The Participator in Contemporary Art

The early 21st century has seen contemporary art make continued use of audience participation, in which the spectator becomes part of the artwork itself. In this book, Kaija Kaitavuori claims that the `participator’ is a new artistic role that does not fall under the auspices of artist or spectator and in proving such she devises a four-group typology of involvement. Her classification distinguishes between different forms of engagement and identifies their specific features. The key criteria she proposes are how concepts of authorship and ownership shift in relation to collectively created work, how contracts regulating the use and production of shared work are arranged and the extent to which involvement in making art can be regarded as democratic. This highly original book thus offers students and teachers the tools with which to improve their understanding of participatory art and removes the confusing terminology that has characterized so many other discussions.

Author Biography

Kaija Kaitavuori is a Visiting Lecturer at the Aalto University in Helsinki. She was previously a Visiting Lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London between 2012 and 2015. Her doctoral research was supervised by Julian Stallabrass (Courtauld) and Natalie Heinich (CNRS, Paris). She has also held senior roles at the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki and the Finnish National Gallery.