The do-it-yourself artwork Participation from Fluxus to new media

by Dezeuze, Anna

• ISBN13: 9780719087479
• ISBN10: 0719087473
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-05-30
• 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." 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 independent scholar.

Table of Contents

*An introduction to 'do-it-yourself'' artwork - Anna Dezeuze* * PART I: SITUATING PARTICIPATION * 3 Pioneers - Guy Brett * 'Open work,' 'do-it-yourself artwork,' and bricolage - Anna Dezeuze * 'Creative acts of consumption' or, death in Venice - Judith Rodenbeck* Instability: the visual/bodily perception of space in kinetic environments - Arnauld Pierre * PART II: PERFORMING PARTICIPATION * The rules of engagement: Displaced figuration in Robert Morris's sculpture - Catherine Wood * Marina Abramovic: Approaching zero - Frazer Ward* Space, body and the self in the work of Bruce Nauman - Amelia Jones* Tiravanija's liability - Janet Kraynak * The face and the public: Race, secrecy and digital art practice - Jennifer Gonzalez * PART III: THEORISING PARTICIPATION * Play, ritual and politics: Transitional artworks in the 1960s - Anna Dezeuze* Exchange and reciprocity in some art of the 1960s and after - Miwon Kwon * Working on the community: Models of participatory practice - Christian Kravagna* Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics - Claire Bishop* What kind of participative system? Critical vocabularies from new media art - Beryl Graham * Index