Art that sticks: Affective ambiguities and sensory spaces of participation

Abstract

This article examines how participatory art circulates affect in housing estates undergoing politicized urban development. Through the relational and processual art practice of the art project 49 Open Doors, it explores how affect as a theoretical and methodological framework can expand understandings of the more-than-verbal, more-than-visual, and more-than-obvious ways of creating spaces with residents. Drawing on a contrasting theoretical framework through Sara Ahmed's culturally critical notion of sticky affects and Brian Massumi's aesthetic concept of pre-discursive intensities, the analysis traces ambiguous moments in which affective encounters create alternative sensibilities, while remaining embedded in histories of political power and institutional authority. Based on affective, sensory, and situated methodologies established through long-term fieldwork, the article develops an embodied approach to exploring the politics of affect in participatory art practices that are ephemeral, subtle, and felt. By analyzing how affect circulates through three artistic workshops involving colored smoke, shared meals, and laser light, the article highlights the frictions between aesthetic alternatives and political stickiness, showing how participatory art contradictorily opens spaces for embodied participation and reproduces existing power structures. By attending to these affective movements, the research contributes to an ambiguous understanding of the sensory, relational, and political dimensions of participatory art practices in Danish housing estates facing contested urban development.