Participation Then / Participation Next

This will be 2-part* reading group, focussing on the history and future of debates around art as participation. In the first session, Laura Cull will introduce, and invite discussion around, the changing relations to ‘audience’ in the work of Allan Kaprow: from his Environments, to the Happenings and finally to Activities, which Kaprow conceived as participant-only events.

In the 2nd part, Hayley Skipper will introduce Dave Beech's text 'Include me out!', and discuss participation in relation to examples of contemporary art projects.

The reading group will also introduce the debates around Nicholas Bourriaud's Relational Aesthetics, taking a particular interest in the post-Bourriaud writing around participation by London based critic, Claire Bishop.

*i.e. a slot one day and another the next, or two slots on one day of about an hour and a half each.

Texts

Beech, D. (2008) “Include me out!”, Art Monthly, no. 315

Bishop, C. (2004) “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics”, October, no.110, pp.51-79

--—- (2006) “The social turn: collaboration and its discontents”, Artforum International

Bourriaud, N. (1998) Relational Aesthetics (Paris: la presses du reel) - download a translation of the text into Serbian

Kaprow, A. (2003) ‘Participation Performance (1977)’ in Essays on the Blurring of Art & Life (Berkeley/LA/London: University of California Press).

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