Community art as an egalitarian participatory practice

The most discussed participatory art projects today for their values, are always based on either breaking new ground (or shaking the theoretical foundations of public art, or existing frameworks and definitions), significantly expanding participation (which is still as an important, even decisive indicator), or elevating the audience/recipients to a position of priority (or using local indicators to evaluate success or failure).The results are often hidden rather than immediately apparent on the surface. The core issue here is to what extent the choices of participants are respected, or how to minimize intervention in their choices? This study aims to re-examine the two aesthetic preferences represented by Kester and Bishop—collaboration and antagonism—as an extension of Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics, further developing them into two distinct approaches: bottom-up, community-based collaborative and dialogic participatory art, and top-down, large-scale participatory art. Today, non-community participatory art is generally understood as an attempt to control the audience’s perception and interpretation, exerting a broader influence and gaining favor among critics as a form of post-elite art. Community art, on the other hand, is often questioned for its aesthetic value, with its social value as an priority, being emphasized in the context of excessive intervention by art institutions and governments, resulting in a smaller influence and little attention from critics. If these limitations are overcome, community art can practically enable the public to reach the true “collaborator” stage of participation. This study serves as a further reflection on the position of community art in today’s art world, as presented in Matarasso’s book A Restless Art (2019), and provides a value assessment diagram for participatory art, attempt to clarify the practical value of community art as the significant participatory art through a visual model. keywords: community based art work, Participatory Art, community-engaged art, democratic public space