New publication: Participatory Practices in Art and Cultural Heritage: Learning Through and from Collaboration

A new edited volume has been published! In the series ‘Studies in Art, Heritage, Law and the Market’, this volume edited by Christoph Rausch, Ruth Benschop, Emilie Sitzia and Vivian van Saaze, analyses participatory practices in art and cultural heritage in order to determine what can be learned through and from collaboration across disciplinary borders. This book offers a space for critically reflecting on participatory practices with the aim of asking and answering the question: How can we learn to better participate? To do so, it focuses on the emergence of new norms and forms of collaboration as participation, and on actual lessons learned from participatory practices.

Apart from Ruth being a co-editor and co-author of the introduction, the book contains contributions by other (former) members of the research centre.

Imogen Eve, Peter Peters, and Ties van de Werff write about one of the experiments of the Artful Participation project (MCICM), and probe into the politics of co-creative engagement in the field of classical music.

Inge Römgens and Ruth Benschop present a specific case to explore the normative work that goes into participatory artistic practices. In their chapter, they show how by starting from a position of not-knowing, both artistic research
practices as well as analyses of those practices can make room for the examination of preexisting tacit norms and the development of more generous ways of working and attending to such work.

Flora Lysen and Antye Guenther explore the ethics of participatory practices of artistic research, too. Their contribution, a fictional lecture performance, is at once a creative and rich example of artistic research in and of itself, as well as a critical
examination of the lecture format (or the format of a book chapter in this volume) and the values of collaboration. Lysen’s and Guenther’s text engages with different genres of performing positioned between the arts and academia (performative lectures, lecture performances, lectures, demonstrations, presentations).

Veerle Spronck examines the norms and forms of orchestral practices to see how the artistic quality we traditionally associate with classical music takes shape in and through the heterogeneous practical work an orchestra does. She analyses the work of the innovative Dutch orchestra Pynarello and shows how they do not incorporate participatory elements into their routines. Rather, they attend in new and normative ways to their own routines and thus create a consciously reflexive practice in which both musicians and listeners might find different roles.

Apart from these AOK-contributions, there are many more chapters to explore! For a complete description or for ordering a copy, please visit the Springer website.