'Counter-conscious’ Ways of Life

Abstract

In his opening address to the symposium Art Creating Society at the Museum of Modern Art Oxford in 1990, Stephen Willats compelled participants and the audience to contribute their viewpoints on the development of a new vision for art, one that extends its social meaning beyond the institutional territory to which it has traditionally been confined. This statement is an example of his pronounced intention to have his artworks intervene into the functioning of society at large, developing models that provide both critical outlooks and promising perspectives. Willats’ approach is connected to the «interactive communication networks» he creates in contemporary art. He also creates a network between artists and others through the magazine Control he has been publishing since 1969. The magazine’s title should be read in the sense of «agency» and «interaction» and not in the authoritarian sense beloved of the critics of cybernetics, as historians like Andrew Pickering pointed out.