The Economics of the Performative Audience

Abstract

In ‘The Economics of the Performative Audience’, Jessica Santone considers recent developments in the roles of audiences of contemporary art and performance. Audiences have quite often been made to perform the work in art and theatre contexts. Moreover, against a backdrop of changed expectations of interactivity and ‘participation’ that promises without delivering liberation or shared authorship, audiences now come into being through spectators repeatedly enacting themselves as ‘audience’ per normative rules of engagement. Especially in the synthesis of performance event and documentation that structures contemporary reception, one can see the rupture of participation between democratic collective ideal and neoliberal capitalist individuation. Performances from the past decade by Martha Rosler and Carey Young are analyzed in this essay. The events or actions the artists orchestrate are critical in nature, but the method of engagement that transpires temporarily conceals their political consequences, which are only visible belatedly as documentation of the work circulates. The potential of the performative audience lies in its ability to recognize itself as such through these images.

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