Claire Bishop

A searing critique of participatory art by the historian author of Installation Art traces art development throughout the 20th century to examine key moments in the participatory discipline to expose its political and aesthetic limitations. Original.

Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship

Radical museology is a vivid manifesto for the contemporary as a method rather than a periodization, and for the importance of a politicized representation of history in museum of contemporary art."--pub. desc.

Radical Museology, Or, What's Contemporary in Museums of Contemporary Art?

Art that seeks to produce situations in which relations are formed among viewers is placed in historical and theoretical context in key writings by critics and artists. The desire to move viewers out of the role of passive observers and into the role of producers is one of the hallmarks of twentieth-century art. This tendency can be found in practices and projects ranging from El Lissitzky's exhibition designs to Allan Kaprow's happenings, from minimalist objects to installation art. More recently, this kind of participatory art has gone so far as to encourage and produce new social relationships. Guy Debord's celebrated argument that capitalism fragments the social bond has become the premise for much relational art seeking to challenge and provide alternatives to the discontents of contemporary life. This publication collects texts that place this artistic development in historical and theoretical context. Participation begins with writings that provide a theoretical framework for relational art, with essays by Umberto Eco, Bertolt Brecht, Roland Barthes, Peter Bürger, Jen-Luc Nancy, Edoaurd Glissant, and Félix Guattari, as well as the first translation into English of Jacques Rancière's influential "Problems and Transformations in Critical Art." The book also includes central writings by such artists as Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica, Joseph Beuys, Augusto Boal, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Thomas Hirschhorn, and Rirkrit Tiravanija. And it features recent critical and curatorial debates, with discussions by Lars Bang Larsen, Nicolas Bourriaud, Hal Foster, and Hans-Ulrich Obrist. Copublished with Whitechapel Art Gallery, London

Participation

Installation Art

Presents an examination of installation art through case studies of artists and individual works.

A Critical History

Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics

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, Pawe? 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.

Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship

Artificial Hells

Fred Moten

Hito Steyerl

Julia Bryan-Wilson

Susan Leigh Foster

Kélina Gotman

Bojana Kunst

Mathieu Copeland

André Lepecki

Katherine Dunham

Merce Cunningham

Christine Greiner

Claire Tancons

Thomas J. Lax

Nadeije Laneyrie-Dagen

Germaine Acogny

Analivia Cordeiro

Carmen Luz

Cláudia Müller

Daniel Blanga Gubbay

G.R.E.S. Estação Primeira de Mangueira

Juliana Moraes

Leda Martins

Lucas Pedretti

Manuel Segade

Sophie Jacotot

Will Rawls

Zoila Mendoza-Walker

Esta Antologia reúne 28 textos em torno dos entrelaçamentos entre dança, cultura visual e políticas do corpo. São ensaios, discursos, textos críticos e de referência, bem como um samba-enredo, escritos por historiadores da dança e da arte, artistas, curadores, coreógrafos e dançarinos. O MASP organizou três seminários internacionais sobre as Histórias da dança entre 2018 e 2020, e 7 dos textos vêm dessas apresentações, enquanto os outros 21 são novas edições e traduções inéditas de textos fundamentais para pensar a dança e a coreografia — que corpos dançam, o que os move, como se movem e como são representados. Esta publicação supre uma lacuna no mercado editorial. Ela é essencial para quem tiver interesse nos debates em torno das relações da dança e as artes visuais e de sua presença nas galerias e museus. A Antologia de textos acompanha o volume Histórias da dança: catálogo, com ensaios e reproduções das obras e performances selecionadas para integrar a exposição coletiva articulada em torno do eixo temático do ano de 2020.

Histórias da dança: antologia

Mark Sladen

Double Agent is a group exhibition featuring artists who use other people as a medium. The show contains works in a variety of media, including video and live performance - works which are often slippery in meaning or disquieting in effect.

Double Agent

Fiona Anderson

Alexander Nemerov

Richard Meyer

Michelle Millar Fisher

Amy Tobin

Andrianna Campbell

Jacopo Galimberti

Meredith A. Brown

Sharon Hayes

Marci Muhlestein Clark

Ileana L. Selejan

David Kennedy Cutler

Sara Greenberger Rafferty

Sofia Gotti

Marko Ilić

Andrea Geyer

Sara Catenacci

Oriana Fox

Frances Jacobus-Parker

"Collaboration has been a component of art making for centuries—from ancient Greek potters and painters to nineteenth-century photographers Hill and Adamson to the contemporary Raqs Media Collective—yet it remains a complex topic for art historians of all periods. Taking its cue from Sigmund Freud’s 1929 publication, Civilization and its Discontents, in which the psychoanalyst wrestled with tensions between the individual and society, Collaboration and its (Dis)Contents: Art, Architecture, and Photography since 1950 asks what it means to produce work together as individuals and why this might matter for the creation of art and scholarship in the twenty-first century. This volume stems from The Courtauld Research Forum’s 2013 flagship research initiative, led by Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow Meredith A. Brown, which brought together a group of early career scholars based in London and New York who spent the year engaged in transatlantic conversations about collaboration and its influence on the histories of modern and contemporary art, architecture, and photography. The resulting collaboratively written essays and artists’ projects are timely contributions to the growing art historical debates around collaboration and collectivity and their relationship to modernism, feminism, Marxism, and contemporary practice. Collaboration and its (Dis)Contents explores not only what constitutes collaboration in recent art globally but also opens up possibilities created by collaborative historical and artistic research in a field that historically has privileged the traditional single-author text."-- Courtauld Books Online website.

Art, Architecture, and Photography Since 1950

Collaboration and Its (dis)contents

Part of the acclaimed 'Documents of Contemporary Art' series of anthologies. This title explores the desire to move viewers out of the role of passive observers and into the role of producers. Participation begins with writings that provide a theoretical framework for relational art, with essays by Umberto Eco, Roland Barthes, Peter Bürger, Jean-Luc Nancy, Edouard Glissant, Félix Guattari, as well as the first translation into English of Jacques Rancière's influential 'Problems and Transformations in Critical Art'. This anthology also includes central writings by such artists as Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica, Joseph Beuys, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Thomas Hirschhorn, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and features recent critical and curatorial debates, with discussions by Lars Bang Larsen, Nicolas Bourriaud, Hal Foster and Hans-Ulrich Obrist.

The award-winning, highly acclaimed Artificial Hells is the first historical and theoretical overview of socially engaged participatory art, known in the US as “social practice.” In recent decades, the art gallery and the museum have become a place for participatory art, where an audience is encouraged to take part in the artwork. This has been heralded as a revolutionary practise that can promote new emancipatory social relations. What was it is really? In this fully updated edition, 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. Bishop challenges the political and aesthetic ambitions of participatory art this practise. She not only scrutinizes the emancipatory claims, but also provides an alternative to the ethical (rather than artistic) criteria invited by such artworks. In response 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.

Claire Bishop

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