Taking part in it all

What is participation? What happens to us when we participate in a work of art? Why have artists been interested in participation in the past, and why do they value it now? Given the emphasis of the Wunderbar Festival on supporting live art works that actively involve the audience, these seem like apt questions with which to begin. In what follows, I want to look briefly at four performative practices that might help us to reflect on these questions, as well as contributing to our wider understanding of how artists have approached the notion of audience participation, then and now.