Irrational Interactions

This chapter disrupts the model of participation as rational action, considering embodied influences on participation, and how they shape both decisions to participate and the character of participation itself. The terminologies and modes of questioning deployed here contrast with the earlier chapters, drawing on cognitive science and the phenomenological philosophy associated with it, as well as ideas from anthropology and evolutionary psychology. These factors are considered not just in terms of how they might play a part in the manipulation of participation, but also in terms of aesthetics: how the experience of different states of mind/body is part of the artwork of audience participation. The key questions for the chapter are: These ideas are put to work in an analysis of De La Guarda’s Villa Villa, a performance that addressed itself directly and deliberately to the bodies of spectator participants.