Participation has become one of the key terms in contemporary art discourse. But what does it mean to participate in art? How does it relate to the political problem of social participation? Can it be equated with the staged interactivity we encounter in much contemporary art practice? And what about the history of aesthetic participation? How do contemporary models of thinking participation relate to the modernist idea that participating in art means partaking in something that posseses universal validity? What became of the modernist assumption that there is an ethical dimension at work in our relation to art works? The lecture will pursue these questions and offer theses to be discussed.

Juliane Rebentisch teaches philosophy at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University in Frankfurt/Main. She is a member of the cluster of excellence „Formation of Normative Orders“. Her main research areas are aesthetics, ethics, and political philosophy. Publications include: Ästhetik der Installation (Suhrkamp 2003); Kreation und Depression. Freiheit im gegenwärtigen Kapitalismus (co-ed. with Ch. Menke, Kadmos 2010); in preparation: Die Kunst der Freiheit. Zur Dialektik demokratischer Existenz (Suhrkamp, Jan. 2012).