Bishop, C. (2012). Artificial hells: Participatory art and the politics of spectatorship. Verso Books. Chapter 2: Artificial Hells: The Historic Avant-garde
In the second chapter of the book, Bishop (2012) describes three historic avant-garde trends that were influential in the development of participatory arts: Italian Futurism (led by Filippo Marinetti), Russian Proletkult and mass spectacle, and Paris Dada (influenced by Andre Breton). These three movements encouraged “active spectatorship” in contrast to the conventional theater performance which was “derided” as one “producing passivity” (p. 44). Bishop describes these three movements as “models of participatory practice concerning three ideological positions (emergent Fascism in Italy, Bolshevism in Russia, and in France, a post-war rejection of national sentiment)” (p. 41).
Futurist activities were held on the street and included performances such as “gymnastics, slapsticks, singing, anatomical monstrosities, and so forth” (p. 45), which centered on the mostly negative interaction between performers and the public. As members of the audience and performers antagonized and attacked each other, these interactions were set to provoke conflict by evoking overwhelmingly negative emotions. The goal of Futurism was to capture the audience’s attention and redirect it toward destruction and violence which, as Bishop explains, aimed to “convert the widest possible range of Italians to a national, militaristic, techno-futuristic cause that aimed to motivate colonial expansion and rouse enthusiasm for war” (p. 47). Bishop emphasizes that “the participation” was understood by Marinetti as “total commitment to a cause;” such “abandonment” was accompanied by “regressive aspects too: a reduction to mob mentality, and abandonment of critical distance and reasoned logic” (p. 47).
Bishop’s analysis of Russian Proletkult and mass spectacle focuses on “ideological reprogramming” of the relationship between “works of art, artists, and audience” that “spanned art, theater, and music” in order to bring them in alignment with Bolshevik ideology. The goal of Proletkult, conceptualized by its “founding theorist” Aleksandr Bogdanov, was to “bring cultural production in line with collectivist ideas“ by abandoning bourgeois culture, and to revolutionize culture by bringing it in line with” collective ideas” by “merging” artists with workers and home with work and by “creating a revolutionary consciousness” (p. 50). The new art envisioned by Bogdanov was based on the “model of collective authorship” (p. 51); it was meant to be “useful and [to] effect concrete changes in society” (p. 52). The participatory role of “proletariat” was social/collective rather than individual.
Mass spectacles (described as “monumental outdoor spectacles”) were viewed as alternative to “professional theater and [as] an opportunity for culture to evolve from people themselves” (p. 58). Bishop explains the ideological difference between Prolekult’s theater and mass spectacle as follows. In Proletkult theater, the emphasis was on “participatory production:” a hierarchical model, in which state propaganda mobilized the public to form the “image of collectivity.” In mass spectacle, the emphasis was on “participatory presence:” a model in which the government supported “de-hierarchized creative process” (p. 61). Yet, critics of mass spectacle emphasized that its main goal was to “raise morale” and to distract the public from such social problems as poverty, labor camps and poor living conditions. The mass spectacle was described by critics as “a colossal waste of resources,” which rendered “the proletariat the subject of a representation that was crassly symbolic and superficial” (p. 61).
The Paris Dada movement organized performances that included mixed art forms, such as mixing music and poetry, which also used public spaces and involved interaction with the audience and, at times, techniques of “media provocation“ (p. 66). The group was conceived as “all-negating, anti-ideological, and anarchist” (p. 66). In contrast to Futurism, the goal of Dada events was to “evolve a desire rather than to scandalize” (p. 70) and to guide the viewer to “find a continuity between the work of art and their lives” (p. 71). Bishop explains that the movement created an opening “towards more refined and meaningful forms of participatory experiences,” by developing “more subtle areas of social investigation” (p. 71) (described as “quasi-anthropological investigations”) which required “appropriating a social form and subverting its conventional associations” (p. 72).
