The findings presented in this article present a portion of my thesis, "Cosplay: Community, hierarchy, and the Acafan methodology" (Skentelbery, 2023), completed at Keele University on March 15, 2023.My research, influenced by the work of Bainbridge and Norris (2009, 2013), Gn (2011) and King (2013King ( , 2016)), began optimistically.Initial data collected suggested that cosplay subcultures regularly create storms and disrupt the gendered norms of modern Western society by creating transformative spaces at fan conventions.My research, however, revealed that something much more complicated was occurring.My research findings, which combined auto-ethnographic participation and interviews, drew on a broad swathe of traditional audience scholarship, and post-feminist criticism.These data sets and theoretical frameworks suggested that there were in fact complexities and contradictions that exist within cosplay communities, and that cosplayer also replicated gendered and sexual norms.In this article, cosplays of DC Comics' iconic cat burglar Catwoman are the focal case study.Through the case study, in relation to Catwoman's long history across comics, film, and games, I examine how cosplayers not only create storms, but also replicate norms and gender power imbalances. 1: COSPLAY AND GENDERED PERFORMANCE'Gendered norms, ' in its simplest terms, refers to the ways in which men and women (in the dominant gender binary) are expected to present and behave on a day-to-day basis.Cosplay scholars have suggested that cosplayers, through their elaborate dress and performances, can threaten day-to-
AB: Thank you so much for agreeing to have this conversation with me, Leila.The first thing I'd like to discuss with you is around the norms of participation -what we might consider the implicit rules of participation in the context of culture.LJ: There are so many different meanings of participation, in so many different contexts, that it's quite hard to say whose norms or rules we are talking about.In my research I have argued that the word risks becoming meaningless because of its ubiquitous use (Jancovich, 2015).But in terms of political science theories, which is what I draw from, participation is about having the power to influence change (Bevir and Rhodes 2010).So participation should be about breaking norms, not reinforcing them.But of course that's not the definition that's commonly used in the cultural sector, where "participation" often means "taking part" in something that's being created for you, rather than shaping it (DCMS 2023).So in the cultural sector it is often about "fitting in" to social norms.This of course varies across the sector: cultural participation can also be about, as Nora Sternfeld (2013) said, "having the ability to change the rules of the game." So even that question -"What are the norms?" -it depends for whom.For participatory artists, their norm might be to direct the experience and retain authorship, and the participants might be their props, whereas for the socially engaged or community artist, the norm might be about the participants having agency and some control over the content itself.But in both cases, the norm is to start with artists, who then reach out to find participants to engage with.What if the new norm was to fund communities to decide what kind of cultural offer they want?AB: I think that this resonates quite a lot with some of the things I have been thinking aboutthat participation in culture is not just about participation in cultural activities, but rather in cultural governance and decisions around culture.To me this sounds like one of the key challenges when we think about participation.Of course, there is a wealth of history of participatory practices in the arts and culture (Matarasso, 2019), but as you were saying, the issue of agency in this context is quite problematic, because in my opinion, without building spaces and capacities for agency, very often we also have issues around the sustainability of participation.LJ: The shift from participation in activity to the shift in decision-making that you have introduced is literally what all my research is about.I have a lecture with that title in my module on participation, because rhetorically, at least, that is the shift that we've seen in cultural policy discourse and in cultural practice, to some extent, internationally over the last twenty years.I started doing research on this topic in
Abstract The paper addresses the political and cultural problem underpinning mainstream narratives on homelessness. The absence of data, in conjunction with the misconceptions associated with homelessness, translate into the criminalization and stigmatization of homelessness, both at the local level and in fragmented policies at national and international levels. Section one presents an overview of homelessness as a cultural and political problem; section two then introduces the Italian situation and Bologna as a case study. After a presentation of the method followed in section three, sections four and five describe and then discuss two projects initiated by a political collective in the city of Bologna that directly involve homeless people in the deconstruction of imageries and narratives around homelessness. Finally, section six draws conclusions about the need to generate new narratives capable of accounting for the intersectional and complex nature of the phenomenon of homelessness: new narratives capable of restoring to the homeless their articulate human identity.
Abstract Participatory arts can invite stormy and violent forms of participation when they are commissioned for sites where frustration, territorial control and pre-emptive self-defense involve practices of accepted street codes by those living within racialized, febrile territories. Through the case study of Aroma Home, a participatory art gardening project, in Paris’s northern peripheries, I analyze instances of affective, symbolic, performative and territorial violence as non-normative political acts of participation. Examining the underlying contexts and logics that led to these incidents, I argue that the most insidious act of violence in the project was the creation of our invasive, extractive garden on a hitherto unclaimed and unidentified patch of ‘free’ public ground. In creating a new identity for this wasteland and defining its use, we effectively limited, and implicitly prescribed, modes of participation that were culturally alien to those we most wanted to involve.
Abstract Drama facilitation takes place in “social world” spacetimes that are governed by hegemonic norms. These are created by a complex interplay of global historical processes, the specifics of local factors in the present, and the experience of participants. In Merseyside, UK, these processes create intersectional oppression, which, despite a rhetoric of “inclusion,” renders engagement in creative work either uncomfortable or unobtainable for diasporic and working-class communities in the area. These communities also continue to disproportionately experience various forms of violence. Our response is a trauma-informed “conscientization through the body,” using an eclectic mix of emergent methodologies that intentionally co-create emancipatory spacetimes.
Abstract In 2019 artist Layla Khoo created and installed a participatory artwork at Nunnington Hall, a property owned by the National Trust, UK. The artwork, named Change in Attitudes, was a response to the taxidermy collection of hunting trophies displayed on site, all shot and collected by the last owner of the house, Colonel Ronald Fife. The work sought to encourage visitors to consider their thoughts on this difficult part of the collection, both in its historical context and in light of current societal norms, by inviting them to participate with the artwork through choice-making. This case study first analyzes the impact of this work on visitor engagement at the site, both in the participation methods intended by the artist and in the unexpected participation methods employed by the visitors as the installation evolved. The questions raised by this case study are then considered, as well as the research currently under way which seeks to answer them.
Abstract The paper examines the possibilities offered by decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) for supporting audience participation in the museum sector . DAOs, a type of digital infrastructure underpinned by blockchains and smart contracts, have been seen as informing a more autonomous, self-managing, transparent, and more efficient online organization, one capable of shaping how users participate and communicate with one another. At the same time significant questions have been raised over how DAO technologies complicate the human issues of democracy and shared authority. This paper explores and evaluates the impact of DAO structures in the context of museum participation, specifically viewing them through the lens of shared authority and democracy. It argues that these technologies are capable of offering evidence-based participation, but that this is contingent on access and trust.
While participation unfolds as an object of study in its own right across a variety of social practices, sectors, and disciplines, its experiential dimensions are underexplored.This is the case both when we understand the concept 'experience' as a demarcated intense and sensuous state/rupture and when we use it to designate the various ways that humans perceive and make sense of the world around them.Since the influential work by Sherry Arnstein (1969) and Carole Pateman (1979), much of the research on participation has dealt with how democratic values or motivations are met (or not met) in participatory initiatives within fields like public services, policy, digital media, and cultural institutions.Here we find categorizations like full/partial or true/fake participation, as well as critiques of participation for being either symbolic, tokenistic, or manipulative -or, as in Nico Carpentier's distinction between access, interaction, and participation, not qualifying as participation at all (2012).Much of the research has developed conceptual frameworks on the different spaces, power imbalances, and framings of citizens in participatory processes (White, 1996;Cornwall, 2008;Kelty et al., 2015), or more practical guidelines on how to facilitate these processes in ways that pay attention to citizens' interests and voices (Simon, 2010(Simon, , 2016;;Blanche, 2014).Alongside these investigations, some studies have focused on the outcomes of participation: the transformation of traditional institutional practices and discourses, and the challenge of established distinctions between professional and citizen, or between expert and lay knowledge (Byrne & Morgan, 2018; Eriksson, Stage & Valtysson, 2020).Processes and outcomes, as well as consensual or dissensual values, are of course also experienced by the people who face, produce, and/or facilitate them.But much research is based on the point of view -and, to whatever extent they are realized, the participatory intentions -of institutions, organizers, experts, and professionals rather than on the perspective of citizen participants.Theories and empirical studies rarely explore the complex interplay between participation and experience.We therefore know little about, for instance, the differences between the experience of participating in a concert audience or crowd and the experience of a shift in power balance and influence -or between the experience of top-down facilitated and bottom-up self-organized participation.We also have limited knowledge of how the experience of participation changes over time, or of how various experiences of participation link to one another.Does repeated experience of participation, for instance, create expert participants?And what are the differences between participatory experiences that take place in museums, political movements, local neighborhoods, or social media publics?This special issue of Conjunctions focuses on these experiential dimensions of participation.A major inspiration here is Christopher Kelty's book, The Participant (2019).Kelty emphasizes that participation requires individuals who are freely choosing to take part in meaningful collectives whose sum is greater than their parts and whose "power is expected to be greater than that of its members" (Kelty, 2019, p. 17).In that respect, participation relies on autonomous individuals, even Open Access.
Abstract This article investigates the collaborative craft-based art project Data Mirror, launched by the Trapholt Museum of Art and Design in Denmark in March 2022 with artist and weaver Astrid Skibsted. Through the lens of affect theory (Massumi, 2002, 2009), the article explores how the textile making practice and the materials in Data Mirror affected the participatory experience. Building on Christopher Kelty’s understanding of participation as strung between individuality and collectivity, the article argues that the experience of participation in Data Mirror is in fact “more than individual,” but not only in the sense defined by Kelty of being “both individual and collective at the same time” (2019, p. 18). Over and above this, the participatory experience is also about connecting with and being moved affectively by materials, tools, and – in the Data Mirror case – artistic dogmas. The aim of the article is both analytical and theoretical. Based on a close analysis of (1) material intensities and embodied experiences of stitching and (2) felt potential and creative capacity, it calls for a more embodied, material, and affective understanding of the horizontal and vertical (Eriksson, 2019; Kelty, 2016) dimensions of participation.
Abstract The crisis of democracy calls upon public art museums to reflect on what is expected from them as public spaces. This article investigates the art museum as an engaged political participant in its local surroundings and the neighborhood assembly as the platform of this participation. Through original interviews with museum professionals, the article examines three examples of museum-based neighborhood assemblies in different geographical contexts: the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Spain), Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende (Chile), and Whitechapel Gallery (UK). Drawing on political theory to analyze the horizontal, discursive, and performative features of these practices, the article examines their democratic potential and limitations. The argument is put forward that the neighborhood assembly functions as a practice of participatory cultural citizenship, whereby the art museum can enter a space of co-authorship of the local cultural environment with the local constituents and can be a participant among many.
Abstract The article takes its point of departure in an experiment conducted at Randers Art Museum, Denmark, in which museum visitors were asked to comment on their experiences with artworks from the museum’s collection. Their comments that were subsequently shared by the museum in the exhibition space. By examining dialogue as a form of participation, the author analyses and discusses how this particular participatory experiment created a dialogical and polyphonic museum experience in which the institutional voice was complemented and even challenged. The article contributes to the field of research on participation by connecting theoretical and practical levels through an experimental methodological approach. It presents concrete recommendations for enhancing visitor-oriented and dialogical strategies in museum communication. Moreover, it demonstrates that the experimental approach can be very useful for both researchers and museum professionals, as long as they reflect on both the limitations and the possibilities of specific experiments like this one.
Abstract This article critically reflects on the limitations and challenges of using Cards on the Table (COTT), a participatory research method used to evaluate experiences of participation in art projects. The focus of this article is on the application of COTT as part of our evaluation of BE PART, a four-year Creative Europe Program of the European Union that ran from 2019 to 2023. The COTT method is informed by community research and participation action research, but here we highlight the ambiguous and messy nature of researching with such a broad and varied network of communities. We illustrate the tension between our desire to research in a co-productive, community-led, and action-oriented way and the realities of conducting research with a vast network of participants and limited time and budget.
AbstractRecent outbursts of activist interventions in museums have put a spotlight on the difficult relationship of cultural spaces with activism as they aspire to be forums, sites for civil, social, and cultural participation (Black, 2005; Byrne, 2018; Janes & Sandell, 2019; Pegno, 2021). On the one hand, museums want to be engaged and relevant, taking part in social dialogue as “agents of change” (Mouffe, 2016; Sandell, 2003). On the other, they often have complex relationships with the activists themselves, especially in the framework of participatory practices (Coffee, 2008; Lorente, 2015). This article focuses on the process of co-creation of an exhibition about the social history of AIDS at the Museum of Civilizations of Europe and the Mediterranean (the Mucem) in Marseille, France, and explores how this participatory project involving activists can help us better understand the challenges of museum activism. The core question this article addresses is: how did activists experience the co-creation participatory process, and what can the museum learn from it to inform their practice of museum activism?
Abstract Participatory art turns the artwork into a process of engagement and co-creation, and it thus involves forms of time-based coordination that influence the experience of creating participatory art. In this paper I argue that participatory art is underscored by two contrasting temporal frameworks. One is the framework of long-term durational approaches that have been internalized among artists as an ethical and political obligation toward participants; the other is the short-term temporary framework that typically comes with project funding and steers the project toward delivery of target outcomes. To show the tensions to which these contrasting temporal frameworks can give rise, I analyze the development of a participatory art project in Copenhagen’s South Harbor. Specifically, the analysis emphasizes how tensions arose in respect to delimitations of project aspects such as who constitutes the creative team, what is the task before us, and what is our expected contribution to the community. By emphasizing the tensions arising from contrasting temporal frameworks, the article contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the experience of creating participatory art, and to problematizing the question of time for participatory art.
Abstract Based on three autoethnographic cases, this article reflects on activist participation in academic systems. The three authors are activists with different attachments to and experiences of academic knowledge-work. Our experiences as activists in academia help us form the argument that many activist contributions to academic systems remain unacknowledged. We are using these overlooked cases to expand existing participatory and activist/action research that often assumes a preliminary distinction between activists and researchers. Instead, we pose critiques of participation that are neither internal (in the sense criticised by Cooke and Kothari) nor external, but formulated from positions in between as activist-academics. Our critiques of academic participation concern exploitation of student work in academic teaching, lack of acknowledgement of activist knowledge in research processes, and tendencies to dismiss activists as professional disseminators of academic knowledge.
Abstract In this essay, I experiment with Lauren Berlant’s idea of ‘cruel optimism’ to explore how policies specifying responsible conduct of research within academia have effects that extend beyond efforts at establishing an untarnished university. Based on a feminist ethics of care, alongside experiences from teaching PhD students about research integrity and ethics, I unpack how culpability, vigilance and powerlessness surface. In this essay I then speculate: what would it entail to care? I suggest that there is a need to consider research ethics as an ethics that cares both for and about the university as a habitat1.
Abstract In A Passion for Radio: Training of Trainers José Ignacio López Vigil asserts that community radio “is (made) of flesh and bone” (2015, p. 25). In the context of authoritarianism and patriarchy in today’s Nicaragua these words suggest at least three meanings. One recalls threats to the lives and livelihoods of Nicaraguans that work for Nicaragua’s surviving independent media, including community radio, particularly following the political and humanitarian crisis that began in April 2018. Community radio as “flesh and bone” also relates to the bodies of its listening public and is examined in this paper through the prism of the feminist community radio station, Radio Vos (Radio You 101.7 FM). Radio as “flesh and bone” also serves as a metaphor for community radio’s material and operational existence, a body that functions via multiple interworking parts and systems. In discussing the challenges facing community radio in Nicaragua, this essay incorporates excerpts from an interview with Argentina Olivas, the director of Radio Vos.
Abstract The development of participatory research practices has been linked to high hopes of creating more relevant, socially robust, and democratic forms of academic knowledge. Researchers have, however, also pointed to a discrepancy between the ideals and realities of participation, in research and elsewhere. This paper uses these critiques of participation to unfold the dilemmas of two participatory projects: RECcORD: Rethinking European Cultural Centers in a European Dimension (2015-17) and Participate: Citizen Participation in Danish Cultural Centers (2019-23). Both projects approached participation as a method that involved co-researching participants from cultural centers, and as a practice to be explored while unfolding in the centers. This paper critically discusses the methodologies of the projects by developing an evaluative framework that highlights both the participatory potentials and pitfalls of the two processes. This transferable framework is based on the concepts of ‘unpredictability’, ‘friction’, ‘autonomy’, ‘inequality’, ‘failure’, and ‘scale’.
