Overview

Does ‘participatory’ art and architecture shape social reality, or is it shaped by it? Shifting the ground of this debate, which tends to assume one or other direction of influence, this innovative book explores the inherently dialectic relationship between society and the built environment. At the same time, it strives for a historically conscious discussion of a very contemporary issue. Chapters rethink the top-down model of participation and audience activation of high modernism, from Alexander Dorner’s immersive museum to Mies van der Rohe’s ‘room(s) for play’; investigate participation in spaces under political pressure, from exhibitions in bombed-out buildings in besieged Sarajevo (1992-5) to the art and organizing of revolution in Egypt (2012-13); draw historical parallels between modes of participation and the exercise of power that are seldom compared with one another, from sites of occupation in 1968 Mexico and 2011 Spain; finally creating links between cartography and feminism and between tourism and internet surveillance. With these juxtapositions of the aesthetic and the everyday, and the built and the mediated, new questions arise: is space formed once and for all, or is it the changeable product of changeable patterns of use? Does the aesthetic always correspond to the political, or might an aesthetically authoritarian space be conducive to social justice? In exploring these questions, this book looks at how participants themselves exert power, rather than being victimised or liberated from it.

Full Product Details

Author:   Martino Stierli ,  Mechtild Widrich
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   I.B. Tauris
Dimensions:   Width: 13.80cm , Height: 3.60cm , Length: 21.60cm
Weight:   0.566kg
ISBN:  

9781784530303

ISBN 10:   1784530301
Pages:   344
Publication Date:   16 October 2015
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Whose Participation? Introductory Remarks - Martino Stierli and Mechtild Widrich Part I: Agency 1. The Infrastructure of Participation: Cultural Centres in Postwar Europe - Kenny Cupers 2. Occupied Sites: Tlatelolco and Metropol Parasol - Ana María León 3. Aesthetics and Politics of Participation in 1960s Brazil: From Hélio Oiticica’s ‘Parangolés’ to the Paulista School of Architecture - Martino Stierli 4. Putting on the Map: Suzanne Lacy’s International Dinner Party - Elke Krasny 5. Exhibitions in Damaged and Destroyed Architectural Objects in Besieged Sarajevo: Spaces of Gathering and Socialization - Asja Mandic 6. City of Revolution: On the Politics of Participation and Municipal Management in Cairo - Mohamed Elshahed 7. Disobedient Objects - Gavin Grindon Part II: Display 8. Between Theatre and Agora: Thoughts on Exhibition, Drama and Participation - Werner Hanak-Lettner 9. 1912 – Hellerau as Spielraum - Lutz Robbers 10. Participatory Aesthetics: Alexander Dorner’s Reorganization of the Provinzialmuseum Hannover (1923–1926) - Sandra Löschke 11. ‘The Ultimate Erotic Act’: On the Performative in Architecture - Mechtild Widrich 12. Echo-Logy: Working with Allan Kaprow - Philip Ursprung 13. Documentary (Non-)Interventions: Mediated Presence in Public Space and its Artistic Reflection - Katja Kwastek Author Biographies Index

Reviews

‘Marking out a knowingly complex field of contemporary scholarship on “participation” in art and architecture, this volume is testament not only to the multiple valences of the term – artistic, social, political, civic, urban, economic, and more – and the distinct contexts in which participatory acts and forms of agency have appeared or been strategically mobilized, but also of the term’s rich and ongoing potential as a critical and artistic lens. Inviting us to continue to “think” through participation, it will be a welcome addition to contemporary debates on the ethical and political dimensions of art and architecture’. * Felicity D Scott, Associate Professor of Architecture and Director of the Program in Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture, Columbia University * ‘Intervening in vibrant debates on participation in the public sphere, Participation in Art and Architecture ranges widely over continents and cases: Sarajevo under siege, Sao Paulo between moving bodies and opened urbanism, the Acropolis and architectural erotics, Google Street View, Cairo, Mexico, and various European and American heterotopias. Tactics are examined in exhilarating historical detail, as theatrical and performative possession converts the spaces of the state into sites of contestation, and as design from the bottom up, immaterial labor, and theaters of memory are mobilized by users on the ground. This provocative collection hybridizes the disciplinary concerns of art and architecture, enriching them both’. * Caroline A. Jones, Professor of Art History, History Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art Program, MIT School of Architecture and Planning *

'Marking out a knowingly complex field of contemporary scholarship on participation in art and architecture, this volume is testament not only to the multiple valences of the term - artistic, social, political, civic, urban, economic, and more - and the distinct contexts in which participatory acts and forms of agency have appeared or been strategically mobilized, but also of the term's rich and ongoing potential as a critical and artistic lens. Inviting us to continue to think through participation, it will be a welcome addition to contemporary debates on the ethical and political dimensions of art and architecture'. * Felicity D Scott, Associate Professor of Architecture and Director of the Program in Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices in Architecture, Columbia University * 'Intervening in vibrant debates on participation in the public sphere, Participation in Art and Architecture ranges widely over continents and cases: Sarajevo under siege, Sao Paulo between moving bodies and opened urbanism, the Acropolis and architectural erotics, Google Street View, Cairo, Mexico, and various European and American heterotopias. Tactics are examined in exhilarating historical detail, as theatrical and performative possession converts the spaces of the state into sites of contestation, and as design from the bottom up, immaterial labor, and theaters of memory are mobilized by users on the ground. This provocative collection hybridizes the disciplinary concerns of art and architecture, enriching them both'. * Caroline A. Jones, Professor of Art History, History Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art Program, MIT School of Architecture and Planning *

Author Information

Martino Stierli is The Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. He is the author of Las Vegas in the Rearview Mirror (2013), and Montage and the Metropolis (2018). Mechtild Widrich is Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Widrich is the author of Performative Monuments (2014) and The Sites of History (2022).

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