Claire Bishop: Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (2012)

“Since the 1990s, critics and curators have broadly accepted the notion that participatory art is the ultimate political art: that by encouraging an audience to take part an artist can promote new emancipatory social relations. Around the world, the champions of this form of expression are numerous, ranging from art historians such as Grant Kester, curators such as Nicolas Bourriaud and Nato Thompson, to performance theorists such as Shannon Jackson.

Artificial Hells is the first historical and theoretical overview of socially engaged participatory art, known in the US as “social practice.” Claire Bishop follows the trajectory of twentieth-century art and examines key moments in the development of a participatory aesthetic. This itinerary takes in Futurism and Dada; the Situationist International; Happenings in Eastern Europe, Argentina and Paris; the 1970s Community Arts Movement; and the Artists Placement Group. It concludes with a discussion of long-term educational projects by contemporary artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn, Tania Bruguera, Paweł Althamer and Paul Chan.

Since her controversial essay in Artforum in 2006, Claire Bishop has been one of the few to challenge the political and aesthetic ambitions of participatory art. In Artificial Hells, she not only scrutinizes the emancipatory claims made for these projects, but also provides an alternative to the ethical (rather than artistic) criteria invited by such artworks. Artificial Hells calls for a less prescriptive approach to art and politics, and for more compelling, troubling and bolder forms of participatory art and criticism.”

Publisher Verso Books, London, 2012
ISBN 1844676900, 9781844676903
390 pages

Reviews: Josephine Berry Slater (Mute, 2012), Mechtild Widrich (caa.reviews, 2013), Marcus Verhagen (New Left Review, 2014), Kenn Watt (Drama Review, 2014), Kim Charnley (Art Journal, 2014), Joseph Henry (New Inquiry, 2012), Jaenine Parkinson (Vague Terrain, 2011), Ryan Wong (Hyperallergic, 2012), Alexander Provan (NY Observer, 2012), Leah Lovett (Dark Matter, 2013), David M. Bell (Political Studies Rev, 2017), Corinne Segal (Boston Review, 2012), Christine Korte (Public, 2013), Jennie Klein (PAJ, 2015).

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Jeff Berner (ed.): Astronauts of Inner-Space: An International Collection of Avant-Garde Activity (1966)

17 Manifestoes, Articles, Letters, 28 Poems & 1 Filmscript.

With manifestoes by Raoul Hausmann, John Arden, Jorgen Nash, Decio Pignatari, Maurice Girodias, Bruno Munari, Allen Ginsberg, Franz Mon, Marshall McLuhan, Max Bense, Diter Rot, Otto Piene, W. S. Burroughs, Dom Sylvester Houedard, Konrad Bayer, Margaret Masterman, R. Watts

Publisher Stolen Paper Review Editions, San Francisco, and The Times Publishing Co, London, 1966
66 pages
scanned by Lori Emerson

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N.O. Cantsin (ed.): A Neoist Research Project (2010)

“A Neoist Research Project is the first comprehensive anthology and source book of Neoism, an international collective network of mostly anonymous and pseudonymous subcultural actionists and speculative experimenters.

It collects more than one hundred Neoist texts and two hundred images, documenting – among others – Neoist interventions, the Neoist Apartment Festivals, definitions and pamphlets of Neoism and affiliated currents, language and identity experiments and Neoist concepts and memes such asthe shared identity Monty Cantsin.

Here’s a fistful of titles from the content: ‘What is an uh, uh, Apartment Festival??????’, ‘Blo-Dart Acupuncture &/or Ear-Piercing’, ‘Impractical Seriousness’, ‘Krononautic Divector Field Didaction’, ‘Chronicle of the Neoast Observer at the So-Called Millionth Apartment Festival’, ‘3 part action’, ‘Neoist haircut’, ‘non-participation’, ‘Philosopher’s Union soapbox stand’, ‘anything is anything’, ‘language constructions’, ‘Dyslexia’, ‘Continuity Poem (cinematic version)’, ‘A note from the editors of SMILE’, ‘Street performance actions against false infinity ‘, ‘Neoist Parking Meter Action: Pay Me to Go Away’, ‘Neoism 101: Thought Projection’, ‘Our Tactics against Stockhausen’, ‘Seven Scripts for One Week of Neoist Activity’.”

Publisher OpenMute, London, 2010
ISBN 9781906496463
246 pages

Video (moving images from A Neoist Research Project)
Audio lecture (Netzwerk Neoismus, by Florian Cramer, 98 min, in German)

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