The text by Dave Beech, 'Art and Participation' is short and sweet and is actually a blog post concerning the the panel discussion 'The Ethics of Collaboration...' at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD), Dublin on 11 March 2011 which raises questions on authorship. It does not necessarily discuss self-organisation but the idea of participation in art especially in relation to the work of Artur Żmijewski. Discussing how the value of participation is never challenged and how 'People in the artworld seem to have subscribed wholesale to the idea that participation or collaboration is an athletic sport in which artists must compete for their form of participation to be deeper, stronger, faster, longer and purer.' That 'In the vibrant public sphere we crave, we would not hope for fewer authors, but for more.' Of particular interest to me is the final sentence 'Participation is the solution for the ethically oriented, but for the politically oriented, it is the universalisation of authorship that holds more promise.' Therefore to create the possibility for self-organisation do we need to consider what exactly we mean by participaton and understand authorship as possible for everyone. I would like to ask can authorship in this context be seen as a replacement for self-organisation and would the possibility of the universalisation of the author create a space for self-organisation and action?
More information and a full audio of the seminar can be found herehttp://www.firestation.ie/projects/project/two-monuments/
More information and a full audio of the seminar can be found herehttp://www.firestation.ie/projects/project/two-monuments/