The Gestures of Participatory Art

By Sruti Bala

Winner of the 2019 ASCA Book Award

Participation is the utopian sweet dream that has turned into a nightmare in contemporary neoliberal societies. Yet can the participatory ideal be discarded or merely replaced with another term, just because it has become disemboweled into a tool of pacification? The gestures of participatory art insists that the concept of participation must be re-imagined and shifted onto other registers. Moving from reflections on institutional critique and impact to concrete analyses of moments of unsolicited, delicate participation and refusal, the book examines a range of artistic practices from India, Sudan, Guatemala and El Salvador, the Lebanon, the Netherlands and Germany. It proposes the concept of the gesture as a way of theorising participatory art, situating it between the visual and the performing arts, as both individual and collective, both internal attitude and social habitude.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1526100770
• ISBN13: 9781526100771
• Release Date: July 2018
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Length: 168 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.5"