Synopses & Reviews
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 viewers 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.
Synopsis
What happens when you touch or enter an artwork instead of looking at it? As artists since the 1950s have increasingly sought to involve viewers more actively in their artworks, this critical anthology sheds light on the nature of these new forms of participation and their historical, social and political significance.
About the Author
Anna Dezeuze is an Honorary Research Fellow in Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Manchester.
Table of Contents
Anna Dezeuze: What the do-it-yourself artwork can do for you * PART I: PARTICIPATION IN CONTEXT * Anna Dezeuze: “Open work,” “do-it-yourself artwork,” and bricolage * Judith Rodenbeck: “creative acts of consumption” or, death in Venice * Arnauld Pierre: Instability: the visual/bodily perception of space in kinetic environments * Guy Brett: 3 Pioneers * PART II: PERFORMING PARTICIPATION * Catherine Wood: The rules of engagement: Displaced figuration in Robert Morriss sculpture * Frazer Ward: Marina Abramovic: Approaching zero * Amelia Jones: Space, body and the self in the work of Bruce Nauman * Janet Kraynak: Tiravanijas liability * Jennifer Gonzalez: the face and the public: Race, secrecy and digital art practice * PART III: ANALYSING PARTICIPATION * Anna Dezeuze: Play, ritual and politics: Transitional artworks in the 1960s * Christian Kravagna: Working on the community: Models of participatory practice * Miwon Kwon: Exchange and reciprocity in some art of the 1960s and after * Claire Bishop: Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics * Beryl Graham: What kind of participative system? Critical vocabularies from new media art * Index *