François Matarasso: A Restless Art
05/31/21 • 62 min
A Restless Art
How participation won, and why it matters
François Matarasso
Published by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (open access), 2019
ISBN 9781903080207
It is almost twenty years since contemporary art took a ‘participation turn’. Now, just about every museum or theatre company has a participation or engagement department. It is nothing short of orthodoxy that one of art’s core roles is to reach out to audiences beyond art institutions – and paradoxically it is often art institutions that mandate this function. How can we reconcile the somewhat forgotten history – and ongoing practice – of the community arts with the recent rise of participatory art, social practice, or outreach and engagement?
François Matarasso speaks to Pierre d’Alancaisez about his long-term engagement in community art practice, the meanings of participation and cultural democracy, and his proposals for thinking about cultural and artistic participation as a fundamental human right. We talk about the history of the community arts movement in the UK, his influential 1997 paper Use or Ornament, ways of supporting cultural democracy through projects like Fun Palaces, and reaching peak culture.
François Matarasso is a community artist, writer, and researcher, and one of the co-creators of the 2020 Rome Charter.
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Find many more interviews, projects, and my writing at https://petitpoi.net/
You can sign up for my newsletter at https://petitpoi.net/newsletter/
Support my work: https://petitpoi.net/support/
A Restless Art
How participation won, and why it matters
François Matarasso
Published by Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (open access), 2019
ISBN 9781903080207
It is almost twenty years since contemporary art took a ‘participation turn’. Now, just about every museum or theatre company has a participation or engagement department. It is nothing short of orthodoxy that one of art’s core roles is to reach out to audiences beyond art institutions – and paradoxically it is often art institutions that mandate this function. How can we reconcile the somewhat forgotten history – and ongoing practice – of the community arts with the recent rise of participatory art, social practice, or outreach and engagement?
François Matarasso speaks to Pierre d’Alancaisez about his long-term engagement in community art practice, the meanings of participation and cultural democracy, and his proposals for thinking about cultural and artistic participation as a fundamental human right. We talk about the history of the community arts movement in the UK, his influential 1997 paper Use or Ornament, ways of supporting cultural democracy through projects like Fun Palaces, and reaching peak culture.
François Matarasso is a community artist, writer, and researcher, and one of the co-creators of the 2020 Rome Charter.
*************
Find many more interviews, projects, and my writing at https://petitpoi.net/
You can sign up for my newsletter at https://petitpoi.net/newsletter/
Support my work: https://petitpoi.net/support/
Previous Episode
Jennifer Ponce de León: Another Aesthetics Is Possible
Another Aesthetics Is Possible
Arts of Rebellion in the Fourth World War
Jennifer Ponce de León
Published by Duke University Press, 2021
ISBN 9781478011255
In Another Aesthetics Is Possible Jennifer Ponce de León examines the roles that art can play in the collective labour of creating and defending another social reality. Focusing on artists and art collectives in Argentina, Mexico, and the United States, Ponce de León shows how experimental practices in the visual, literary, and performing arts have been influenced by and articulated with leftist movements and popular uprisings that have repudiated neoliberal capitalism and its violence. Whether enacting solidarity with Zapatista communities through an alternate reality game or using surrealist street theatre to amplify the more radical strands of Argentina’s human rights movement, these artists fuse their praxis with forms of political mobilization from direct-action tactics to economic resistance. Advancing an innovative transnational and transdisciplinary framework of analysis, Ponce de León proposes a materialist understanding of art and politics that brings to the fore the power of aesthetics to both compose and make visible a world beyond capitalism.
Jennifer Ponce de León speaks with Pierre d’Alancaisez about the counter colonial practice of the artist Fran Ilich, the activist performances of Grupo de Arte Callejero, Etcétera, and International Errorista rooted in the political histories of Latin America as a site of resistance in which the boundaries between art and politics blur.
Jennifer Ponce de León is an assistant professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania and an interdisciplinary scholar whose research focuses on cultural production and antisystemic movements in the Americas since the 1960s.
*************
Find many more interviews, projects, and my writing at https://petitpoi.net/
You can sign up for my newsletter at https://petitpoi.net/newsletter/
Support my work: https://petitpoi.net/support/
Next Episode
Gemma Commane: Bad Girls, Dirty Bodies
Bad Girls, Dirty Bodies
Sex, Performance and Safe Femininity
Gemma Commane
Published by Bloomsbury, 2021
ISBN 9781788311267
What makes a woman ‘bad’ is commonly linked to certain ‘qualities’ or behaviours seen as morally or socially corrosive, dirty and disgusting. Bad Girls, Dirty Bodies explores the social, sexual and political significance of women who are labelled bad or dirty. Through case studies (including Empress Stah, RubberDoll or Doris La Trine), the book challenges the notion that sexual, slutty, bad, or dirty women are not worth listening to. Gemma Commane speaks to Pierre d’Alancaisez about her study of neo-burlesque, queer performances, and explicit entertainment as sites of power, possibility, and success.
Gemma Commane is Lecturer in Media and Communications at the Birmingham School of Media, Birmingham City University. She is active in research in the fields of media and cultural studies, and gender and sexuality.
*************
Find many more interviews, projects, and my writing at https://petitpoi.net/
You can sign up for my newsletter at https://petitpoi.net/newsletter/
Support my work: https://petitpoi.net/support/
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