I explore what models of social relation and community these practices can produce, while I remain wary of models that either fetishize a myth of a unified singularity and thereby obliterate difference, or propose an unresolved multitude. I seek models of community that recognize people’s social interdependence without assimilating their

‘relational aesthetics’

The question of the significance of participation, though vital to much contemporary work, is one that should be treated with some suspicion. The mere involvement of the actions of audience members is not enough to assume a vital or direct relationship to the work of art …. How the exchange of participation takes place must be carefully framed, so

these artworks ‘construct models of sociability suitable for producing human relations, the same way an architecture literally “produces” the itineraries of those presiding in it’ (p. 70).

– social engagement and equality of opportunity – are, for me, two of its most precious possibilities.

art theorist Claire Bishop has called ‘the social turn’ in contemporary art (Bishop, 2006b).

These subsequent chapters often look at a greater range of art and performance beyond the participatory forms outlined above and in Chapter 1, because they ask how participation in culture is more broadly and fundamentally affected not just by artistic practices but also by policy-making, spatial organization and arts funding.

In the context of such a bonfire of social welfare’s principles and structures, what could any arts possibly do to quench the flames or, indeed, to prevent themselves inadvertently adding fuel to the fire?

‘thus creates, within its method of production and then at the moment of its exhibition, a momentary grouping of participating viewers’ (p. 58).