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Affect’s Role in Participatory Artistic Practices: And Why We Try To Avoid It (2014)
(ABSTRACT)
Participatory Art is distinct from other types of art purely due to its implication of the viewer within the work – its participatory nature. Engagement with the viewer in this way causes an affective response within the viewer even if the viewer choses not to become a participant – because by declining the individual has already become involved to a limited extent. Beyond this decline to the participatory invitation, once a viewer switches roles to that of a participant they are affectively engaged within the work. Many critics of participation would argue that this close involvement leaves the participant unable to remain impartial or to be able to respond to the work from an academic or critical standpoint.
Lingis’ (2000) text will be drawn upon as a means of exploring the importance of affect in relation to storytelling and history, and I will further this connection to affect’s importance within art. Massumi (2002) will be used to introduce the autonomy of affect, and through this autonomy I will complicate the intentional stirring of affect, or its manipulation. However, Massumi (2002) also brings in an argument for the importance of attempting to articulate and explore the realm of affect – even though it is outside of the rational. Berlant (2010) will offer us an angle from which we can question the merits of affective attachment and potentially offer an additional reason for disengagement – in affective attachments and in participatory art practices. As an example I will discuss the work of the artist Oliver Herring, specifically focusing on his project TASK (2002-present), as an exciting case of participatory art which makes use of affect to create a situation in which the viewer shifts to the role of the participant – and through this experiences intensely affective, and potentially transformative moments on a collective, or shared level. |
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