Abstract
The Wishing Wall is a spectator-orientated
artwork that was staged by Landi
Raubenheimer and Paul Cooper in February
2010, as part of the ‘Infecting the City’
performance art festival. The purpose of this
article is to investigate the artwork in terms
of authorship. The artwork consisted of an
installation in Adderley Street in Cape Town,
and as a public artwork involved spectators
as voluntary participants in its creation. The
question of authorship which arises, is to what
extent the artists’ role is authorial, and to what
extent the participants play this role. Nicholas
Bourriaud’s theory of relational aesthetics is
used as a point of departure from which to
understand the relational aspects of the wall
in which the author’s autonomy is subverted.
Miwon Kwon’s writings on site-specific art
are also referred to, as she contextualises
the facilitating roles she envisions artists
playing in such artworks. In a sense the notion
of the artist as romantic genius is brought
into question by artworks that displace and
reinterpret the role of the artist as author,
while at the same time this distinction
remains necessary for the artwork to maintain its criticality. John Roberts argues that if this
does not take place, the artwork runs the risk
of being subsumed into the realm of social
production, and it ceases to be art.