Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship

This searing critique of participatory art—from its development to its political ambitions—is “an essential title for contemporary art history scholars and students as well as anyone who has . . . thought, ‘Now that’s art!’ or ‘That’s art?’” (Library Journal)

Since the 1990s, critics and curators have broadly accepted the notion that participatory art is the ultimate political art: that by encouraging an audience to take part an artist can promote new emancipatory social relations. Around ...