1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910160341803321

Autore

Rounthwaite Adair <1983->

Titolo

Asking the Audience : Participatory Art in 1980s New York / / Adair Rounthwaite

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Minneapolis, Minnesota ; ; London, [England] : , : University of Minnesota Press, , 2017

©2017

ISBN

9781452953861

1452953864

9780816698721 (hc : alk. paper)

9780816698738 (pb : alk. paper)

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (284 pages) : illustrations, photographs

Disciplina

702.81

Soggetti

Art, American - New York (State) - New York - 20th century

Interactive art - New York (State) - New York

ART - General

Art, American

Interactive art

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction: recovering audience -- The politics of participation -- The pedagogical subject of participation -- Photography, agency, and participation -- Art, affect, crisis -- Conclusion: partcipation in the present.

Sommario/riassunto

The 1980s was a critical decade in shaping today's art production. While newly visible work concerned with power and identity hinted at a shift toward multiculturalism, the '80s were also a time of social conservatism that resulted in substantial changes in arts funding. In Asking the Audience, Adair Rounthwaite uses this context to analyze the rising popularity of audience participation in American art during this important decade. Rounthwaite explores two seminal and interrelated art projects sponsored by the Dia Art Foundation in New York: Group Material's Democracy and Martha Rosler's If You Lived Here.... These projects married issues of social activism--such as



homelessness and the AIDS crisis--with various forms of public participation, setting the precedent for the high-profile participatory practices currently dominating global contemporary art. Rounthwaite draws on diverse archival images, audio recordings, and more than thirty new interviews to analyze the live affective dynamics to which the projects gave rise. Seeking to foreground the audience experience in understanding the social context of participatory art, she argues that affect is key to the audience's ability to exercise agency within the participatory artwork. From artists and audiences to institutions, funders, and critics, Asking the Audience traces the networks that participatory art creates between various agents, demonstrating how, since the 1980s, leftist political engagement has become a cornerstone of the institutionalized consumption of contemporary art.