The publication Artwork as Institution. Stephen Willats centers on British artist Stephen Willats’ use of Modelling Books as tools to engage with people, and to create social spaces for relation and interaction in neighborhoods, museums, and bookshops since the 1970s. These tools help to reflect specific situations and develop ideas, models of how to approach them and move within them. The artworks enact a re-constitution, a transformation of the self and of situations. They provide a platform for an investigation of hidden, normalizing infrastructures, constraints, and limitations as well as for the possibility of the creation of alternatives. At the same time, through this collaborative process, a social space is formed, a communications network is created, by and for those who become involved. It is a process of instituting, a process where the artwork becomes its own institution.
Artwork as an Institution. Stephen Willats
Brand-New-Life. Magazine for art criticism, 2019
Contributions by Jamie Allen, Bernhard Garnicnig, Elsa Himmer, Lucie Kolb, and Stephen Willats
ISBN 978-3-033-07267-l
