Participatory art and the impossible public

Arts discourse abounds with references and concessions to the public – that disorderedly mass of individuals who may stumble across the threshold of the public museum. Likewise, the public is invoked in conjunction with public engagement with art, or with public galleries, public funding, public art and so on. In spite of the institutional and critical focus on art’s public dimensions intensifying since the 1990s (from Suzanne Lacy’s ‘new genre public art’ to Nicolas Bourriaud’s ‘relational aesthetics’, Grant Kester’s writings on ‘dialogical art’ and Claire Bishop’s on participation) it seems an oversight that the relationship between art and the public as such has not been considered in any significant critical depth. At the same time, much of this critical discourse has appeared within a politico-economic climate of neo-liberal capitalism, which has devastatingly (re)fashioned the public in its own image. This article argues that it is precisely this potential dimension of the public that a number of contemporary artists are testing or seeking to redeem. It contends that the public’s definitive excess, the impossibility of pinning it down, is also its potent political and democratic potential. I focus on participatory works by the former collaborative duo Komar and Melamid, and by Stuart Ringholt, arguing that each work contributes to unique understandings of the public with respect to contemporary art.