Fear from Art Institutions: Participatory Art and Its
“Hierarchies”
The shift from establishing relations
to and between objects towards relations between subjects and the public that
recently took place in the field of art has been highly influenced by philosophical
or sociological theories of democratisation of art
and its institutional structures. [1] The main aim of participatory art in
great deal overlaps with a kind of deconstruction of the renowned hierarchies
between “high” and “low” art. However, I want to point to a certain paradox:
that such “participatory shift” in arts simultaneously creates new hierarchies
and differentiations, new fears and obstacles.
This is not the same as to say that
participatory art is overrated, or as to criticise it
for overemphasising the social and ethical values
over the aesthetical and formal components. The debates that recently sparked
over these issues mostly overlooked one of the most important impacts of the
participatory art that has less to do with any discussion of the inner art
structures or art relations, but rather is focused on
the differentiation of the art audiences. [2]
On the one hand aiming to open the art
institutions towards a more profound involvement of art audiences in the
process of artistic practices and productions, on the other hand such tendency
towards participation produces new distinctions and “elites” by inviting the
audiences in different levels of direct involvement. Such differentiation of
audiences can lead towards developing more diversified art and cultural
policies among curators and art administrators but also towards a greater
awareness among the “elitist” museum and gallery audiences of the existence of
“other” publics/participants.
In the time of YouTube,
art blogs, video game patches and other ways of
interaction between the artists, audience and media, culture becomes a fluid,
dispersed and relational phenomenon that can not be controlled by a centralized
state apparatus. . On the other hand, the computerised
and centralized systems of control can be used for ever more
strong biopower and cultural control.
Therefore, it is not surprising that there are still many state governed
museums, commercial galleries or other art institutions that still perpetuate
the system of art exhibitions based on the presentation of work of art put on
pedestal. Even though the ethnic, cultural and gender identity and self become
un-fixed, transformative and mobile phenomena that enter and transform the
inherited cultural values from the past, there is still a spectre
of some obsolete fixed identities hunting from some hidden spaces and
frightening relations of power.
That is why it is so important to state
that the art processes and projects that include participation of different
audiences simultaneously include a certain doing away with the hierarchies. By
deconstructing of the hierarchies that have always already been established
among different social and economic classes and cultures participatory art
deconstructs its own power.
Additional novelty in contemporary
participatory driven art is that while many similar phenomena from the past
that dealt with or fought for social and economic well being of different
communities were commissioned in order to strengthen the central power of the
commissioner (the state, the private benefactor, or the funding agency) today
artists initiate such projects on their own.
However, there are many contradictions
at work in participatory art practices. One of the main critiques of the impact
of relational theory is the questions to which extent it is applicable to art
influenced by postcolonial critique. Namely, it is obvious that the
participatory art projects can easily be captured in the vicious circle of
criticism without taking into account the positive perspective or without
giving any proposition for 'real' participation. This kind of projects can
easier be welcomed by the society as a preferred mild social critique instead
of a more direct political critique of the social inequalities and injustices.
There is another problem with
participatory art in the activist circles, when art is understood as a call for
revolution and its success or failure is measured according to its
revolutionary prerogatives. The interpretation of art as agency that should
circumvent the main societal and ideological obstacles that artists face
outside of European democracy prescripts and expects all too big impact of art
activism projects.
At the end I want to argue that art has
yet to find a position that would reconcile the contradictions between these
two radical ends: between 'critique for critique's sake' and art turned into
revolutionary means. The question about the relation between reality and art
cannot be resolved by taking a stand and establishing a steady hierarchy
between two of them. Reality and art have always worked together, only the ways
in which they are entangled differ. One thing that one can agree with is that
the participatory art projects establish a new and more productive context for
such entanglements and open up new potentialities for a bigger social impact of
contemporary art processes in general and for overcoming of the fear from art
institutions among common public.
Suzana Milevska
________________________
[1] For different
views on participatory art practices: Maria Lind, “Actualisation
of Space: The Case of Oda Projesi,”
10.2004, 15. Aug. 2006 http://www.republicart.net/disc/aap/lind01_en.htm Claire
Bishop, “The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents,” Artforum, Feb 2006, vol. XLVI, no. 6, pp. 178-183 Suzana Milevska, “Participatory
Art: A Paradigm Shift from Objects to Subjects,” springerin,
2/2006, 25 April 2006 http://www.springerin.at/dyn/heft_text.php?textid=1761〈=en Shana Lutker, “Not-Art: Every
garden a munition plant”, 1 Sept. 2006
http://www.x-traonline.org/vol8_4/lutker_haeg.htm#5 [2] Claire Bishop,
"Aesthetic/Ethical - Critical Modalities" Maria Lind
"Tactical/Agnostic Artist - Ted Purves” 10 Sep.
2006 http://leisurearts.blogspot.com/2006/04/maria-lind-tacticalagnostic-artist-ted.html#114533198048342091
Fuente:
http://www.nomad-tv.net/kontrol/milevska.htm