Prof. Claire Bishop, an art historian at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, gave a talk, “Participatory Art: Collaboration and its Discontents,” at TNUA in January.

Prof. Bishop is a regular contributor to various art journals, such as Artforum, October, Tate Etc, and IDEA.

Her article, “The Social Turn: Collaboration and Its Discontents,” appeared in the February 2006 issue of “Artforum.”

She pointed out that participatory art has been given the mission to reform the “fragmented” society, but the emphasis on its emancipatory functions has ignored and sacrificed the aesthetic side.

Her talk at TNUA was mostly based on her “Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and Politics of Spectatorship,” which was published in 2012, to explain her views and to share observations on the contemporary scene of art.

Prof. Bishop noted that she has been studying such issues since 2000.
She illustrated her points with the works by Dutch artist Jeanne van Heeswijk and the artists group Superflex.

For example, she said, an abandoned shop was turned into an art gallery, or images of old and sick people were disseminated on the Internet.

She said such works have strong political purposes, but the presentations are too simplistic.

Prof. Bishop said that her research has shown that little has been written on such topics, and critical assessments are rare.