Abstract

Keywords: Participatory art, social networking service, social media, Web 2.0, Candlelight Protest, participation, authorship, spectatorship, patronship

Among the various labels for art’s social engagement that have diversified since the 1990s, “participatory art,” as first coined by Claire Bishop, theorizes and emphasizes its “participatory” rather than political characteristics. In the recent “nonviolent” tendencies of political protests around the globe, this “artistic” collaboration of citizens has been facilitated by social media, lowering the threshold for participation. This study aims to investigate this new emergent genre of art, namely “participatory art utilizing social media,” through a case study of Flower Wall Project conducted in South Korea’s 2017 “Candlelight Protest.” Rather than assessments based on political achievement or technological determinism, this paper seeks to lay the groundwork for establishing sophisticated evaluation criteria with a balanced perspective between esthetics, politics, and technology.s.

• Gyung Jin Shin is artist, researcher, and PhD candidate of the School of Creative Media in City University of Hong Kong. She received an MFA from Columbia University in 2010 and a BFA from Seoul National University. Her art work has been exhibited and screened in the US, Europe, and Asia. Her research interest includes art’s social engagement (socially engaged art, participatory art, politics and aesthetics, etc.), post-media discourse, postdigital/post-internet art, new materialism, media archaeology, and Critical Theory.

Full text (PDF) p. 611-615