After Felix Gonzalez-Torres: The New Active Audience in the Social Media Era. Issue 5 (1st November 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Lee, Hyun Jean; Kim, Jeong Han
• Is Part Of: Third text. Volume 30:Issue 5/6(2016)
• Page Start: 474
• Page End: 489
• Publication Date: 2016-11-01
• Subjects: Hyun Jean Lee -- Jeong Han Kim -- Felix Gonzalez-Torres -- Jong Won Park -- PLATEAU -- audience -- participation -- value sharing -- new media -- Nicholas Bourriaud -- Miwon Kwon; Art and society -- Periodicals; Art -- Developing countries -- 20th century -- Periodicals; Developing countries -- Intellectual life -- Periodicals; 700.91724
• DOI: 10.1080/09528822.2017.1355149
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0952-8822

Abstract

Abstract: This article interrogates the active audience happening at the Felix Gonzalez-Torres' interactive sweet pile work in Seoul, South Korea in 2012. In the happening, audience members aggressively responded to the installation, and right after the gallery asked the audience to return the sweets; this process was discussed widely through social media. The happening can also be read as a single snapshot of how the new active audience, transformed by social media, has arrived in the contemporary artworld. Examining the audience's ethics, claimed by Bourriaud and Kwon's argument for the public that Gonzalez-Torres hoped to embrace, the authors argue that the new active audience in this social media era reacts and reinvents to/within interactive and participatory work, by re-interpreting and re-contextualising the artwork similarly to the way game players do in their game play. As a central link of the value creation process in the art experience, this audience adds new meanings, values and experiences to the artwork, thereby making art function as aesthetic, cognitive, and a crucial register in our society.