The Politics of Participatory Art
| Author | David M. Bell |
| Date | 01 February 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1478-9302.12089 |
| Published date | 01 February 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1111/1478-9302.12089
Political Studies Review
2017, Vol. 15(1) 73 –83
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1111/1478-9302.12089
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Article
The Politics of Participatory Art
David M. Bell
University of Sheffield
The two books reviewed in this article engage with ‘participatory art’, in which artists mobilise people as the central
medium of their work. Grant Kester argues that such works have the potential to generate new communal forms
that challenge neoliberal hegemony, while Claire Bishop argues that in dispensing with the negating praxis of the
avant-garde they all too frequently end up reproducing its logics. The article suggests that if the binary that
structures both their arguments is overcome, a productive synthesis of their arguments can be made – although this
still leaves unanswered a number of questions about the role that art might play in social change.
Bishop, C. (2012) Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London: Verso.
Kester, G. H. (2011) The One and the Many: Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press.
Keywords: art; collaboration; participation; ethics; aesthetics
In February 2006 the art historian Claire Bishop published ‘The Social Turn: Collabo-
ration and Its Discontents’ (Bishop, 2006a) in the magazine Artforum, in which she was
highly critical of dominant trends in ‘participatory art’ practice and the discourses
surrounding it. She argued that the field was marked by the renunciation of aesthetic
judgements in favour of a ‘Christian’ ethics of collaboration, rendering it incapable of
producing interesting art or making disruptive political statements. Among the targets of
her critique was fellow art historian Grant Kester, whose book Conversation Pieces (Kester,
2004) is a key text of this ‘social turn’; and he responded with a letter, printed in
Artforum’s May 2006 issue. In it, he argued that ‘Bishop seems determined to enforce a
fixed and rigid boundary between “aesthetic” projects (“provocative”, “uncomfortable”
and “multi-layered”) and activist works (“predictable”, “benevolent” and “ineffectual”)’
(Kester, 2006, p. 22) rather than considering alternative understandings of aesthetics that
stem from ethically sound social practice in which the artist facilitates the collaborative
production of work. The May issue also included Bishop’s reply to Kester’s response,
which argued that his ‘righteous aversion to authorship can only lead to the end of
provocative art and thinking’ (Bishop, 2006b, p. 22).
These arguments form the basis for the two books reviewed here, which will be of
interest to scholars exploring alternative forms of political organisation; and to those
interested in the relationship between politics, ethics and aesthetics. Both books have
been largely well-reviewed – Kester’s for opening participatory art criticism to new
evaluative criteria (Calder, 2014; Cartiere, 2013; Cole, 2012; Smith, 2012) and Bishop’s
for historicising participatory art while critiquing widely made claims for its artistic and
political value (Martin, 2013; Watt, 2014; Widrich, 2013) – although I draw on more
critical reviews below. While Bishop and Kester’s exchange was conducted in a rather
ferocious manner (at one point Kester writes that ‘all that is lacking’ from Bishop’s
POLITICAL STUDIES REVIEW: 2015
doi: 10.1111/1478-9302.12089
© 2015 The Author. Political Studies Review © 2015 Political Studies Association
The Politics of Participatory Art
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