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Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship
This searing critique of participatory art—from its development to its political ambitions—is “an essential title for contemporary art history scholars and students as well as anyone who has . . . thought, ‘Now that’s art!’ or ‘That’s art?’” ( Library Journal )
Since the 1990s, critics and curators have broadly accepted the notion that participatory art is the ultimate political 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, Pawel 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.
Since the 1990s, critics and curators have broadly accepted the notion that participatory art is the ultimate political 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, Pawel 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.
400 pages, Paperback
First published July 24, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
December 18, 2018
When you don't understand something, or don't like something and you can't articulate why, it's good to read up on it to get a more informed opinion.
And after slogging through this jargon-heavy book, I can say that I'm still not entirely sure if I appreciate performance art, or understand it.
There were some chapters so dull I could barely get through them, and there were some that I moved through quickly. The Russian art chapter I thought was particularly good. Especially the piece where the artists appeared on the horizon and handed out pictures to the waiting spectators / participants.
Before I say anything else, I want to congratulate one paragraph in particular that made me put my head down on my desk and laugh helplessly into my arms. Here it is in all its shining glory:
"After this, Oleg Kulik, who was naked and chained to a kennel, executing one of his well-known dog performances, also became increasingly hostile. Soft nibbles turned into bites and assaults. Trying to push Kulik back inside his kennel, Jan Åman kicked the artist in the face, which provoked the artist to become yet more violent; the police were called in and Kulik was arrested, charged and later released with a fine."
Amazing.
I got the...general sense that artists engaged in this sort of work rely heavily on shock factor and making others uncomfortable. Which is... not my arena, I will say. It cheapens it somewhat, especially when they're trying to articulate grand ideals.
All in all, I think I should reread this book when I'm a little more versed on the subject as this was definitely not for people who have a superficial understanding of performance art. (Also, the Europe focus was boring. Research Gutai, you cowards.)
And after slogging through this jargon-heavy book, I can say that I'm still not entirely sure if I appreciate performance art, or understand it.
There were some chapters so dull I could barely get through them, and there were some that I moved through quickly. The Russian art chapter I thought was particularly good. Especially the piece where the artists appeared on the horizon and handed out pictures to the waiting spectators / participants.
Before I say anything else, I want to congratulate one paragraph in particular that made me put my head down on my desk and laugh helplessly into my arms. Here it is in all its shining glory:
"After this, Oleg Kulik, who was naked and chained to a kennel, executing one of his well-known dog performances, also became increasingly hostile. Soft nibbles turned into bites and assaults. Trying to push Kulik back inside his kennel, Jan Åman kicked the artist in the face, which provoked the artist to become yet more violent; the police were called in and Kulik was arrested, charged and later released with a fine."
Amazing.
I got the...general sense that artists engaged in this sort of work rely heavily on shock factor and making others uncomfortable. Which is... not my arena, I will say. It cheapens it somewhat, especially when they're trying to articulate grand ideals.
All in all, I think I should reread this book when I'm a little more versed on the subject as this was definitely not for people who have a superficial understanding of performance art. (Also, the Europe focus was boring. Research Gutai, you cowards.)
May 31, 2013
So Claire Bishop is one of my favorite art critics right now. She won me over from almost the beginning. She's critical, and likes to rewrite history from different perspectives. There was her Installation book that i read and loved, and now she's moved onto participatory art. Here again she is looking for criteria to judge this work while also reconstructing art history from the perspective of this discipline.
There's a lot of leg work put into this book, since she started writing it in 2005. And the discipline doesn't do her any favors since you have to talk to participants and many of the works no longer even exist. But she plows through it all anyway.
Bishop seriously buys into the idea of art having political and sociology undertones. The academic and art jargon is thick in this book. Bring a machette and have google open. This isn't high on my priority list to read, because I'm not that interested in participatory art. I am a bit, but right now i'm comfortable with my view of history and I don't need Bishop to give me affirmation like i did my senior year. I read the introduction which psyched me up, but after rereading the beginning of chapter one several times I put the book back on the shelf. We'll see when I come back to it.
There's a lot of leg work put into this book, since she started writing it in 2005. And the discipline doesn't do her any favors since you have to talk to participants and many of the works no longer even exist. But she plows through it all anyway.
Bishop seriously buys into the idea of art having political and sociology undertones. The academic and art jargon is thick in this book. Bring a machette and have google open. This isn't high on my priority list to read, because I'm not that interested in participatory art. I am a bit, but right now i'm comfortable with my view of history and I don't need Bishop to give me affirmation like i did my senior year. I read the introduction which psyched me up, but after rereading the beginning of chapter one several times I put the book back on the shelf. We'll see when I come back to it.
October 27, 2025
I ATE this up! Oh to be one of the thousands partaking in a reenaction of some revolution or other… Anyhoo, very educational, and a solid in-depth survey into participatory art from the 1920s-90s.
I now contemplate the quality vs equality interpretation. Is it enough for art to only be regarded for its innovative and accessible techniques?? Does this have to mean neglecting its aesthetics and ability to actually make substantial change? Does the inclusion of others always jeopardize its aesthetic ability? I feel caught up in this- not just in regards to participatory art, but for a lot of art and practices in general, especially when they don’t end up working— cause then it was just like a cool, morally inclusive idea…and now I’m stuck here wondering if a socially good and collaborative concept actually gets you anywhere.
Highlights for me were the chapters on Incidental People and the APG and the chapter on delegated performance.
I now contemplate the quality vs equality interpretation. Is it enough for art to only be regarded for its innovative and accessible techniques?? Does this have to mean neglecting its aesthetics and ability to actually make substantial change? Does the inclusion of others always jeopardize its aesthetic ability? I feel caught up in this- not just in regards to participatory art, but for a lot of art and practices in general, especially when they don’t end up working— cause then it was just like a cool, morally inclusive idea…and now I’m stuck here wondering if a socially good and collaborative concept actually gets you anywhere.
Highlights for me were the chapters on Incidental People and the APG and the chapter on delegated performance.
January 21, 2025
Claire Bishop's "Antagonism & Relational Aesthetics" (2004) made a significant impact on me when I first encountered it in my early 20s. I wasn't opposed to participatory art as a whole, but I already shared Bishop's distrust of "transcendent human empathy that smooths over the awkward situation before us." As a budding marxist, I was thrilled by her understanding of what relational art could be if it was "predicated not on social harmony, but on exposing that which is repressed in sustaining the semblance of this harmony." At the center of her argument was a (basically Adornian) critique of Bourriard and his followers, who had postulated a more-or-less unmediated and direct relationship between openness-sociability on the level of artistic form and democracy-equity on the level of politics. Artificial Hells (2012) essentially constitutes the ‘proof’ of these earlier criticisms.
Part of this proof is historical. The book offers an incredibly rich portrait of the long 20th century as conceived through the ways in which various art movements took up and attempted to resolve the questions around participation. Bishop covers the futurists, the constructivists, the situationists, Latin American pedagogical-conceptualists, and even the neoliberal Artist Placement Group–this list could go on and on. All of these movements sought to give participation a central role in their practices, and all of them reached different (artistic and theoretical) conclusions—to say nothing of their complex and contradictory politics. In grappling with this history, the idea of a one-to-one relationship between formal expansiveness and and (more or less direct) democracy becomes unthinkable.
The second, more theoretical dimension of Bishop’s proof is the concept of “spectatorship,” here figured as a kind of irreducible aesthetic reserve (and potentially also a temporal dilation) which prevents us from sidestepping questions of mediation when we evaluate individual works and projects. After all, participatory art speaks to both participants and spectators (who may or may not be present in the moment of the work’s creation or performance). To focus solely on the participant is to misapprehend the real formal character of these pieces. And insofar as the spectator cannot be eliminated, we have to conclude with Bishop, that the production of “experiences that enlarge our capacity to imagine the world and our relations anew… requires a mediating third term - an object, image, story, film, even a spectacle… that permits the experience to have purchase on the public imaginary.” In other words, even the most blinkered defender of the ethical turn in art will eventually have to attend to the properly aesthetic qualities of whatever attests to this or that ‘happening’ or ‘situation’. This doesn’t mean that we can ignore the political or ethical dimensions of a given work, presumed to be ‘autonomous’—(she’s not that kind of Adornian)—it just means that critics and artists cannot reasonably base their value judgments of art on ethical criteria alone without flattening the work’s real social form: a form which confronts a participating subject just as surely as it confronts the non-participant.
All this is certainly not to say that political radicalism and formal exploration are completely unrelated to one another—and Bishop does argue that all these moments of participation need to be seen in context. After all, the first and second waves of participatory art-making were very much connected (respectively) to the revolutionary upsurge of 1917 and the ‘democratic’ rejection of ‘state socialism’ that we associate with May ’68. Most intriguing is Bishop’s argument that the ‘conspicuous reemergence’ of participatory art in the 1990s is connected to the overthrow of Soviet communism in 1989. “Triangulated, these three dates form a narrative of the triumph, heroic last stand and collapse of a collectivist vision of society.” Here at the end of history, it is precisely the lack of a viable collective political project which inaugurates this new era of participatory exploration, and this change is signaled by the rise of new terminology: the artistic “project” supplants the individual “works” of yesteryear. A “loosely-defined anti-capitalism” replaces a genuinely collective vision of what we as social beings could create together.
In this context, it would be naive to imagine (with Bourriard) that art alone can or should be called upon to produce a new vision of revolutionary-democratic collectivity. Bishop writes:
This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with the nature of participatory art in the context of ‘late capitalism’—but I would also recommend it to people who simply want to complicate their understanding of 20th century art history. If you’re anything like me, then you’ve probably focused a bit too heavily on paintings, readymades, conceptual works, and all those other hallmarks of institutionalized art history. Bishop’s book will round out your understanding and give you a much more comprehensive view of the last century, rooted in the still-marginalized genres of performance and installation. (For more, check out Sruti Bala's The Gestures of Participatory Art (2018).)
As far as criticism goes— I do feel that there are some unresolved elements in the text: although we are no longer in agreement with Adorno’s rejection of political commitment, we still remain locked within his understanding of negativity, which sometimes borders on a defense of art’s supposed autonomy (despite what I wrote above). Additionally, although I still have a lot of love for antagonistic work, Bishop’s defense of antagonism often takes shape along lines that I would describe as Sadean. And that’s fine— but I enjoyed this book so much that I wanted more from it: I would have loved to see the idea of antagonism developed in greater theoretical detail.
Bishop promises in the introduction that the “hidden narrative of this book therefore a journey from sceptical distance to imbrication.” It was a privilege to be taken along for the ride.
Part of this proof is historical. The book offers an incredibly rich portrait of the long 20th century as conceived through the ways in which various art movements took up and attempted to resolve the questions around participation. Bishop covers the futurists, the constructivists, the situationists, Latin American pedagogical-conceptualists, and even the neoliberal Artist Placement Group–this list could go on and on. All of these movements sought to give participation a central role in their practices, and all of them reached different (artistic and theoretical) conclusions—to say nothing of their complex and contradictory politics. In grappling with this history, the idea of a one-to-one relationship between formal expansiveness and and (more or less direct) democracy becomes unthinkable.
The second, more theoretical dimension of Bishop’s proof is the concept of “spectatorship,” here figured as a kind of irreducible aesthetic reserve (and potentially also a temporal dilation) which prevents us from sidestepping questions of mediation when we evaluate individual works and projects. After all, participatory art speaks to both participants and spectators (who may or may not be present in the moment of the work’s creation or performance). To focus solely on the participant is to misapprehend the real formal character of these pieces. And insofar as the spectator cannot be eliminated, we have to conclude with Bishop, that the production of “experiences that enlarge our capacity to imagine the world and our relations anew… requires a mediating third term - an object, image, story, film, even a spectacle… that permits the experience to have purchase on the public imaginary.” In other words, even the most blinkered defender of the ethical turn in art will eventually have to attend to the properly aesthetic qualities of whatever attests to this or that ‘happening’ or ‘situation’. This doesn’t mean that we can ignore the political or ethical dimensions of a given work, presumed to be ‘autonomous’—(she’s not that kind of Adornian)—it just means that critics and artists cannot reasonably base their value judgments of art on ethical criteria alone without flattening the work’s real social form: a form which confronts a participating subject just as surely as it confronts the non-participant.
All this is certainly not to say that political radicalism and formal exploration are completely unrelated to one another—and Bishop does argue that all these moments of participation need to be seen in context. After all, the first and second waves of participatory art-making were very much connected (respectively) to the revolutionary upsurge of 1917 and the ‘democratic’ rejection of ‘state socialism’ that we associate with May ’68. Most intriguing is Bishop’s argument that the ‘conspicuous reemergence’ of participatory art in the 1990s is connected to the overthrow of Soviet communism in 1989. “Triangulated, these three dates form a narrative of the triumph, heroic last stand and collapse of a collectivist vision of society.” Here at the end of history, it is precisely the lack of a viable collective political project which inaugurates this new era of participatory exploration, and this change is signaled by the rise of new terminology: the artistic “project” supplants the individual “works” of yesteryear. A “loosely-defined anti-capitalism” replaces a genuinely collective vision of what we as social beings could create together.
In this context, it would be naive to imagine (with Bourriard) that art alone can or should be called upon to produce a new vision of revolutionary-democratic collectivity. Bishop writes:
“That the ‘political’ and ‘critical’ have become shibboleths of advanced art signals a lack of faith both in the intrinsic value of art as a de-alienating human endeavor (since art today is so intertwined with market systems globally) and in democratic political processes (in whose name so many injustices and barbarities are conducted). Rather than addressing this by collapsing art and ethics together, the task today is to produce a viable international alignment of leftist political movements and a reassertion of art’s inventive forms of negation as valuable in their own right.”
This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with the nature of participatory art in the context of ‘late capitalism’—but I would also recommend it to people who simply want to complicate their understanding of 20th century art history. If you’re anything like me, then you’ve probably focused a bit too heavily on paintings, readymades, conceptual works, and all those other hallmarks of institutionalized art history. Bishop’s book will round out your understanding and give you a much more comprehensive view of the last century, rooted in the still-marginalized genres of performance and installation. (For more, check out Sruti Bala's The Gestures of Participatory Art (2018).)
As far as criticism goes— I do feel that there are some unresolved elements in the text: although we are no longer in agreement with Adorno’s rejection of political commitment, we still remain locked within his understanding of negativity, which sometimes borders on a defense of art’s supposed autonomy (despite what I wrote above). Additionally, although I still have a lot of love for antagonistic work, Bishop’s defense of antagonism often takes shape along lines that I would describe as Sadean. And that’s fine— but I enjoyed this book so much that I wanted more from it: I would have loved to see the idea of antagonism developed in greater theoretical detail.
Bishop promises in the introduction that the “hidden narrative of this book therefore a journey from sceptical distance to imbrication.” It was a privilege to be taken along for the ride.
Read
June 20, 2018very entertaining. it helped me, to figure out the wrong assumptions I had about peformance art in general, giving me a more detailed perspective on a field I only work with indirectly. Maybe I should read more from her.
November 20, 2025
De los más pertinentes y completos intentos de mapeado de todo el Arte Participativo, desde las vanguardias a otros tantos hitos ya entrados en el siglo XXI. Aunque tiene sus vacíos, como es lógico en su actitud enciclopédica, supone una excelente refutación de Estética Relacional de Bourriaud y uno de los libros más importantes de la crítica e historiografia del arte contemporáneo. Muy elocuente y recomendado para ampliar visión de una de las tendencias más marcadas del arte actual.
January 25, 2020
Finally read this. It's a good history of participatory art. I was surprised, I had expected it to be more argumentative after reading her article in October. Here, she keeps gesturing towards the question of evaluation and judgment but the issue isn't really addressed.
March 11, 2020
Claire Bishop's writing is so clear-cut and rigorous. Her astute ability to communicate vague and difficult concepts around participatory art is absolutely admirable. A very needed book that definitely sets the scene for more attention around collaborative art projects in the contemporary context.
September 15, 2012
See my full review, forthcoming in the Winter issue of C magazine.
February 24, 2017
2017年讀畢已經有種long-overdue的感覺，當代藝術的變動--好快呀，但無差別的是俐落的文字描繪似乎是可以橫跨時間的；當代形式表現看似不同，其性質的變異卻走的緩慢。如果你常看展覽，想必能在章節中找到相似的歸納。作為1990年代以前的參考：也讓人多了個理由重讀關係美學、拉康、德勒茲！
March 10, 2022
Un libro magnífico. Claire Bishop plantea un recorrido a lo largo del tiempo (desde las vanguardias históricas hasta los proyectos artísticos de comienzos del siglo XXI) que traza la evolución del arte que trata de otorgar un papel no pasivo a los espectadores.
Se explica que el elemento participativo ha adoptado enfoques muy variados según la época y el espacio geográfico, siendo hoy dominante en Occidente el afán de que la práctica artística establezca contacto con su contexto social y contribuya positivamente a la reconstrucción del lazo comunitario.
La autora sondea las raíces de esta idea y la problematiza, reivindicando por ejemplo la introducción de criterios (denostados) de valoración estética frente a los juicios sostenidos en argumentos (parciales y algo tramposos) de tipo ético, social o político.
Se disfruta particularmente la habilidad que tiene Claire Bishop para aproximarse a contextos ajenos al suyo (el latinoamericano o el de Europa del Este, fundamentalmente), su buen tino en la elección de casos de estudio y el modo en que sus muchos y elaborados argumentos apuntan cantidad de veces hacia posibles líneas de continuidad para la reflexión. Lo principal que se echa en falta es que se cuele en el libro algo del presente post-2008. Aunque su publicación llegó después, parece que el trabajo se dio por cerrado antes.
La edición en español pierde calidad en la traducción hacia la mitad del libro.
9/10
Se explica que el elemento participativo ha adoptado enfoques muy variados según la época y el espacio geográfico, siendo hoy dominante en Occidente el afán de que la práctica artística establezca contacto con su contexto social y contribuya positivamente a la reconstrucción del lazo comunitario.
La autora sondea las raíces de esta idea y la problematiza, reivindicando por ejemplo la introducción de criterios (denostados) de valoración estética frente a los juicios sostenidos en argumentos (parciales y algo tramposos) de tipo ético, social o político.
Se disfruta particularmente la habilidad que tiene Claire Bishop para aproximarse a contextos ajenos al suyo (el latinoamericano o el de Europa del Este, fundamentalmente), su buen tino en la elección de casos de estudio y el modo en que sus muchos y elaborados argumentos apuntan cantidad de veces hacia posibles líneas de continuidad para la reflexión. Lo principal que se echa en falta es que se cuele en el libro algo del presente post-2008. Aunque su publicación llegó después, parece que el trabajo se dio por cerrado antes.
La edición en español pierde calidad en la traducción hacia la mitad del libro.
9/10
March 12, 2019
With the term 'community-based practice' roaming around the art world recently and the influx of residency program that focuses on the collectivity, Artificial Hells is a timely book for the current trend of global contemporary art. Some of the historical examples provided in this book by Bishop is fun to read, however, many of them are tedious and—in my opinion—insignificant. Nevertheless, the trajectory of the art movements critically discussed in this book shown that the evolution of direct participation in art is actually interesting to follow; from the early stage of avant-garde bifurcated to both left and right-leaning politics to the art that functioned as pedagogy—which is also is the current trend of many art collectives to implemented pedagogical approach in their artistic practice. In participatory art, the distinction between life and art is vaguer it's actually become exciting. The aestheticisation of everyday life.
August 28, 2023
Very dense and buzzword-y, but thought the author’s argument was interesting and made me think deeper about the arguments that proponents of participatory art spoon-feed us versus what’s actually going on.
Especially the chief argument made by artists of “participation,” “community,” and “performance” as vague stand ins for buffering against the injustice of [fill in the blank social/political justice issue] and a rejection of the aesthetic value of this “art” on the part of the creator. If this is the case, the author asks, why is the value and impact of these projects derived by comparison to other art and never actual social/political organizations out in the world?
Why are these projects, which their creators simultaneously refer to as both art and not art, the only medium in art that is off-limits to judgement of their inherent value as just… art?
Especially the chief argument made by artists of “participation,” “community,” and “performance” as vague stand ins for buffering against the injustice of [fill in the blank social/political justice issue] and a rejection of the aesthetic value of this “art” on the part of the creator. If this is the case, the author asks, why is the value and impact of these projects derived by comparison to other art and never actual social/political organizations out in the world?
Why are these projects, which their creators simultaneously refer to as both art and not art, the only medium in art that is off-limits to judgement of their inherent value as just… art?
April 18, 2025
Oh the irony—this book about hells became my own little academic hell trying to tie it into my seminar presentation paper. I get that Claire Bishop is a major voice in the participatory art discourse, and I respect the depth of the research here… but reading it felt like wading through thick theoretical sludge.
There were a few gems buried in the text, and sure, her critiques of socially engaged art brought some tension to the field that’s important. But the writing? Dense. The organization? Chaotic at times. And trying to make it align with the direction of my paper was honestly more frustrating than enlightening.
It’s one of those books that feels like a rite of passage—you read it because you have to, not because you want to. Two stars because I did get a couple usable quotes out of it, but I wouldn’t revisit it unless absolutely necessary. Artificial hells indeed. 😵💫🔥
There were a few gems buried in the text, and sure, her critiques of socially engaged art brought some tension to the field that’s important. But the writing? Dense. The organization? Chaotic at times. And trying to make it align with the direction of my paper was honestly more frustrating than enlightening.
It’s one of those books that feels like a rite of passage—you read it because you have to, not because you want to. Two stars because I did get a couple usable quotes out of it, but I wouldn’t revisit it unless absolutely necessary. Artificial hells indeed. 😵💫🔥
June 30, 2022
Artificial Hells is not an easy read. It took me two false starts and a very long time to get through it, and I’m still not sure how much I absorbed. The person who recommended and loaned it to me also struggled with it, warning me in advance that, “This is a book written by a PhD for other PhDs.” There is a lot to chew on here. Bishop’s subject is ostensibly “participatory art,” but in order to properly discuss such, she along the way also tackles politics, theatre, commerce, and a host of other sociological and aesthetic topics. This would make for good semester-long study, supplemented by other materials and classroom discussion. By treating it as a solo reading project, I know I am not utilizing the book to its full potential.
April 8, 2020
Um livro bastante interessante e o primeiro que li que, ao debruçar-se sobre a história da "Arte Participada"*, a relaciona também com factores políticos e económicos. Bishop não só faz descrições apaixonadas de projetos nos quais participou como também é capaz de fazer algumas reflexões bastante críticas da Arte como catalizador de mudança social.
Bem investigado, bem escrito, simultaneamente literário e informativo. Recomendo a investigadores ou a leitores casuais.
* Não sei bem que termo usar na tradução
Bem investigado, bem escrito, simultaneamente literário e informativo. Recomendo a investigadores ou a leitores casuais.
* Não sei bem que termo usar na tradução
February 11, 2024
Spodziewałam się dużo bardziej krytycznej rozprawy, a dużo mniej historycznego zarysu. Ale pomimo tego, że nie była do końca tym, czego oczekiwałam, jest świetnie napisana i bardzo inspirująca. Jestem pod dużym wrażeniem precyzyjnego i pełnego erudycji formułowania myśli i tez.
May 12, 2024
One of the most important contributions in the realm of political critique of participatory art. So many quotables, rich with examples and innovative conclusions. This book shaped so much of my thinking in these themes. Huge thanks to Bishop!
January 27, 2025
"In a world where everyone can air their views to everyone, we are faced not with mass empowerment but with an endless stream of egos levelled to banality. Far from being oppositional to spectacle, participation has now entirely merged with it."
December 13, 2017
Very good examples to illustrate the argument!
December 31, 2017
daming bilin para sa mga babalaking pampublikong intervention for 2018:
December 22, 2025
lettura incredibile e mastodontica, ma ho odiato profondamente il formato del libro e alcuni capitoli erano noiosi.
November 18, 2025
Important!
October 6, 2021
Long, heavy and hard to read at times. However I particularly enjoyed the section on delegated performance. Useful for my dissertation
September 23, 2018
An illuminating book about different forms of art that are currently redefining how to relate to the observer-spectator. The historical analysis is brilliant; Bishop relies more on the tradition of theatre and performance than the more established, visual-arts one. Part of this book was researched in Buenos Aires, while she was at the CIA.
January 5, 2020
Bishop was one of the major staples of my academic reading while doing my MA. Not only she draws an interesting sight on the evolution of participatory art practices, but also she never looses her critical viewpoint.
February 28, 2013
1) Brilliant, undoubtedly a best-seller book--standard reference from now on 2) Bishop is present-day's more acute critic 3) Bring back some Lacan, the forgotten guy!
May 25, 2023
Not the easiest book to understand but i like the ideas and it has been very useful.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews