Participation Without Guarantees: Notes on Art as Socio-affective Practice
Keywords:
Participatory art, Latin American art, Art and affectAbstract
In recent decades, we have seen the multiplication of the labels use to refer to art works that, in one way or another, promote audience participation beyond spectatorial practice: participatory art, community art, relational aesthetics, contextual art, collaborative art, dialogic aesthetics, social aesthetics, artistic intervention, action-art... It is often insisted that this type of art, which usually has a manifest political intention, promotes the creation of new affective situations, of emotional bonds between social sectors that otherwise might not coincide. However, we must recognize that, frequently, this intention is insufficient for this art to have a significant social impact and that participation has even become a leitmotiv of the canon of international contemporary art. In this essay I address several participatory art works developed in the the two national contexts that I have inhabited in recent years: the United States and Colombia. Emphasizing the affective dimension of the works, I discuss their political scope and limitations, suggesting that this type of art, to paraphrase Stuart Hall, is always created "without guarantees".
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