Participation in Art and Architecture (Hardback)  | Released: 16 Oct 2015

If participation has been an ideal in politics since ancient democracy, in art it became central only with the avant-gardes emerging from WWI and the Russian Revolution. Politics and aesthetics are still catching up with each other. In the 21st Century, since the revolutionary unrest of the 1960s, participation in art and architecture has lost its utopian glow and become the focus of a fierce debate: does 'participatory' art and architecture shape social reality, or is it shaped by it? Contemporary critics see in participation only technocratic control, while others embrace it as a viable politics in an era of global capitalism. This volume breaks the impasse by looking at how participants themselves exert power, rather than being victimized or liberated from it. From artists hijacking Google Earth to protesters setting up a museum of the revolution in Cairo, art, architecture, and daily life are explored in their participatory dimension.About the Author: Martino Stierli is Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. He was previously SNSF Professor for the History of Architecture and Art at the Art History Institute, University of Zurich. Mechtild Widrich is Professor of Art History at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She was previously Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer at the Department for the History and Theory of Architecture at ETH Zurich.