coworking resident

“Ideological victory can look just like ideological defeat. When one’s enemy accepts one’s terms, one’s point of critique and resistance is lost, subsumed. The dimension of antagonism (fundamental opposition) vanishes.” – Jodi Dean
Today everyone sings the praises of participation: leading academics hail active audiences who remix commercial culture, established curators wax poetic about relational aesthetics, web 2.0 executives and marketing experts applaud openness and connectivity, conservative economists have discovered the benefits of collaboration. Interactivity, access, engagement are the highest ideals of the new order, ideals taken by many to be synonymous with democracy. Participation is perceived as politics, and vice versa.
Not An Alternative’s installation at the Tate Modern’s No Soul for Sale show was inspired by artist Rikrit Taravanija’s influential work “Tomorrow is Another Day,” a piece that welcomed people into a gallery remodeled as an apartment, where they were met with free food, interesting conversation, even a bed to rest on. As critic Claire Bishop points out, the tradition of socially engaged art that Taravanija is part of assumes that “the creative energy of participatory practices rehumanizes – or at least de-alienates – a society rendered numb and fragmented by the instrumentality of capitalism.” The problem, as Jerry Saltz complacently observed, is that many of the people who accepted Taravanija’s invitation were art world denizens – dealers, curators, creators, and wannabes – who already felt entitled to access the space.