The principle of participation in art has become established over the last half-century or so. To include the audience in the production of works, or at least to make them receptive to the active process by which a work is ultimately finished, has been attempted many times since the 1960s. All the differences in works by Yoko Ono, Allan Kaprow and Franz Erhard Walther, who are among the pioneers in participative art, are linked by the aspiration to make the participation of the audience an emancipatory act. It is a matter of overcoming the hierarchy between artist and recipient, yes, a matter of empowering those who, intimidated and submissive to authority, have so far merely let art have its effect on them. At best, participation follows the maxim ‘learning by doing’ - the practising of patterns of behaviour. The individual creative activity works to sensitize the audience’s awareness and change their way of thinking: only insofar as an attitude of dependence can be overcome can freedom become real.
However, that ‘first fine careless rapture’ which in the beginning reliably accompanied participative projects has given way to something of a hangover. One had repeatedly to ascertain whether the audience wanted to be as active and emancipated as the artist presumed they would. On the contrary, some critics regard calling it participation as mere window dressing, because, when examined more closely, only new forms of hierarchy and exclusion have arisen.
Probably, the most acute reckoning with participative art was made by the architect and writer Markus Miessen, who, between 2001 and 2016 wrote the ‘Participation tetralogy’. Four entire books that deal critically with the concept and application of participative strategies. As his point of departure, Miessen takes the stand that we “are at the beginning of an era of participation” and “the call for participation in all decision-making processes” is becoming ever louder – and in many areas, not only in that of art, participation is propagated from protest movements to party or online platforms. At the same time, he states that participation, critically dubbed by him as a “doctrine of salvation”, is a “term in need of repair”. It is neither a moral value in itself nor does it necessarily deliver a winning strategy. Rather, it is often inefficient and, at worst, actually leads to disaster because the various parties involved reciprocally disable each other. Instead of succumbing to the illusion that all participants are in harmony with each other merely because they are undertaking a communal project, one should preferably develop a “conflict-oriented understanding of participation”. This should not be a “paternalistically approved opening-up of the decision-making process”, that is, a patronizing and hierarchical practice, but must allow everyone “individual access to existing balances of power.”
If, in this critique, a too romantically naïve understanding of participation is replaced by a concept that is too martial, it is still plausible when we take a look at numerous projects currently underway: For example, the National Monument to Freedom and Unity which is to be located in Berlin adjacent to the reconstructed City Palace Berlin. The winning design is by the Stuttgart event agency Milla & Partner and titled ‘Citizens in Motion’. A large dish is mounted in such a way that it rocks in one direction or another depending on the number of visitors walking upon it and how they are distributed.
The fact that one can read on the agency’s website that the monument “invites participation” has once again a patronizing air; and that it is supposed to be “an image of living democracy” gives it a downright frivolous effect as this appears to be something approved of from above – approval which can be withdrawn again just as easily.
In her Kugelschwarm (Flock, or swarm, of spheres) project, Gabriele Obermaier avoids such an insincere and trivialized approach to participation. Rather, she successfully deploys an altogether convincing and intelligent variant. The idea of having 111 pupils of different grades from the Munich Wilhelms Gymnasium each shape a sphere (and then to cast these in bronze) unfolds over several steps to become a subtly effective event. As simple as the task may be and as little scope as there appears to be for its implementation, there is plenty of food for thought when observing the different finished versions. On the one hand, it is apparent that inherent in striving for an ideal form is the fact that one cannot reach it. Not one of the spheres is truly round, but one can see that each one is following this ideal: this and the deviation from it are present in equal measure.
On the other hand, in the difference between both, it becomes clear that non-achievement of the ideal does not mean failure. On the contrary, each sphere becomes more interesting by missing the a priori familiar ideal. This is not only dependent on the age of the person shaping the sphere but also on their experience, temperament and sculptural interest. If one can see in some examples the effort to make an ideal a sphere as possible, with others one senses the pleasure in an expressive, perhaps almost slightly subversive gesture; yes, curiosity as to what could still be accepted as a sphere while at the same time being a free and individual sculpture.
Only because all pupils were given the same task and only because this was a single and simple instruction are the differences between the individual spheres so easy to compare with one another and are therefore all the more significant. Here, participation does not mean that the individual is lost in some larger scheme and must identify with all the others. On the contrary, there is space for self-will and self-assertion. Gabriele Obermaier neither patronizes the pupils nor does she instrumentalize them for her own project but creates a framework within which everyone is encouraged to use to the full the freedom bestowed upon them. Consequently, very much in keeping with the sense of the original idea, participation helps towards increased emancipatory energies.
At the same time, however, she creates more than a space for personal fulfilment. The pupils, at the very latest when the project was finished, experienced themselves as a community – as part of a ‘flock’ or ‘swarm’. Their spheres are distributed around the school building which confers a feeling of pride in having, individually, contributed to something greater. Gabriele Obermaier has placed the spheres in such a way that they show to advantage as single pieces as well as being elements of an overall concept.
Each has its own place: some stand alone, some in striking juxtaposition with other spheres, but always every single one is clearly different from all the others – while still part of the design involving the entire school building.
Ultimately, this book contributes to making this project visible and documenting it as well as honouring each individual contribution to the collection of spheres. As the participating pupils’ names and the location of their contributions are recorded, Gabriele Obermaier once again sets her project apart from many other participative projects in which the members remain an anonymous mass or are even reduced to test subjects who, at worst, can be derided. In Kugelschwarm, however, participation means the recognition of each individual. Here, traditional hierarchies have actually been successfully dissolved and a model presented showing what it means to be equal and individual, even while being part of something superordinate.
Wolfgang Ullrich