The Institution between Precarization and Participation

Abstract

The position of the art institution today is reflected through the perspective of the relation between two notions, precarisation and participation, which are simultaneously discussed in the contemporary performance and visual art in the recent years. Art institutions are involved in the normalisation of precarity and in many cases became an example for the new modes of working and production of sociality. They are deeply embedded in the constant exposure of vulnerability as a main social capital: not only that many of them are working with a very badly paid or voluntary working force, but they also work under extremely vulnerable and unstable conditions, which demands the constant implication of measures of protection. To protect their own vulnerability they have to continuously reach out, develop themselves as social places, as the unique place of precarious experience, and therefore invent new forms for the exposure of sociality, give the form to this glittering force of human productivity. The link between precarisation of artistic experience and governmental precarisation, which finds today its most visible form in the rise of participatory events and exhibition of sociality. We are more and more surrounded with ´responsiblé institutions, which could be only exposed as social places because of the meticulous normative procedures, excellent logistical skill and top-off curatorial management.