3 - Contingent Encounters: Artists, Artisans and Amateurs

Summary

Chapter 3 develops the idea that contingent encounters are rooted in diversely transnational aesthetics of contingency, but also that this art invents new combinations or strategies specifically to exceed iconic visions. It focuses on work that generates contingency by involving local or regional traditions of weaving and ceramics, as well as artisans themselves. This chapter also addresses art that engages spectators through recent transnational practices, including interactions characteristic of uses of social media. I show that this work diverges from conventional understandings of chance aesthetics and participatory art. I also argue that participatory works exhibited in physical and virtual public spaces, as well as in galleries, blur the boundaries between sites which are conventionally viewed as separate and as associated with either art or activism. I explore contrasting means of evoking encounters between artist and artisans in work on Tunisia by Majd Abdel Hamid (textiles), Selma and Sofiane Ouissi (video performance) and Sonia Kallel (audio tour and video installation) I then address installations by Collectif Wanda, Mouna Jemal Siala and Wadi Mhiri, and Febrik, which involve spectators in ‘reordering space’ or in making alternative ‘icons’ of Tunisia today or of the revolutions in Tunis, Cairo and Damascus.