Table Of ContentCultures of Participation
This book examines cultural participation from three different but interrelated
perspectives: participatory art and aesthetics, participatory digital media and
participatory cultural policies and institutions.
Focussing on how ideals and practices relating to cultural participation express
and (re)produce different “cultures of participation”, an interdisciplinary team
of authors demonstrate how the areas of the arts, digital media and cultural policy
and institutions are shaped by different but interrelated contextual backgrounds.
Chapters offer a variety of perspectives and strategies for empirically identifying
“cultures of participation” and their current transformations and tensions in
various regional and national settings.
This book will be of interest to academics and cultural leaders in the areas
of museum studies, media and communications, arts, arts education, cultural
studies, curatorial studies and digital studies. It will also be relevant for cultural
workers, artists and policy makers interested in the participatory agenda in art,
digital media and cultural institutions.
Birgit Eriksson is Professor of cultural theory and analysis at the School of
Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Denmark. Her current research
focuses on participatory arts and culture, art and social communities, aesthetics
and politics. She is the author or editor of eight books. Recent journal articles
include “Forms and potential effects of citizen participation in European cultural
centres” (co-au, 2018) and “Are we really there, and in contact? Staging firsthand
witnesses of contemporary Danish warfare” (2017).
Carsten Stage is Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Culture,
Aarhus University, Denmark. His current research focuses on patient participation,
affect and social media. Recent publications include the monographs T he Language
of Illness and Death on Social Media (Emerald, 2018, co-au), Networked Cancer
(Palgrave, 2017) and G lobal Media, Biopolitics and Affect (Routledge, 2015,
co-au) and the edited collection A ffective Methodologies (Palgrave, 2015, co-ed).
Bjarki Valtysson is Associate Professor at the Department of Arts and Cultural
Studies, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His current research is focussed on
cultural participation, digital cultural policy and algorithmic platform societies.
He is the author or editor of several books and articles. Recent publications
include M edia and the Mundane: Communication Across Media in Everyday
Life (Nordicom 2016, co-ed), T echnologies of Labour and the Politics of
Contradiction (Palgrave 2018, co-ed) and Digital Cultural Policy: From Politics to
Practice (Palgrave, 2020).
Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies
Ethnic Media in the Digital Age
Edited by Sherry S. Yu and Matthew D. Matsaganis
Narratives of Place in Literature and Film
Edited by Steven Allen and Kirsten Møllegaard
Unplugging Popular Culture
Reconsidering Materiality, Analog Technology, and the Digital Native
K. Shannon Howard
Advertising in MENA Goes Digital
Ilhem Allagui
Gambling in Everyday Life
Spaces, Moments and Products of Enjoyment
Fiona Nicoll
Inhuman Materiality in Gothic Media
Aspasia Stephanou
Millennials and Media Ecology
Culture, Pedagogy and Politics
Edited by Anthony Cristiano and Ahmet Atay
Media Cultures in Latin America
Key Concepts and New Debates
Edited by Anna Cristina Pertierra and Juan Francisco Salazar
Cultures of Participation
Arts, Digital Media and Cultural Institutions
Edited by Birgit Eriksson, Carsten Stage and Bjarki Valtysson
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Research-in-Cultural-and-Media-Studies/book-series/SE0304
Cultures of Participation
Arts, Digital Media and Cultural
Institutions
Edited by Birgit Eriksson,
Carsten Stage and Bjarki Valtysson
First published 2020
by Routledge
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© 2020 selection and editorial matter, Birgit Eriksson, Carsten Stage
and Bjarki Valtysson; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Birgit Eriksson, Carsten Stage and Bjarki Valtysson to be
identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors
for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019945321
ISBN: 978-0-367-21838-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-26645-4 (ebk)
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Contents
List of figures vii
List of contributors viii
1 Introduction: Cultures of participation 1
BIRGIT ERIKSSON, CARSTEN STAGE AND BJARKI VALTYSSON
PART I
Participatory art and aesthetics 11
2 Performance, public (re)assembly and civic reenactment 13
SHANNON JACKSON
3 Autonomy and collectivity at the Echigo-Tsumari Art
Triennale in Japan 30
GUNHILD BORGGREEN AND ANEMONE PLATZ
4 Cross-cultural collaboration: Modes of participation
for co-creation of the urban public space 51
MINNA VALJAKKA
5 Art and local communities: Inclusion, interests
and ownership in participatory art projects with
embroiderers and billiard players 71
BIRGIT ERIKSSON
PART II
Digital media and technology 91
6 VR – the culture of (non)participation? Reframing
the participative edge of virtual reality 93
ANNA NACHER
vi Contents
7 Photo-sharing as participatory surveillance 110
CLARE SOUTHERTON, MAJA SONNE DAMKJÆR AND ANDERS
ALBRECHTSLUND
8 Medialities of participation in sound art 129
VADIM KEYLIN
9 The participatory patient: Exploring the platformed
multivalence and public value of cancer storytelling
on social media 147
CARSTEN STAGE
PART III
Cultural policy and institutions 165
10 The “problem” of participation in cultural policy 167
LEILA JANCOVICH AND DAVID STEVENSON
11 Public participation and agency in art museums 185
EMILIE SITZIA
12 Re-ordering and re-performing: Re-placing cultural
participation and re-viewing wellbeing measures 201
SUSAN OMAN
13 Diving into the archive: Google Cultural Institute
and the cultural politics of participation 220
BJARKI VALTYSSON
Index 236
Figures
2.1 Sproul Plaza, UC Berkeley (2017) 16
2.2 Aaron Landsman, City Council Meeting, NYC, 2013 24
2.3 Paul Ramírez Jonas, Public Trust (2010) 26
3.1 Emma Malig, A tlas Lamenti , 2018 39
3.2 Kōryū Shrine, Chūjō village, Niigata Prefecture,
August 2018 40
3.3 Former ski house in Sekiasa village, Niigata Prefecture,
August 2018 43
3.4 View of Kōichi Sakai, T he Green Room Project 2018 ,
August 2018 44
4.1 Forms of participatory agency in the MG Festival
in Jakarta 59
4.2 The varying interrelatedness of three main variables
of participation and collaboration enacted through
an artwork or an intervention 61
4.3 One form of participation enacted through
an artwork 62
4.4 Unplanned forms of participation by residents 63
12.1 A recreation of question 1, from the four questions
in the Office for National Statistics’ Measuring National
Wellbeing Debate questionnaire 207
12.2 A re-ordering of priorities in the Measuring National
Wellbeing Debate Questionnaires 208
Contributors
Anders Albrechtslund is Associate Professor in Information Studies and
Director of Center for Surveillance Studies, Aarhus University.
Gunhild Borggreen is Associate Professor at the Department of Arts and
Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen.
Maja Sonne Damkjaer is Assistant Professor in Media Studies at the
School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University.
Birgit Eriksson is Professor of cultural theory and analysis, School of
Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, [email protected]
Shannon Jackson is Associate Vice Chancellor for the Arts and Design at
UC Berkeley, where she is also the Cyrus and Michelle Hadidi Profes-
sor of rhetoric and of theater, dance and performance studies.
Leila Jancovich, Associate Professor in cultural policy and participation,
University of Leeds.
Vadim Keylin is PhD Fellow at the School of Communication and Cul-
ture, Aarhus University.
Anna Nacher is Associate Professor at Institute of Audiovisual Arts,
Department of Management and Social Communication, Jagiellonian
University.
Susan Oman is an AHRC creative economy engagement fellow looking
at data, diversity and inequality in the Sheffield Methods Institute,
University of Sheffield. She was recently awarded an honorary fellow-
ship to the Institute of Cultural Practices at University of Manchester.
Anemone Platz is Associate Professor in Japan studies at the Department
of Global Studies, Aarhus University.
Emilie Sitzia holds a special chair at the University of Amsterdam and is
an associate professor of cultural education in the Department of Art
and Literature at the University of Maastricht. She is the director of
the Master of Arts and Heritage programme at UM.
Contributors ix
Clare Southerton is Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Vitalities Lab,
Social Policy Research Centre and Centre for Social Research in
Health, UNSW Sydney.
Carsten Stage ([email protected]) is Associate Professor in the School of
Communication and Culture, Aarhus University, Denmark.
David Stevenson , Head of Media, Communication and Performing Arts,
Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh.
Minna Valjakka is Senior Research Fellow at the Asia Research Institute,
National University of Singapore.
Bjarki Valtysson is Associate Professor at the Department of Arts and
Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen.
