On participation and dialogue

What makes you involved? When don't you want to be involved? What factors are the most important to create meetings between people?

Under this headline we would llike to discuss different aspects of the concept of participation. Closely connected to this are the concepts of interaction, dialogue and relational aesthetics. Here are some spontanious and diverse thoughts that might start up the discussion.

Just as art institutions (should?) move towards becoming more of toolboxes or empty spaces, facilitators of possibilities, which invites artists to produce projects, many art projects move from creating "pieces" or "works" to creating situations with the possibilities to make room for other peoples creation, and hopefully: different kinds of personal and social relations.

Participation, in combination with a sort of "professional DIY attitude" is of course very appealing in terms of promoting participatory democracy and active engagement. These modes of production also clearly shifts the focus from what art is to what is does, what it produces and how it is produced. Is it possible to produce engagement, inspiation and empowerment or simply to inspire by being engaged? I think most people would agree to that life feels more alive when you are involved. (Which is a lot different from feeling involved, a formulation that we often hear in politics as well as art) To be involved usually includes potential infuence, which leads directly to the ideas of interaction. But is it really necessary to be involved in order to engage, act or enjoy? Is the goal always to be active? What does it mean to be active? How do we value the activity of listening? How do we know what kind of activity operates in the direction we want? What does it mean to be present?

Surely the art world has in many ways created a quite separate and closed sphere in society, and of course this needs to be transgressed (both in terms of content, but most of all in the formats of artistic proposals and on an organizational level). As I see it, the foundation of participation in arts - as well as the efforts in various collective and self-organized modes of production - is part of the constant effort to question, blur or get rid of hierarchy. What factors (i.e the relasionship artist-spectator) are "supervising" the conventional hierarchical contracts, and what factors offer space for a genuine meeting or encounter? However, it is very important to always problematize these "hot concepts" as they have a tendency - most of all when it comes to involving or interacting with an art audience - to be precisely the opposite of the ambition: manipulative and authoritarian.

In möte09 we want to focus on the concept of meeting, which has exciting potential for several different types of exchange and engagement. This means that we can also choose to investigate traditional contexts in order to see what kind of meeting happens there, as well as going into the more radical expressions of participatory culture. What are your views on participation - potentials and problems?