The Participator in Contemporary Art

Kaitavuori, Kaija

doi:10.5040/9781350989061

Cited by 6 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…People were at once producers, consumers and the consumed. In fact, their esthetic engagement was at once reactive and heteronomous as well as active and autonomous, touching all the bases of Kaitavuori's (2018, p. 17) typology of participation. The making and reception of art were inextricably intertwined.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Public art and ritual transformation in Northern Ireland

Downey

Sherry

2020

AAM

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PurposeThe actual uses to which public art is put have been virtually ignored, leaving multifarious dynamics related to its esthetic encounters unexplored. Both audience agency in placemaking and sensemaking and the agentic role of place as more than a mere platform or stage dressing for transformation are routinely neglected. Such transformative dynamics are analyzed and interpreted in this study of the Derry–Londonderry Temple, a transient mega-installation orchestrated by bricoleur artist David Best and co-created by sectarian communities in 2015.Design/methodology/approachA range of ethnographic methods and supplemental netnography were employed in the investigation.FindingsParticipants inscribed expressions of their lived experience of trauma on the Temple's infrastructure, on wood scrap remnants or on personal artifacts dedicated for interment. These inscriptions and artifacts became objects of contemplation for all participants to consider and appreciate during visitation, affording sectarian citizens opportunity for empathic response to the plight of opposite numbers. Thousands engaged with the installation over the course of a week, registering sorrow, humility and awe in their interactions, experiencing powerful catharsis and creating temporary cross-community comity. The installation and the grief work animating it were introjected by co-creators as a virtual legacy of the engagement.Originality/valueThe originality of the study lies in its theorizing of the successful delivery of social systems therapy in an esthetic modality to communities traditionally hostile to one another. This sustained encounter is defined as traumaturgy. The sacrificial ritual of participatory public art becomes the medium through which temporary cross-community cohesion is achieved.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Increasingly, artists and architects are creating installations that encourage public participation. Kaitavuori (2018) estimates "participatory art" to have become the most popular form of contemporary art over the last fifteen years. Of special relevance to our present study, much of this art invites inscription (Franck (2015).…”

Section: Originalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Public art and ritual transformation in Northern Ireland

Downey

Sherry

2020

AAM

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“…Thus assembled, The Method of National Constellations can be seen as representative of the model of participation in art, theatre in particular, that we shall call directed, or heteronomous (e.g. Kaitavuori, 2018;Niziołek, 2016Niziołek, , 2018b. In this instance, the participant is invited to engage in a happening, installation, or situation, to mention but a few possibilities, constructed by an artist and already put on display.…”

Section: The Methods Of National Constellationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assemblage of Memory: On the Structure, Process and Creativity in Collective Memory

Niziołek

2021

Creativity Studies

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The article is aimed at presenting and discussing the theoretical concept of assemblage of memory inspired by and grounded in the creative work done in connection with social research within the framework of participatory theatre. Based on three projects of this kind that I have collaborated on over the last couple of years, all taking memory as their theme, The Method of National Constellations (2014–2016), Prayer: A Common Theatre (2016–2017), and Bieżenki (2018), the concept draws both on artistic, and sociological thinking. An assemblage of memory could be roughly described as a product of creativity, which is constructed using “found” materials, such as stories, images, emotions, behaviours, objects, people even, to compose a new meaningful entity. This is congruent with what became to be known as the assemblage theory, started by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, who suggested that social phenomena, such as collective memory, one could add, should be viewed as dynamic and heterogeneous arrangements of a variety of elements, material and immaterial, natural and artificial, human and non-human, that are dependent on the connections between them rather than their intrinsic qualities. Thus, an assemblage of memory cannot be accessed through text-oriented methodologies that still seem to predominate the humanities (with its focus on the witness and testimony), but requires innovative, creative procedures, which, as exemplified by the above mentioned theatrical projects, are capable of revealing its structure and dynamics.

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“…Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship . Among other authors, a typology of participation in art based on two dividing factors: the phase of audience engagement (display or production), and the mode of participation (reactive/heteronomous or active/autonomous), has been recently proposed by Kaitavuori (2018) in the book The Participator in Contemporary Art. Art and Social Relationships .…”

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confidence: 99%

‘I remember little. Almost nothing’. Participatory theatre as a means to access subjugated memories

Niziołek

2021

Memory Studies

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The article presents and discusses the interdisciplinary, collaborative and participatory research project Bieżenki. Thematically, the project is devoted to the history of the so-called bieżeństwo – a migration of people from eastern Poland during the First World War, forced by the retreating Russian Army, when the Germans broke through the eastern frontline in 1915. The stories of those refugees, among whom were a number of Rus’ peasants, and within that group, women with children (the term bieżenki signifies female war refugees), make up a crucial part of the regional history that has been largely absent from public knowledge and historical discourse. Methodologically, the project is based on participatory theatre that engages non-artists both as content providers, and on-stage performers. Theatrical practice has been used to collect the marginalised memories of bieżeństwo (as they are often kept and transmitted within family circles), and present them to the wider public in the form of theatrical performance. The project has also resulted in a theoretical concept of the assemblage of memory, inspired by and grounded in the creative process, which is briefly sketched out at the end of the article.

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The Participator in Contemporary Art

Cited by 6 publications

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Public art and ritual transformation in Northern Ireland

Public art and ritual transformation in Northern Ireland

Assemblage of Memory: On the Structure, Process and Creativity in Collective Memory

‘I remember little. Almost nothing’. Participatory theatre as a means to access subjugated memories

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