The Social Contract / Il Contratto Sociale, 2007
event with 91 participants
At the via Matteo Bandello apartment Giovanna Giannattasio hosted The Social Contract, a work that requires the viewer to sign a legally binding confidentiality agreement to engage with the work, and in this case to enter the apartment. After leaving the viewer is bound not to discuss what they saw or experienced in the apartment.
The Social Contract asks an audience to make some awareness of their own production in the work of art. We are familiar with an art world that bases its confidence on authenticity, signature and spectatorship and yet the work of the audience is largely about showing how works of art function as distinct from what they depict. The audience, whether they are aware of it or not, must decide how Martin Creed’s turning the lights on and off in the Turner Prize is and art work and therefore different to what they do at home.
Funding, science and technology has been directed towards the verification of the authenticity of historical and celebrated art works and some may still deceive us, which remains their fascination. Duchamp’s urinal, dripping abstract paint, Manzoni’s merde, Pop Art, all refer to what we already know in our ongoing lives. We could say that, in fact, Everybody knows, and yet in some institutional settings we are still the idea that the audience will be shocked and will not understand the work of art. Often an artist will avow that they don’t know why they made a work or what it means. It’s clear that we are already sharing something that has not yet been decided.
It is up to each member of the audience to decide and measure their own honesty and authenticity with regard to The Social Contract. The real work will continue on, often in indecision, and is performed by those who came to look.
