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THE ART OF PARTICIPATION

Exhibition at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

let's see whether we manage to go to San Francisco before February 2009 and see this stunning expo, which actually is one of our main topics in our work. The expo presents an in-depth overview of participation-based art in the last 60 years; it can be seen as an exploration of what is an “art of participation”. The exposition's Curator, Rudolf Frieling states:

"We know what it means to participate in politics or school, and sometimes know what it means to participate in a work of art if we get clear instructions. However there are some projects where it is unclear what exactly is asked of you, or you can only find out by actually doing something. The work requires your input and your act of contribution."

Works range from performance based art and happenings to web based projects. A very interesting "exhibit" seems to me Erwin Wurm’s One Minute Sculptures. The artists provides various objects, that are exposed and look like 20. century sculptures. BUT.... these objects come with instructions, that invite the visitor to perform the sculpture! Apparently not the easiest exercises, the "dead" objects come to live by the spectators following Wurm's instructions. Each sculpture is individual and ephermal. What a beautiful concept... [paper on one minute sculptures] We'd be curious to see this exploration of approaches and situations in which the public has taken a collaborative role in the art-making process. It is divided into an online exposition, and the physical on-site exhibition.. The online exhibition consists of artworks that were specifically designed for the world wide web. They range from public discussion forums to online games and sharing tools, some of them using web 2.0 technologies. You can participate in creating a performance that will be showed on 7 February 2009 at SFMOMA, by voting for ten components, including location, time, props, themes, and subtitle. A favorite work is Mejor Vida Corp., an "online shop", that "creates, promotes and distributes world wide products and services for free", including counterfeit barcodes, ID cards, and subway tickets. A very humourous critique of global corporations! Works by artists like Joseph Beuys, John Cage, Lygia Clark, Hans Haacke, Dan Graham, and Nam June Paik, Francis Alÿs, Maria Eichhorn, Jochen Gerz, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Lynn Hershman Leeson, and Erwin Wurm can be enjoyed and seen. The exposition is completed by lectures, performances (i.e. The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends Is the Highest Form of Art), Film + Video Screenings, and a special exhibition, The 1000 Journals Project "This is an experiment and you are part of it.", which had been created and maintained by Someguy, a San Francisco–based graphic designer who chooses to remain anonymous, the 1000 Journals project is designed to stimulate collaboration and understanding among perfect strangers. The project began when blank, 220-page books from San Francisco were distributed around the world—sent through the mail or delivered by hand to discrete locations. A stamped set of instructions inside each journal invites participants to make their mark in it by drawing, pasting, cutting, ripping, folding, burning, or writing on its pages. When finished, participants pass the journals on. A website tracks the books and their contributors, and displays scans of the pages.

8. November 2008 - 8. February 2009

The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
151 Third Street San Francisco, CA 94103

© Clara Altenburg

................................................................... Ewin Wurm One Minute Sculpture

for more one-minute-sculpture videos have a look at sfmoma's blog
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P.D.
ART MACHINES/ MACHINE ART.

For me the most interactive and participative exposition I have ever visited, though the concept was based on this thought: In general we presume that artists make art, but what happens when machines produce art? The exposition invited the public to play with the exposed machines, which were artworks in themselves, created by artists and provided the visitor with a big variation of (mostly mechanic) tools to create pieces of work (not sure whether it is art).