Events
Participation - A User's Guide
Irit Rogoff
Monday, March 8th, 630 PM
Rose Auditorium
Cooper Union School of Art
41 Cooper Square
New York, NY 10003
Free Admission
This presentation tries to veer away from the inclusive prescription that characterizes the so called 'participatory turn' in contemporary art -- in which protocols were created to invite subjects into projects and spaces. Instead the presentation asks: What does it mean to take part in a culture beyond the roles that social habit allows? If participation is not directed from above by artists , curators and institutions - how then does it come about ?
By looking to the work of Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben and Jean- Luc Nancy, the interests of community and collectivity in art can be fleshed out through the concept of 'singularity' rather than that of identity. Such engagements with the blurring of lines between makers, viewers, objects and spaces has required the development of an alternative vocabulary to capture the shifting relations between art and its meanings.
