forward. As the rules for what can be presented have changed with modernism (today we are a long way from the salon des rejetees) anything can be presented for intellectual consideration and debate, although critics of this system (knowledge as spectacle) are putting boundaries on what can be called knowledge. It seems that phenomenology and the idea that everything is relative are ideas that have been fully taken up and manipulated by the state, museums, society (hence relational aesthetics) whereas the satrean notion that knowledge is only what can be definitely proved, the modesty and integrity of learning, has fallen by the wayside, perhaps because phenomenology makes the world seem so enormous, perhaps, as debord suggests, simply because it is easy for the state to encourage an extended period of research without conclusion
Conclusion-that seda is one of few ‘participation’ artists who choose specifically to work with art and people and whose work has a purpose. but is participatory art still just a badly run synthetic play area for adults, a real life version of the sims, a narcissistic attempt by one person to fulfil his or her desires which otherwise would go unfulfilled? Is it escapism? Participatory art seems even more likely than painting etc to be seen as pointless. Does it really affect anybody? In the case of seda, and others (young, the guy who made the huge glass diamond) work directly injected into or aimed at the community can impact that community (perhaps only in as much as boosting its sense of importance, or at least the sense of importance of the local culture office). It seems that the best thing to hope for at the moment from participatory art is a small window into a section of the community. Participatory art may yet be a useful way of dealing with modern society, it may give people a feeling of comfort, it may yet challenge, but it has to be done very carefully. The artist must not make the work about themselves-he or she should have a goal. Work should not be pretentious in any way-if the artist has a limited knowledge of something, they must admit as much, and if their friends are mostly artists, they must admit as much. To gain information from the public, using a gallery is futile except for as a place to display findings. The larger questions at hand in this essay are whether phenomenology is a sound philosophy, whether it works, and also how art will develop and adapt in our bizarre, abstract capitalist society.
Participation…
I would like to hold a series of conversations about a vase
Classes
Discussion groups
Can we discuss this picture of x?
WHAT IS ART LIKE IN DEVELOPING COUNTRYES? IS IT LIKE ART IN CAPITALIST COUNTRIES WAS 100 YEARS AGO, EMPHASIS ON SKILL ETC? OR IS IT DRAWING FROM CAPITALIST SOCIETIES?
IDEAS in situationism-
Them moment, the transitory moment, how important is this actually in situationism?? The fundamental choice. The feeling of being someone in the world who is able to make choices.
Participation-audience participation, how to get to the bottomof whether something a ‘participant’ does is true. Debord suggests that ‘participation’ in art is a masquerade that proclaims itself able to, as Beech says in the article ‘Include Me Out!’; “fundamentally challenge the cultural distinctions that separate …(artworks)…from the artist and the minority community of art”.
My work is about capturing a moment of time but surely that is invalid when the only people whose it are art students?
Existence, ritual etc
Maybe this initial essay could address problems of participation
Then my dissertation could look at the moment in time, the idea of ritual and of existing and the disorientating ‘spectacular’ world.
http://www.nowpublic.com/world/confused-bow-down-north-korea-obama-where-are-you
It is important to distinguish
between the concepts of participative art and
participatory art projects. The latter describes artworks
in which the artist uses participation as a component of
art making. In participative art projects however,
participation IS the project and the artist creates the
framework allowing for participation with no preconceived
ideas of the outcome. As in participative
democracy or participative management it is not so
much the fact that people participate that matters but
rather the fact that participation is the main principle
governing human interactions in such models.
(participation in contemporary art)
An essay on participation would have to take into account relational aesthetics
http://www.springerin.at/dyn/heft_text.php?textid=1761&lang=en
(Participatory Art: A Paradigm Shift from Objects to Subjects, Suzana Milevska)
Theorists
of "participatory" democracy such as jean-Jacques
Rousseau in the eighteenth century, John Stuart Mill in
the nineteenth, JDrgen Habermas in the twentieth, and
today's Cass Sunstein have stressed that active and
civil give-and-take among people of differing views is a
bedrock of informed and socially responsible citizenry.'
(interactive art for a challenged democracy)
Traditionally artworks last and can be seen or
experienced at any time. Contemporary artists have
explored time sensitive artworks that can only be
experienced under specific conditions or at a specific
date and time.
Robert Barry - Sent a message to let the public know
that “This morning half a cubic meter of helium was
released in the atmosphere”. The artwork only exists
through that message and the connection it created.
Christian Boltanski - Mail-art. Sent a vague and
alarming letter to his friends and acquaintances and
documented their reactions.
On Kawara - Sent numerous telegrams to inform his
public that “he is still alive”.
Liam Gillick - Designed a conference room in 1999 with
geometric furniture and specific walls configuration. A
real symposium was held in the room as part of the
installation.
Karen Kilimnik - Created a series of drawings are based
on her address book thus creating connections between
people on many levels.
Meetings and Conviviality
Artworks can also work as machines generating
encounters or meetings of all kinds. Here are a few
examples:
Braco Dimitrijevic - “Casual Passer-by” a series of giant
advertising posters based on photos of anonymous
passer-by and giving the status of celebrity to unknown
and unaware individuals.
Sophie Calle - Most of her work is based on meeting
with people she doesn’t know: followed passer-by,
hired as a maid in a hotel she searched hotel rooms
etc..
Philippe Parreno - Organized a party at the Consortium
exhibition in Dijon France. His project aimed at using
time rather that space during the art fair. The “party”
generated meetings and conviviality.
Rirkrit Tiravanija - In one famous instance, in a Cologne
gallery, Tiravanija re-created his East Village
apartment, where he cooked and served food for 24
hours. In another instance he created a relaxation
space for artists during an art fair.
Contract and Collaboration
Other contemporary artists have explored contractual
relationship and collaborative art processes.
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster - “Welcome to what you
believe you see” (1988) the artist documented his
relationship with various gallery owners he worked
with.
Noritoshi Hirakawa - Created forms based on chance
encounter – for a show in Geneva (1994) he placed an
ad in a newspaper seeking a travel companion to
Greece. Documenting the travel was the material of his
artwork.
Alix Lambert - Wedding piece (1992) – got married four
times in six months as part of her exploring marriage
relationships.
Maurizio Cattelan - Designed a costume of a rabbit for
gallery owner Emmanuel Perrotin who had to wear the
costume in his gallery as part of the project.
(participation in contemporary art)
The issue with my work is, why should anyone watch my films and respond to them? What does art give to people? What is the point of participation in art?
Can art help people to understand society perhaps? Does it help them to express themselves? Why are there so many artists and art students today? Do people study art for narcissistic reasons, or to express themselves, or to be free?
Metatheatre or breaking the fourth wall-panto, asides, etc.
People unsure of how far to go, how much to participate
In art, the artist makes up the rules, although modernism has brought up the question ‘what is an artist’-sherrie Levine, Duchamp etc
PHOTOGRAPHY and spectacular society seem to have developed at the same time. I wonder if my artefact could be ‘a photograph’. Perhaps a photograph of a well known painting that now has a prominent place on some kind of packaging….does such a thing exist? What about a painting by monet? Perhaps photography does not fit in with participation though.
· Until fairly recently, people were not expected to take part in art in any way other than to look at it. The history of participation in art, or interactive art, or community art.
· Propaganda? The idea of art for the masses? COMMUNISM? These things
· Modernism-the rejection of the idea of an all powerful creator
· The sixties, freedom of movement, individuality…..encouraged artists to think in different ways?
· Conversation
Art which makes a big fuss about nothing.
Jeremy deller-a parade celebrating no particular event
If Alys's work used art reproductions to address art's
role within a social and cultural context, Deller, Martinez
and Laderman Ukeles used people to reflect on
their own social or political conditions. Here, different
problems arise: Friedrich Schiller had in the i8th Century
defined the work of art as self-contained, and the
aesthetic experience as a moment of free play or suspension
of power, allowing for two seemingly contradictory
conclusions: aesthetics as a completely autonomous
sphere of experience, and secondly aesthetics as offering
the possibility to create a new form of collective life.
While most contemporary art production has focused on
the former, typically modernist approach - condemning
any possible social or political role of art as an unacceptable
confusion of disciplines - there have always been
voices that have insisted on the interconnection between
art, life and politics, both from an art context (Constructivism,
Bauhaus or Joseph Beuys) and a theoretical one
(Louis Althusser). Today, the contradiction remains; for
example, Relational Aesthetics takes social relations as
its medium (and thus furthers the melding of art and
life) while problematically still adhering to the modernist
idea of the independence of the work of art.
By engaging sections of the public in the performance
as participants and asking them to act out their
own social roles, Deller, Martinez and Laderman Ukeles
made them the subject of the work and, at the same
time, allowed them to adopt political and social subject
positions. That ability of the parade to create subjectivity
is where the artists' political aspirations lie.
(art on parade)
Martinez organised a march with certain disadvantaged people, encouraging them to think about how they were being mistreated, to think of their rights. The artist can use his or her Hand of God to create situations in which anything is possible-the artist uniquely has the ability to organise an event that is both meaningless and meaningful. The artist is like ‘miss blossom’ in ‘I capture the castle’ or a child’s favourite toy-they can do and say what is taboo, can voice emotions that might otherwise cause social isolation. An art event can be baffling, the audience knows what to expect and they expect to see little. In some instances, like the tate modern’s fluxus weekend, when a large organisation is in charge there is still a definite BBC feel-mass production, safe versions of challenging ideas, mediocrity and noise. Participation art is best in intimate settings, and, to maximise its thought provoking impact, it is best experienced alone, and ideally out of a gallery space unless the work is particularly designed for a gallery space. At mark wallinger’s Hayward exhibition, while the flower arrangements hit a pleasantly jarring note amongst a self conscious and ‘educational’ array of sculptures and optical illusions, the corridor piece, an enclosed space where the corridor continues up the wall and around the ceiling, would have been perhaps more effective if it had been in a separate area, away from everything. Though it succeeded in creating an atmosphere, it felt more quirky than calming, disturbing or thought provoking. Too many astonishing things can be almost as mind numbing as not enough.
Laderman Ukeles'Re-spect, in which the
municipal workers of Givors, a small city near Lyons,
drove their trucks and vehicles down the Route National
86 onto the banks of the Rhone. Once there, the 27
assorted vehicles, accompanied by a river procession of
rowing boats, rescue speedboats, barges and a tow boat,
performed a carefully choreographed 'ballet mecanique',
while a ioo-ton diamond of recyded glass from the local
glass factory was gradually revealed.
Re-spect is probably the one case in which an artist
has used the parade format to its full potential. On the
afternoon of October 28, I993, almost the whole city of
Givors went to the Quai de la Navigation to witness the
arrival of the parade and the subsequent performance:
Re-spect became a real celebration. The artist even
obtained the official sanction of the mayor who declared
the day a public holiday - a necessary condition to, allow
all public service employees to participate.
The spirit of competition between the different
groups (firefighters, cleaners, gardeners) enabled the
public service employees to define themselves in relation
to their own department, to the other municipal
workers, and to the city as a whole.
As with any type of interventionist art, there are troubling
aspects to Re-spect and to the other parades. They
can be accused of representing a shallow form of communitarianism,
of being a function of socio-political
compensation and moral grandstanding. As Marius Babias
writes in 'Subject production and political art practice'
(Afterall, issue 9, 2004), 'instead of bringing to light the
state of affairs in a comprehensive political analysis and
thus possibly helping to create a revolutionary situation,
temporary art interventions take on the form of a socioromantic
service, fictitiously reconciling the real conflicts.'
However, even though the potential political and
social effects are difficult to measure, the thoroughness
and consistency of Re-spect injected a certain optimism
that the piece provided a social service, at least as a faithful
exposition of a certain complex situation. This can't
be said of Deller's work in San Sebastian.
. By organising his
parade not on an 'arbitrary day', as stated on the Manifesta
leaflet, but on the official opening date (on Friday
at 7pm, normal working time in Spain), and publicising
it through the Manifesta marketing office, Deller made
sure most of the art-world visitors witnessed part of the
march. But if the potential audience for the work is
reduced to what Stephen Willats called, in Art and Social
Function, 1976, 'art's social environment' that is, 'the
institutions and groups of people which effectively
maintain it [art] as an identifiable activity within society',
then the act of self-representation loses most, if not all,
of its social and political relevance, because the artist is
merely 'preaching to the converted'. On the other hand,
if, as in Givors, the city is made to look at a section of
itself, there is a chance of the work going beyond the
mere psychological empowerment of the marchers
towards a real political empowerment, and the artist
won't then be accused of objectifying the participants
exclusively for the benefit of his or her artwork. Whether
that was the case in San Sebastian is impossible to
establish, because while the event was there for everyone
to see, the timing and publicity were clearly biased
towards an art audience.
(a o p)
On Kawara - Sent numerous telegrams to inform his
public that “he is still alive”.
It is in the major differences between the shows, however, that each
revealed itself as the product of a unique zeitgeist. While both projects
were theoretically open to amateur and professional photographers
alike, MoMAs final pool was thick with names that still resonate:
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange, August Sander, and many
others. That is no surprise when you consider that Edward Steichen
and Wayne Miller determined the selections, rather than the singleblind
crowd process of "Click!" The starry-eyed rhetoric of "The
Family of Man" was based on a belief in pan-cultural human
universals, tempered by a mid-century trust of authority manifested
in Steichen's curatorial position. By comparison, the organizing
principle of "Click!" is embarrassingly local: the Brooklyn Museum
called for photographs about Brooklyn. If that sounds insular and
solipsistic for a major museum, it is only in keeping with the age,
when much of the global data network is devoted to creating and
promoting endless permutations of branded individuality. That may
be less narcissistic than it sounds; skepticism abounds about global
truth, so it is safer to stick to those small pieces of the world that we
can know and control. Even the different layouts of the exhibits speak
volumes. "The Family of Man" was an expansive and grandiloquent
installation designed by Paul Rudolph, while "Click!" occupied a
humble gallery that downplayed physical presence and curatorial
statement in favor of virtual presence and user comments.
(the taste of crowds)
Of course, all this mediocrity [of contemporary
art) claims to transcend itself by carrying
art to a second, ironic level. But it is just as
empty and insignificant on the second as on
the first level. The passage to the aesthetic
level salvages nothing. On the contrary, it is
mediocrity squared. It claims to be null-1"
am null! I am null!"-and it truly is null.
What we have here is a brilliant diagnosis
of the irony we see everywhere in
contemporary art, the idea that through a
kind of internal self-reflection art is somehow
able to distinguish itself from those
values it appears to be putting forward.
And faced with this irony, there is no point
in accusing the art of being bad because
it is just this judgment that it is already
about. Indeed, it is possible to argue that
this judgment is the real subject of the art,
that it would not exist,until after such a
judgment had been made-A. d yet-this
is Baudrillard's objection-it is e*actfy in"
doing this, in turning a bad judgment into
good art, that art forgets the fundamental
rule of symbolic exchange, which is that no
distinction between good and bad can ever
be made.There.is no outside position available
in the game between good and bad,
between value and the destructioR Ofvalue,
that contemporary art unleashes. The good
(value) can never definitively be separated
from the bad (the destruction of value).
(baudrillard good and bad)
Nevertheless, if`we rea4d
Baudrillard's text closely, we will see how'
those distinctions that he puts forward are
impossible to maintain. The same terms
and figures will play in both positive and
negative registers. For example, as we have
seen, Baudrillard can criticize the irony of
art's reflection on its own worthlessness, but
also praise irony as the "universal and spiritual
form of the disillusion of the world." He
can criticize the art world's "insider" trading,
but also approve of Warhol's "radical
snobbism." He can criticize the indifferent
exchange of objects, which "cease thereby
to exist in their finality;' but admire the
"fetishization" of pure forms that "can only
be exchanged among themselves." And
Warhol, Duchamp, and Baudelaire for their
part, if they are largely seen as positive, are
also viewed at times in a negative light
But in another
,sense it is Baudrillard himself who proposes'this
rule, who is able to putforward
a definition of "good" art in-a situation
where good and bad are inextricably united
(and in so doing reintroduces stakes
into contemporary art).
Baudrillard thus introduces
a distinction that lies not so much within
the existing field of art as between this
field and what allows it. Art-appearance
as such-is precisely the failure to represent
that "nothing" for which it stands
in or replaces, just as this nothing could
not be visualized without its art. And
certain artworks and artists-Warhol,
Edward Hopper, Duchamp-come closer
than others to bringing appearance
and nothingness together, although they
too could never finally do so, inevitably
falling short of the mark.
A
distinction between good and bad must
be made, the exchange between them
must stop somewhere, yet we can never
exactly say where this distinction falls,
what lies on one side of it or the other.
As Baudrillard says, "You can no more
identify the instigator of this plot than you
can identify the victim. The conspiracy
has no author, and everyone is both victim
and accomplice."
Such is the power of Baudrillard's
thought: that henceforth the world is not
as it is but only the failure to realize a
kind of rule. To suggest that the world is
a simulation is not to change anything
about the world or to oppose anything to
it, but is only to demonstrate that the world
inevitably falls short of itself, can never be
entirely realized. It is to introduce a gap
between the world and itself, to make it
seem as though the world is the effect of a
prior crime or conspiracy
(baudrillard good and bad)
There was, as a characteristic
feature of modernist life and thought, a belief
in the autonomous agency of the artist, transcending
history, to speak on behalf of the other. While challenging
western culture's myth of autonomy, especially
as the individual was subjected to the ideological and
economic constraints of modernity, the artist nonetheless
presumed a freedom from those limits. However,
linked with agency in its operation seemed to be a
responsibility for historical critique - if artists could
stand outside history through autonomy, then they,
like the angel of history, were uniquely capable of illuminating
it for those still dwelling in the catastrophe.
Certainly it is faith in the redemptive properties of this
mechanism's operation that seems to impel Benjamin's
writing about modernist culture. In Modernism's
obsolescence this articulation of parts of the apparatus
has become completely detached. This separation
allows artists to make a claim for the performance of
autonomy, inevitably rendered through the material of
the everyday. In this they are, supposedly, reuniting
art and life but without ever accepting the necessity of
critique except when, in acts of supreme nihilism -
typified on the one hand by Banksy's 'how you conform
whilst appearing to oppose' graffiti, and on the
other by the entire mode of 'institutional critique' -
presenting that destructive critique as, itself, a commodity
form to be consumed within the systems it
purports to destroy. The claim that was made for
Sherman and Prince in the 8os, that the very act of
transformation is understood as itself a critique,
neglects the degree to which the autonomous sphere
of art has been subsumed by celebrity, mass culture
and the marketplace.
(knowledge and spectacle)
Do not forget this
Ever
Ever
Is my work entirely narcissistic? Is there any point whatsoever in doing what I tried to do??
KATHARINA SEDA or ACADEMIA
What evidence is there, in fact, that art helps anything, affects anything?
Knowledge and spectacle, the article, makes a very, very good argument for the redundancy of the majority of ‘post modern art’. What does art actually do? Is it not fundamentally self expression, or else something aesthetic?
What I make is not devoted to technical skill. It is not clever. It is not about aesthetics. Many artists do not think about what they are doing. Why repeat something, why go over something that has already happened? What good does repeating things do? What does the audience get from seeing an old film, from making links, from answering a questionnaire? If the art is meant to be ironic, would that irony not be better expressed through writing?
The idea of an artistic intervention, with its implication of stoppages and blockages, has always seemed a little naïve to me. Why is this word so over-used in connection with art? I hope I am not being over-literal when I ask: since when did an artist actually stop anything to do with mainstream Capitalism? Insertions seems a much more useful and provocative term. It implies that the artist has the knowledge and the tactical cunning to define a system (perhaps by combining disparate systems) in formal, conceptual and indeed rhizomatic terms, and then find a gap from which to insert or divert something which reframes an understanding of the whole. Such a tactic exposes and manipulates the dynamics and asymmetries of power around us: a form of Kinetic art employing a systems aesthetic. This is art as software: it implies a potential reprogramming of the physical and the immaterial. We should explore this model further.
Carey Young
Involving the audience is a way of spreading the word, forging links or ‘merging art and reality’ I am looking at the area in which art and real life are forcibly brought together or separated, analysed. Real life is analysed, sometimes with a specific goal in mind, for example in Carey Young’s ‘Product Recall’. Other times, and not at all uncommonly, an artist uses their autonomy, their separateness, to explore the way in which people learn or interact, to explore these things unscientifically and to present them to the public in a way that might throw further light onto one, very particular, section of society. Phenomenology, art. We as artists are advised not to make work about horoscopes, or about the music we like, unless in very great detail and with some other motive such as the one mark Leckey has (to teach-IS THIS TRUE?). but we are encouraged, almost (are we?) to make work about our intimate relationships, or the crowd, or the herd. Is this because we are swept up in the craze of modernism or post modernism, funded by galleries?
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The term encompasses the activities and output of those who felt the "traditional" forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming outdated in the new economic, social and political conditions of an emerging fully industrialized world.
A salient characteristic of Modernism is self-consciousness. This often led to experiments with form, and work that draws attention to the processes and materials used (and to the further tendency of abstraction).[4] The poet Ezra Pound's paradigmatic injunction was to "Make it new!" However, the break from the past was not a clean break. Pound's phrase identified one Modernist objective, even as T.S. Eliot emphasized the relation of the artist to tradition.[5]
Literary scholar Peter Childs sums up the complexity:
"There were paradoxical if not opposed trends towards revolutionary and reactionary positions, fear of the new and delight at the disappearance of the old, nihilism and fanatical enthusiasm, creativity and despair."[6]
These oppositions are inherent to Modernism: It is in its broadest cultural sense the assessment of the past as different to the modern age, the recognition that the world was becoming more complex, and that the old "final authorities" (God, government, science, and reason) were subject to intense critical scrutiny.
Romanticism: emphasis on individual subjective experience, the sublime, the supremacy of "Nature" as a subject for art, revolutionary or radical extensions of expression, and individual liberty. By mid-century, however, a synthesis of these ideas with stable governing forms had emerged, partly in reaction to the failed Romantic and democratic Revolutions of 1848. It was exemplified by Otto von Bismarck's Realpolitik and by "practical" philosophical ideas such as positivism. Called by various names—in Great Britain it is designated the "Victorian era"—this stabilizing synthesis was rooted in the idea that reality dominates over subjective impressions
Romanticism fed into social thought, reason and realism became doctrine, people like the pre-Raphaelites and Kierkegaard and Nietzsche argued against r and r. Wagner and Ibsen criticised the idea that all progress is good, and were reviled (19th century baudrillards and debords)
Two of the most significant thinkers of the period were, in biology, Charles Darwin, and in political science, Karl Marx. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection undermined the religious certainty of the general public, and the sense of human uniqueness of the intelligentsia. The notion that human beings were driven by the same impulses as "lower animals" proved to be difficult to reconcile with the idea of an ennobling spirituality. Karl Marx argued there were fundamental contradictions within the capitalist system—and that, contrary to the libertarian ideal, the workers were anything but free. Both thinkers would spawn defenders and schools of thought that would become decisive in establishing modernism.
. Clement Greenberg called Immanual Kant "the first real Modernist",[9] but also wrote, "What can be safely called Modernism emerged in the middle of the last century—and rather locally, in France, with Baudelaire in literature and Manet in painting, and perhaps with Flaubert, too, in prose fiction.
A problem with modernism-so many changes occurred that some dodgy theories most likely slipped through. Freud seems dodgy to me, I should research him.
Out of this collision of ideals derived from Romanticism, and an attempt to find a way for knowledge to explain that which was as yet unknown, came the first wave of works, which, while their authors considered them extensions of existing trends in art, broke the implicit contract that artists were the interpreters and representatives of bourgeois culture and ideas. These "modernist" landmarks include Arnold Schoenberg's atonal ending to his Second String Quartet in 1908, the expressionist paintings of Wassily Kandinsky starting in 1903 and culminating with his first abstract painting and the founding of the Blue Rider group in Munich in 1911, and the rise of cubism from the work of Picasso and Georges Braque in 1908.
These developments began to give a new meaning to what was termed 'Modernism': It embraced disruption, rejecting or moving beyond simple Realism in literature and art, and rejecting or dramatically altering tonality in music. This set modernists apart from 19th century artists, who had tended to believe in 'progress'. Writers like Dickens and Tolstoy, painters like Turner, and musicians like Brahms were not 'radicals' or 'Bohemians', but were instead valued members of society who produced art that added to society, even if it were, at times, critiquing less desirable aspects of it. Modernism, while it was still "progressive" increasingly saw traditional forms and traditional social arrangements as hindering progress, and therefore the artist was recast as a revolutionary, overthrowing rather than enlightening.
Tread carefully with the ideas of revolution-kierkegaard and Nietzsche were anti the-mob. A revolution needs passion, what we have is an exercise in futility (a quote by n or k with this basic message)
Is today’s society left or right wing? Does it believe in retaining old values? Yes in that today society revives old styles (though the styles are modified). Politically, it is a little more complicated. Conservativism could be used to described as the desire to maintain a capitalist, industrially progressive society, OR the desire to promote individuality, or the desire for a traditional community. The left seems to be socialist, the right more feudal, but the central and ruling parties of both (at least in Britain and france) embrace capitalism. America is the spectacular society, all singing all dancing. Progress seems to win over colloquialism.
America-very multicultural. Therefore newcomers to America are absorbed into America, especially people from Europe.
Abstract expressionism-ways of seeing the world, relational, subjective, merging painting with geometry, more scientific ideas. Minimalism-focused on geometry etc, simplicity could communicate as well as or better than subjectivity. Almost as though abstract expressionism is tied to existentialism and minimalism to structuralism. Minimalism argued that extreme simplicity could capture all of the sublime representation needed in art. Though that sentence suggests links with the idea of leap of faith, and phenomenology, getting back to simplicity. Was realism trying to achieve truth? Realism could be linked to phenomenology. What would Kierkegaard make of modern art?
How does existentialism link with a) modernism b) minimalism c) postmodernism
How does it link to the nouvelle vague? –nouvelle vague can be seen as modernist as it rejects traditional forms of cinema. It plays with the existentialist concept of time (as lived, not measured). Spectacular story became less important (humanism, existence precedes essence, authenticity?) I am making bad links here, I need to research this idea further though I don’t think it has much to do with my essay. I should, in fact, get back to my essay.
Modernism may be useful only as background to this essay. Seda is not minimalist, she is not really even modernist. She does not ask anyone to reject anything, though she does challenge the way communities work, and reject traditional relationships between people within a community. She embraces the individual and gives us a good example of how repetition of image (and how, in fact, art interventions or insertions) can be a positive thing-it can reaffirm and reassure us of our place in the world, it can make us feel preserved, a part of something. The act of taking care over and spending time on something related to us can make us feel fond of our lives, or teach us something about our lives (art can give us time to reflect-DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY LESS SO). It can allow us to progress, to locate patterns and to find a next step. It is a form of problem solving which allows us to dream as we solve. It is involved yet distant, it is a form of meditation. This is the position of art in society.
The issue with art is that it does not evaluate pros and cons, necessarily. It only goes into an issue as far as it wants to. It is like reading ‘An Very Short Introduction to Existentialism’. Some readers will choose to progress to Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, but for others, an introduction was all they ever wanted. Perhaps they wanted to feel more learned. Perhaps they wanted to find out how, roughly, existentialism could link to something they were studying. Any reader of such a book will only get a snapshot, maybe an idea of where to go next. This is what contemporary participatory art achieves.
Seda does boss around her grandmother. She shouted orders at the old lady until she made work. Is this fair?
Look at seda in more detail
Seda’s work gives us a snapshot of her life as well as that of people in the area she grew up in. she takes members of her local community with her to perform in art festivals, acting as both artist and tour guide. She sends letters and gifts to locals and encourages them to converse with one another. Some people feel she is a nuisance, a waste of their time. Some participate with bewilderment. In ‘it doesn’t matter’, seda rather forcibly encouraged her grandmother to recollect through drawings and questionnaires dates, objects and events relevant to her own life. Sera’s reason for this was ostensibly to bring her grandmother out of a severe depression, to ‘show her herself’ (as Seda tries in all her work “ to show people each other”). The piece, however, brings to light an issue that has arisen in other works by the artist but is never so apparent. Seda’s grandmother had to be forced to answer questions. The name of the project is, in fact, Jana’s most frequent answer to her granddaughter’s questions. Seda has often challenged notions of privacy but is the dignity of the individual, particularly the grieving individual, not too private? What Seda puts her grandmother through seems cruel. What right does the artist have to assume she knows what is best for her grandmother, and indeed her neighbours? Is the whole project simply a way for the artist to feel she can do something about situations which seem out of her control?
The autonomy of the artist places the art world in an abstract somewhere, a place where anything is possible, where any fear can be overcome, where any social or political problem can, in theory, be challenged. The problem is that ‘in theory’ is as far as the challenge often goes
4.Interactive art is the latest manifestation of the "death of the author". The "interactive artist" is
merely a context-maker, who provides the basic incredients, sets up the situation, and then
disappears. The spectator-turned-into-the-user provides the meanings, in a sense creates the
work at the moment of the interaction.
Some critics wish this was true. However, there is much less openness in most interactive
artworks than they hope. Even though the presence of the artist is usually hidden behind the
scenes, it can be inferred. There are few interactive artworks which purport to give the user the
impression of being the (sole) creator. Kit Galloway's and Sherrie Rabinowitz's classic
telematic work Hole in Space (1980) was one of them - the situation was set up in a public
space, no learning process was involved, no announcements were made, no indicators of "art"
or "signatures" exposed. The two-way "hole" highlighted the actions of the users in both ends -
these were, however, hardly conscious of producing art.
Most artists have adopted a more "traditional" strategy, inscribing their presence in different
ways. Many interactive artworks are "unique" artefacts, "sculptures" or installations which can
be experienced in a certain time and space and are identified as somebody's creations. In
most cases there is an implied presence of the author in the work, which can be felt e.g. as
direct address to the user, but even in the restrictions introduced into the modes of interactivity,
thus deliberately positioning a "distributed" will (of the artist) against the will of the user. The
native Canadian artist Yuxweluptun has (in his VR installation Inherent Rights, Vision Rights)
given such restrictions an ideological significance by superimposing strict rules of movement
onto his "native" virtual world, thus demarkating his own territory from white man's territory of
cyberspace.
As artists' Net sites will develop, the question about the death of the author will appear again.
Some artists will probably prefer to disappear behind their sites, transforming themselves into
invisible figures of the webmaster, while some will "die" as the activity around the site
proliferates; some will do their best to impose their presence in the manner of the countless
private home pages, but with a product that makes a difference.
(seven ways of misunderstanding interaction)
Sweatshops, identical office workers
http://www.slideshare.net/Redseeds/participation-in-contemporary-art
http://www.springerin.at/dyn/heft_text.php?textid=1761&lang=en
This idea (existential monism) can be easily proven. We start with the premise that God is Spirit (John 4:24). We will prove first the lemma that the Universe is at the same time mental and real. Between the knower (soul, person) and the material things which he/she perceives, there are knowledge relations being established, links by which the things are perceived. If these links are neither ideal nor real, then the knowledge is the fruit of nothingness, so we would be in pure nihilism. Absurd, because the only substance of nihilism is the nothing, which, in its turn, it exists, so we are able to infer from the existence of the nothing, the existence of the principle of the existence: the to be (i.e. what enables the nothing to be).
If the links would be ideal but not real, then they could not establish the link between the observer and the objects. Between the links and the objects would then there are some other links, and so on, recursively, to infinity, again absurd, because we maintain that we can know something about the world.
We are not owners of the truth, since we cannot produce truth as we wish (at our own command). Instead, poor monkeys, all we can produce is at our pleasure is the lie. There are many theories about existence, yet they generalize each a particular truth. The only abuse here is saying such theories are complete and universal. Instead, they belong to the personalities of those who thought them as particular fleas belong to a particular dog. Of course, its complementary excess, which says there is no truth and all we can say is being relative, this is as pernicious as the former, since spirit needs truths as the eyes need the light.
(existentialist knowledge theory)
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http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archivefiles/2002/09/touch_sanitatio.php
· Until fairly recently, people were not expected to take part in art in any way other than to look at it. The history of participation in art, or interactive art, or community art.
· Kant’s autonomy of the artist
· Modernism / postmodernism and the idea that there is no creator. industrialisation
· Existentialism, phenomenology, etc-existence precedes essence. Everything is relative
· The spectacle, the society of the spectacle
· The internet, globalisation. The world becomes more specialised (says baudrillard)
· Baudrillard, comments on the society of the spectacle.
There have always, since history began, been examples of art with social as well as aesthetic aims and purposes. Participatory art emerged with Modernism, particularly ___.
work could also be viewed as a critique of postmodern art-nowadays, what is art? When anyone can be an artist provided they follow certain rules, how can anything be revered for its beauty? To this, one may respond that there are still artists who focus solely on making beautiful images; that the art world is simply becoming more diverse. As Robert Barry says of art in his piece ‘It has Order’;
There have always, since history began, been examples of art with social as well as aesthetic aims and purposes. Participative art is a post modern concept that could be connected with abstract expressionism in that it focuses on process, probes and re defines relationships
In ‘It doesn’t matter’ she tried to bring her grandmother out of her depression by giving her projects to carry out, for example drawing items from the hardware shop she worked in for __ years. In ‘There’s nothing there’, she encouraged, with some success, the whole village of Ponetovice to follow her devised daily routine for one day.
Bishop's reference to performers and audiences
(rather than artists and publics) indicates Bishop's debt,
here, to Allan Kaprow's militant elimination of the audience
in his development of the Happening. 'A group of
inactive people in the space of a Happening is just dead
space,' he said. Kaprow's persistent dissatisfaction with
the division between performer and audience - and the
unlikely experiments that this brought about - testifies
to a genuine and radical critique.
(include me out)
Before looking at the work of Katerina Seda, I must first clarify the differences between interactive, participative and participatory art. Interactive art is the broad term used to describe art which encourages or requires some viewer involvement. Participatory art is that which involves participation, and participative art that which specifically investigates participation, communication, exchange. (participation in contemporary art)
I would like to try to identify the value of participative art within society. It is worth saying that my findings may also apply to participatory and interactive art to degrees, but it is participative art which I will focus on.
This really applies to participatory art. In participative art, the artist in fact parodies participatory art, re enacting a situation but with the focus on the participants, to try to get to the bottom of what participatory art can achieve. Participative art is postmodernism to participatory art’s modernism.
Postmodern communities are localised, which for existentialism is not ideal.
, and her work has been praised for the subtle sociological themes it deals with
Seda’s piece, while provocative on paper, was, according to one reviewer, badly explained at the Berlin Biennale. The review questioned the lack of explanation offered by Seda for the piece, and suggested the work should have been shown differently if it was to be perceived as “social art” and not “an exhibition of sculptural objects”. In an interview about ‘Over and Over’, Seda says; “when I start a project the first input is a visual input, not social”, but her drive
WHERE WILL PARTICIPATORY ART GO NEXT?
As I said before, postmodernism, the arena of ideas which includes participative art can be compared to the development of realism as a response to romanticism or existentialism as a response to didacticism.
Of course, it is difficult to say where participatory art will go next as one can only guess where the world will go next, on which subject there are many theories. The influence of the internet seems set to continue growing.
The scale of sedas work is manageable, and bears in mind cultural differences
Postmodern art holds that all stances are unstable and insincere, and therefore irony, parody, and humor are the only positions that cannot be overturned by critique or revision
As Seda proclaims the purpose, above all others, of her work to be “to show people each other”, it seems justified to call her work ‘participative’, despite its clear aesthetic leanings. This essay’s specific purpose is to scrutinise art produced with the clear intention of encouraging connections between individuals, and to see how Seda’s piece fits………….
http://www.toysatellite.org/doods/txt/debord.htm -guy debord will not be missed
http://archiv.radio.cz/history/history15.html -velvet revolution
http://www.barbelith.com/cgi-bin/articles/00000011.shtml- situationism in a nutshell
http://www.janvaneyck.nl/0_2_3_events_info/arc_08_systems_exposed.html -systems exposed-systems theory
http://renaissancesociety.blogspot.com/2008/04/press-artforum-on-katerina-seda.html led me to
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_8_46/ai_n31487411/ -talking about ‘it doesn’t matter’
Every reasonably aware person of our time is aware of the obvious fact that art can no longer be justified as a superior activity, or even as a compensatory activity to which one might honorably devote oneself. The reason for this deterioration is clearly the emergence of productive forces that necessitate other production relations and a new practice of life. In the civil-war phase we are engaged in, and in close connection with the orientation we are discovering for certain superior activities to come, we believe that all known means of expression are going to converge in a general movement of propaganda that must encompass all the perpetually interacting aspects of social reality.
http://www.bopsecrets.org/SI/detourn.htm -a user’s guide to detournement
http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/242 The Realization and Supression of Situationism
http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/315 Détournement as Negation and Prelude
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics#In_Sociology
http://www.janvaneyck.nl/0_2_3_events_info/arc_08_systems_exposed.html cybernetics-process led art
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functionalism_(sociology)
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ez.html
http://www.artpolitic.org/?manifesto
ami writing about process led art?
Am I writing about
http://moma.org/collection/details.php?theme_id=10954&displayall=1
cobra
http://knowledgerush.com/kr/encyclopedia/Psychogeography/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_Urbanism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanism
Consequently the Artworld has eaten and interiorized art-theory which should -- if taken seriously -- cause it to self-destruct. Galleries thrive (or at least survive) on a nihilism which can only be contained by irony, and which would otherwise corrode and melt down the very walls of the museums. This essay, for example, will be printed in the catalog of a gallery exhibition, thus perpetrating the irony of calling for the suppression and realization of art from within the very structure that perpetuates the alienation of the non-artist and the fetishization of the artwork. Well, fuck irony. One can only hope that each compromise will be the last.
http://www.hermetic.com/bey/palimpsest.html very nicely written, very thoughtful, bursts of light
http://www.unpopular.org.uk/lettrism/whylettrism.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone
http://www.altheim.com/lit/taz/index.html
Art, throughout history, has kept more or less out of social and political affairs. In the last century, the work of artists, the questions artists put forward, have become more accepted by mainstream society. There are many reasons for this, which I will not attempt to go into, but the consequence is that art is no longer purely concerned with the creation of images, the telling of stories, and the exchange of status symbols. I say no longer purely concerned because these concerns still exist.
The ambiguity of art like seda’s fuels the majority of its criticisms.
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/renaissance.html
the renaissance, the elevation of art to above
Thewhereabouts is situationism still relevant? What went wrong? Did anything go wrong? The group itself may have disbanded and been picked apart by the art world but the ideas it introduced have been taken up by scattered groups around the world and through the last 30 or 40 years.
It does not seem rational to hope for the sudden dissolution of the art world, and as I have shown, there are a number of artists who, in different ways, have begun to address the position of art in relation to knowledge, to irony and to the ‘average joe’. As Bey says, using a quote from Coomaraswamy; “In a society without "malaise" (at least, in tragic proportions) one might expect to see that "the artist is not a special kind of person, but each person is a special kind of artist." Such utopianism has arguably been shown by Šedá , and others, and could symbolise a welcome break from postmodern irony. The image is, and has always been, capable of communicating that which language cannot. An image is capable of transcending language barriers, capturing attention, igniting enthusiasm, and expressing many things at once. As Plato said, “Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.” The Situationist politicos attempted to turn images on their heads, to reuse, to detour, with hopes of revolution, but they perhaps overlooked the power of the beautiful image. Hakim Bey’s image of the palimpsest captured my imagination and seemed to sum up a lot of my own feelings around the issue of irony and of the sharing of knowledge.
Isolation is something Šedá seeks to combat in her work. She expressly seeks ‘to show people each other’. While her work is very visual, with every project having a visual language, she seems to desire, without irony (FOOT NOTE ON POSTMODERNISM), to change her society for the better. QUOTE? In ‘Over and Over’, the image of the fence is used to set up a sort of physical discussion on intimacy, on personal barriers.
And, to remind myself that information gleaned from conversations must not be trusted, I will quote Robert Barry’s piece…
With this in mind, I will now mention some artists who deal with participatory art in different ways.
Sophie Calle?
Carey Young’s work questions, very knowingly, the relationship between the art world and the world at large. She is aware of the limits of artistic contributions to society and makes clear, through her comparison of ‘intervention’ and ‘insertion’ (FOOTNOTE) and works such as I AM A REVOLUTIONARY
Allan Kaprow could be credited with introducing the idea of participatory art, and in its synthesis thoroughly questions its nature (QUOTE ABOUT THE SENSE OF FUN, art being fun)
M. Lederman Ukeles deliberately avoided the gallery setting in ‘Re-Spect for Givers’ (FOOTNOTE-DESCRIPTION). She choreographed an event around…..
Black hole
Cai Guo Qiang, like Kateřina Šedá , grew up in a communist country which underwent a revolution at the end of the 20th Century. Unlike Šedá, he involved other artists in the production of his work entitled ____. His work could be an example of both a critique of regimes and organisation, particularly communism and capitalism, and also a piece of art which is participatory in its intimacy and recognisability. The piece, like ‘Over and Over’, was made
In his essay ‘The Palimpsest’, Hakim Bey describes a ‘palimpsestic theory of theory’. A palimpsest is a manuscript whose surface has been written on, cleared and refilled with new information, with previous layers of information visible, but not discernible, underneath. Bey is proposing a solution to some of the ‘problems’ of contemporary art-irony, identity crises, attempts to synthesise art and society. He proposes an approach to art which is, first, to be well informed, second and consequently to be able to distinguish patterns, recurring themes in the history of art and to place ones own work, and thirdly to act “not looking for delicious ironies, but for bursts of light.” Such a combination of ideas seems to me to sum up what I have so far uncovered in the course of writing this essay. Of course, I am speaking from the perspective of an artist, someone who is a little Utopian, who enjoys the Romantic. Also, I personally am not well read in art history, philosophy, or politics. I am acting under the influence of bursts of light. And I am not the only one.
The present art world is timeless, and I would, for the moment, agree with Hakim Bey says in his essay ‘The palimpsest’, when he says that we should look to space for a ‘theory of theory’ informative to the present moment, comparing layers of history and looking for patterns.
Art has, since at least the Renaissance and Classicism, both questioned and separated itself. FOOTNOTE-CLASSICISM AND WILLIAM MORRIS. The art world still involves the trade of status symbols, though rather than having a painting of themselves commissioned, the rich now choose to buy pieces of art that ask big questions, that are revolutionary and controversial, that communicate to friends, acquaintances and employees their ability to keep in touch with the zeitgeist. Of course, there are genuine art enthusiasts who happen to be wealthy. As I have discovered in the course of researching this essay, there is ambiguity and paradox almost everywhere in the contemporary art world.
f the art world does disintegrate, or the narcissistic ideals of artists become so unavoidable that art becomes terrifying, wields power over people, is totalitarian, then we can only learn from it. But it is better for the art world to disintegrate than for falsehoods to reign supreme.
There's nothing specific to be achieved in a conversation, except that when the participants feel they are out of it - that is, when they finish a particular dialogue - they just cannot go back to the same places they left before (some transformation might have happened)..[1] WHO DID SHE TAKE THIS FROM?
http://arttorrents.blogspot.com/2007/11/guy-debord-la-socit-du-spectacle-1973.html
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