The do-it-yourself artwork Participation from Fluxus to New Media

by Dezeuze, Anna

• ISBN13: 9780719081446
• ISBN10: 0719081440
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-04-13
• Publisher: Manchester University Press

Summary

Viewers of contemporary art are often invited to involve themselves actively in artworks, by entering installations, touching objects, performing instructions or clicking on interactive websites. Why have artists sought to engage spectators in these new forms of participation? In what ways does active participation affect the viewer’s experience and the status of the artwork? Spanning a range of practices including kinetic art, happenings, environments, performance, installations, relational and new media art from the 1950s to the present, this critical anthology sheds light on the history and specificity of artworks that only come to life when you – the viewer - are invited to ‘do it yourself.’ The volume consists of fifteen essays by art historians, critics and curators, which are divided into three sections. Part I addresses the emergence of spectator participation in the 1960s, while Part II brings together in-depth case studies of specific participatory practices in the 1960s, 1970s and 1990s, analysing the issues that they raise in their very modes of operation. The more general critical essays in Part III map out a range of theoretical approaches to the ‘do-it-yourself’ artwork. Together, the three sections provide invaluable historical perspectives and theoretical tools for scholars, students, artists and readers interested in contemporary art. Rather than a specialist topic in the history of twentieth- and twenty-first century art, the ‘do-it-yourself’ artwork raises broader issues concerning the role of the viewer in art, the status of the artwork, and the socio-political relations between art and its contexts.

Author Biography

Anna Dezeuze is an Honorary Research Fellow in Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Manchester.

Table of Contents

List of figures	p. vii
List of contributors	p. x
Acknowledgements	p. xiv
An introduction to the 'do-it-yourself' artwork	p. 1
Situating participation
Three pioneers	p. 25
'Open work', 'do-it-yourself' artwork and bricolage	p. 47
'Creative acts of consumption' or, death in Venice	p. 69
Instability: the visual/bodily perception of space in kinetic environments	p. 91
Performing participation
The rules of engagement: displaced figuration in Robert Morris's mise-en-scène	p. 115
Marina Abramovic: approaching zero	p. 132
Space, body and the self in the work of Bruce Nauman	p. 145
Rirkrit Tiravanija's liability	p. 165
The face and the public: race, secrecy and digital art practice	p. 185
Theorising participation
Play, ritual and politics: transitional artworks in the 1960s	p. 209
Exchange rate: on obligation and reciprocity in some art of the 1960s and after	p. 229
Working on the community: models of participatory practice	p. 240
Antagonism and relational aesthetics	p. 257
What kind of participative system? Critical vocabularies from new media art	p. 281
Index	p. 306
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