For over a decade, conceptual and performance art has been dominated by participatory art. Its champions, such as French curator Nicolas Bourriaud (who invented the term "relational aesthetics" to describe it) and American art historian Grant Kester, believe that by encouraging an audience to join in, the artist can promote new emancipatory social relations. Artificial Hells is the first historical and theoretical overview of socially engaged participatory art. The book follows the trajectory of twentieth-century art and examines key moments in the development of the participatory aesthetic, in both Europe and America. This itinerary takes in Futurism, Dada, Situationism, Czechoslovakian Happenings, and Argentinean Conceptualism, and concludes with contemporary artists such as Thomas Hirschhorn, Tania Bruguera and Jeremy Deller. Since her controversial essay in Artforum in 2006, Claire Bishop has been one of the few to expose the political and aesthetic limitations of this work. In Artificial Hells she not only scrutinizes the claims for democracy and emancipation that the artists and critics make for the work, but also questions the turn to ethical (rather than artistic) criteria invited by such participatory and collaborative art.

作者簡介

克萊兒．畢莎普　Claire Bishop

紐約市立大學藝術史研究所博士班副教授。著有《裝置藝術》（Installation Art: A Critical History），是《參與》（Participation）雜誌主編。2008年，她共同策劃在倫敦當代藝術中心舉辦的「Double Agent」展，她也持續在Artforum、October、e-flux等雜誌發表論文。

譯者簡介

林宏濤

台灣大學哲學碩士，德國弗來堡大學博士研究。譯作有：《等待哥倫布》、《文明的哲學》、《我的名字叫耶穌》、《神子》、《與改變對話》、《上帝的語言》、《鈴木大拙禪學入門》、《菁英的反叛》、《神話學辭典》、《啟蒙的辯證》、《眾生的導師：佛陀》、《人的形象與神的形象》、《神在人間》、《隱藏之泉》、《法學導論》、《美學理論》、《愛在流行》、《南十字星風箏線》、《體會死亡》、《詮釋之衝突》、《藝術想怎樣？》等書。