Authorship, criticism and participation between contemporary art and sociological theory

The paper presents some recent transformations of contemporary art by showing the implications for sociological theory. In particular, relations between the ethnographic turn in contemporary art and the transition from the concept of society as totality to the idea of society as a process of which the work of art itself is part, are discussed. The consequences of this transition emerge in three directions: in the interest of the artists-ethnographers for the use of the methods of social research in their creative work; in the changed conditions of artistic social criticism, and finally in the development of participatory art according to Post-Fordist conceptions of participation. The aim of this essay is to show how these conceptions of social criticism and participation, recently established in contemporary art, show some similarity with categories and methods of contemporary sociological theory.