1. Two types of participatory art that Bishop addresses early in this chapter are forms of spectatorship that rely on raising consciousness through the distance of critical thinking or a paradigm of physical involvement. The first form was exemplified by German dramas that incited the audience to participate via a disruptive element. In the second form, physical proximity allows the seeds of social change to develop. One example for the first kind Man With A Movie Camera, where audience members were visually subjected to many of the actual production elements that allowed for such a movie to be made. An example of the second kind is the comedy of Andy Kaufman, where audience members were often left to wonder whether or not the artist was aware of his tragic onstage state.
2. Benjamin argues that more important than an artist’s declared sympathies were the positions that the work occupies in the artist’s declared sympathies of the time. Also mentioned is Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, wherein actors put forth so much honesty in their work that audience members have no choice but to become both engaged and involved in the work of the artist. This idea generally aligns with how Benjamin thinks; i.e. the apparatus is better, the more readers or spectators come collaborators.
3. Activation – the desire to create an active subject. Authorship – ceding some or all control of a work is more democratic and egalitarian. Community – a perceived crisis in collective responsibility, that can be remedied at least in part through participatory methods.
4. I’ve been to comedy clubs where the person on stage has called something out about me or my family. Although startling, being brought in to the act made the show a lot more personal, and in effect more pleasurable / memorable.
