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The 20th century avant garde was built on the principle: separate and shock. The avant garde of the century to come will have as its principle: combine and connect. The web will encourage a culture in which art creates relationships and promotes interaction, encourages people to be a part of the work, if only in a small way.


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This "participatory" avant-garde will not emerged from thin air. It will be fed by the way the web gives new energy to participatory approaches to art, a digital version of a folk culture in which authorship is shared and cumulative rather than individualistic.7 The modern culture of post-production, in which artists assemble their work using ingredients taken from other works, draws on this current. The artist becomes more like a DJ or a programmer, assembling a work from modules already available. Umberto Eco8 long ago declared that works of art were open to multiple interpretations; the reader was as active in creating meanings as the writer. Writing in the 1930s Walter Benjamin praised art that invited participation: art was better the more it encouraged people to leave behind their passive role as spectator.10 In the 1960s Guy Debord and the Situationist railed against the society of the spectacle, the empire of passive culture and in favour of art that activated its audience. Allan Kaprow11 became one of the best known practitioners of this philosophy with 1960s happenings - forerunners of flashmobs and alternate reality games - which were designed to bring art to life, to break down the barriers between the artist and the audience, art and the everyday.12 Public and community arts initiatives also have this aim.

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What does this "participatory" avant garde stand for?
Art is essentially inter-subjective and dialogic, and not just in the way an audience might receive and interpret a work but in its constitution. Collaboration and participation is fundamental to the creation of the art not just its presentation and reception.13


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The "participatory" avant-garde sees art as a kind of conversation, rather than a shock to the system. Art is not embodied in an object but lies in the encounter between the art and the audience, and among the audience themselves. Art is not simply the result of self-expression by the artists of a preconceived idea but the result of communication with the audience and other partners in the process. The artist's role is not just to proclaim but to listen, interpret, incorporate ideas and adjust.14

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The audience does not come to a gallery just to withdraw meaning from the art deposited there but to be part of the art, so that their movements and reactions change what is going on. The art wraps them in. It is not just the artist's ideas and knowledge that are on display but those of the participating audience as well.

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For the participatory avant-garde a work of art becomes more valuable the more it encourages people to join a conversation around it and to do something creative themselves. Participatory art is based on constant feedback and interaction, people talking, arguing, debating around the art and their views having some impact.

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In this view of art, the role of the gallery or venue is not as a kind of artistic bank vault into which the work rich in meaning is deposited for safe keeping. An arts venue is a place that provides the setting for creative interaction and communication. Indeed anywhere that makes that kind of creative interaction possible can become the site for a work of art. Art should not be sequestered in special zones, where special people - the artists - deploy their special skills and experience. Kaprow argued art should be grounded in the common experience of every day life. By its nature participatory art cannot be contained in the space demarcated by the artist and the gallery; it must be capable of expanding or dissipating to wherever the participants want to take it. Participatory art cannot be pre-planned in every detail by the artist; otherwise it would be a sham. It has to be free to emerge, adapt and grow wherever the participants want to take it. Art15 becomes more powerful the more connections it makes, rather than from standing alone, unyielding and beyond reach. In this world a curator becomes more like a convenor or mixer, creating a space in which the right kinds of conversations can take place.

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7. Charles Leadbeater, We Think Profile 2008
8. Nicholas Bourriaud Postproduction: Culture as Screenplay: How Art Reprograms the World, Lukas and Sternberg, 2005
9. ?
10. Charles Leadbeater, We Think Profile 2008
11. Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, Black and Red, 1984
12. Allan Kaprow and Jeff Kelley, Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life, University of California Press, 1996
13. Grant Kester, Conversation Pieces, Nicholas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics Les Presse Du Reel,France (1 Jan 1998)
14. Claire Bishop, Participation Whitechapel Art Gallery 2006
15. Kaprow and Kelley, Blurring Art and Life

Posted by Cornerhouse on April 22, 2009
Tags: Essays

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Hannah Rudman on paragraph 1:

People like to be in touch with each other – socialising is a key to engagement. It’s why we go to cultural events with other people. People want to participate through digital social media. “Social networking” was a phrase that emerged over 2006: and 2007 saw the meteoric rise of online social media/networking via websites like MySpace and Facebook , and for young people, Bebo. These sites maximize the developments of Web 2.0, which essentially make it easy for anybody to make content that looks good and can be interacted with. For attracting audiences, the same age-old marketing strategies still work best. Word of mouth, personal recommendation, initiating viral marketing (ie spreading the word by email). These marketing strategies have always depended on social networks. For some, those social networks still hinge around the local pub, or church or sports club: but for others, a new global perspective and access to niche content provided by the internet, means that we’ve found social networks online that suit better our lifestyles and our interests.

On limited budgets, the arts have become competent as a sector at digitally broadcasting (pushing) our information in fairly sophisticated ways TO our audiences. However, it is highly labour intensive for us as the content producers. Using social software and social spaces can provide us with the extra benefits of the audience co-producing content WITH us, and a viral marketing distribution channel. For the audience, the benefits are a sense of participating; of being listened to; and of having their experience WITH the sector tailored and personalised.

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May 3, 2009 2:23 pm
Julie Delvaux on paragraph 2:

“Umberto Eco8 long ago declared that works of art were open to multiple interpretations; the reader was as active in creating meanings as the writer” – in his book on translation, Eco also warned against giving interpretations that are essentially wrong. We could also cite Roland Barthes, for whom a single interpretation of a work, let alone in the light of the author’s experience or views, was wrong. But neither of these views denies that the author exists. What both views do underline is that texts are composed in one “environment”, but they are read and interpreted in other “environments”. This best manifests itself when we bring Freudian psychoanalysis in our reading of Shakespeare. The Bard probably didn’t think the Earth would stand for so long after his death, and equally there was every opportunity for Shakespeare’s works to be lost for posterity, like it happened to many other “authors”. And probably Freud himself wouldn’t endorse some of the interpretations we give, based on his philosophy. The fact that both Earth and Shakespeare didn’t vanish is by itself open to multiple interpretations – but they will inevitably be different for each of us. And the matter of Freud is totally different, depending on how daring and accurate we are.

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May 6, 2009 9:36 am
Julie Delvaux on paragraph 4:

Again, I recall Barthes’s “scriptor” who produces but not interprets the work; and who is born at the same time as the work. Which is close to that Henry Miller’s statement in Tropic of Cancer: “I no longer think that I am a writer – I am”.

“Art is not embodied in an object but lies in the encounter between the art and the audience, and among the audience themselves” – sorry, but, phrased this way, this can be just an excuse for not producing anything. Let’s not forget there have always been groups of artists where not everyone was necessarily an artist in the proper sense of the word – they could be critics or close friends. Arguably, any conversation that took place in such “salon” was art – but it often went unrecorded. Art was born out of these conversations. Undoubtedly, there is “the art of conversation” and “the art of speech”, but in both the line between demagogy and dialogue is very thin. My issue with the cited phrase is precisely that, in an attempt to save art from its critics, it leaves the concept very open to criticism.

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May 6, 2009 9:49 am
Julie Delvaux on whole page :

And now… what is art? The Latin ‘ars’ is closer to ‘craft’. There are Fine Arts, but these are not the same as Literature or Cinema. There is Music that long ago was a part of a humanistic curriculum; and was hugely important for the Pythagoreans; so the philosophical component in thinking and responding to music is potentially larger than with other arts. The essay talks about “participatory avant-garde” which is “a version of a folk culture” – folk culture is not necessarily art. And, of course, there is Art as a philosophical concept, connected to Beauty, but it doesn’t seem that this is being discussed. So – what art do we mean?

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May 6, 2009 9:59 am
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