The Art of Participation

While doing research on Audience Participation in Contemporary Art, I found a whole gallery exhibit had been dedicated to this subject back in 2008 at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). The exhibit titled "The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now” explored participatory art spanning through six decades. Curated by Rudolf Frieling, the exhibition gathered more than 70 works of art and featured projects on-site as well as online.

“The Art of Participation reflects on the confluence of audience interaction, utopian politics, and mass media, and reclaims the museum as a space for two-way exchange between artists and viewers. The exhibition proposes that participatory art is generally based on a notion of indeterminacy—an openness to chance or change, as introduced by John Cage in the early 1950s—and refers to projects that, while initiated by individual artists, can be realized only through the contribution of others. This artistic approach entices the public to join in; it questions the conventional divide between artists and their audiences, and it challenges assumptions about the symbolic value of art as well as the traditional role of the museum as a container for objects rather than a site for social engagement or art production. The Art of Participation traces the influence and transformation of this concept across various genres, identifying its signal moments and charting a lineage of participatory art across a wide spectrum of media, including drawing, painting, sculpture, performance, film, video, photography, online projects, and interactive media installations.” (e-flux.com)

Frieling wanted to map “the geneology of participation in the museum context” with the intent to establish a lineage from conceptual and performance art of the 1960’s and 1970’s to artists using digital technologies and Web 2.0.  The exhibition is primarily historical but it does hint to the newer generation.

Some pieces in the exhibit make a comeback into the present such as Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece from 1964 as it is shown along side the 2003 remake. In both videos, Ono sits alone and motionless on the stage with only a pair of scissors at her side. The audience is then invited to the stage to cut away at her clothing. The audience cuts away at every bit of her clothing until she is left with nothing but scraps. Without the audience there and willing to participate the work would be nothing.

We go back in time more to what some say is the beginning of participatory art with John Cage’s work, 4’33’ from 1952. This work is all about the concept of interactivity, the score is four minutes and 33 seconds of silence performed on a piano. The piece draws the attention of the listeners to the sounds of their surroundings rather than to Cage’s intentional actions. (artpractical.com)

I have requested the catalog of this show from Interlibrary Loan and am looking forward to reading it when it arrives.

I have found many articles on Audience Participation in Contemporary Art and am in awe of what artists have come up with to engage and include the audience.