Participation has been a topic of research and practice in the arts, architecture, and design for many years. Collaborating with other academic fields, it has been regarded as a way to empower people and develop new methods that promote a bottom-up approach to decision-making on various publicly relevant issues. Participation platforms take different forms and formats, and can be understood as a tool for direct democracy.

However, we also notice that participation became widely utilised, and even abused, not only in art practice but also in the broader interdisciplinary field of spatial practice, particularly in relation to urban issues. It became a legitimation for performing democracy, especially for official urban development projects.

Upon examining the results of implementing these strategies, we have successfully incorporated some of them into our everyday lives, particularly in relation to citizens' decision-making. Still, we certainly didn't practice them extensively. On the contrary, in cases where money rules, decisions are made quickly, without waiting for lengthy processes of discussions and negotiations with citizens. It is a fundamental law of neoliberal capitalism to accelerate the flow of money, turning it around quickly to produce as much profit as possible. Furthermore, it appears that democracies around the world are being eroded as the power of money continues to expand.  

Isn't it interesting that at the point when we started introducing citizens' participation into state legislation, the process stalled as pandemic rules began to work in the opposite direction? Suddenly, it was no longer allowed to gather as a group, and it was also no longer permitted to see or talk to each other in person. We all had to isolate ourselves, or we would be breaking the new "emergency law". Coming together to create communities that would impact or even contradict higher powers was out of the question. Still, every one of us has, at some point, become disobedient, realising that extreme forms of individualism are damaging. The urgency to provide an immediate and concrete response to the crisis has given rise to a sudden increase in mutual aid initiatives. Communities have proven to be resilient, able to come together and address basic needs. Shared resources have provided first aid to many.

We finally understood as a society that by mutual solidarity, taking care of ourselves and each other, joining forces to protect the condition of our immediate living environment, and un-learning bad habits of extensive consumerism, among many other things, we could change our behaviour and, by that, change our society and our relation to the world.

However, following the pandemic, Europe faced another crisis with the war in Ukraine. This war divided the world in many ways and reintroduced a fear of war in old and safe Europe. Many Europeans who strongly believed that we do not need to arm ourselves started to support militarisation. Using Sherry Arenstein's[1] understanding of citizen participation, these decisions likely reflected the stage of Manipulation of fear of war, referring to the bottom of "A Ledder of Citizen Participation" to non-participation.

Last but not least, when discussing participation as a form of democracy, the war that followed in Gaza revealed another aspect of civil society's empowerment. People worldwide began to organise themselves in protests against the war, against official politics, demanding an end to the war, to the killing, to the genocide. We can no longer deny it; most European politicians, who are supposed to represent the people of Europe, are not listening. There is a gap between what people demand on the streets of Europe and what or who their governments support. The Gaza war appears as the tragic crystallisation of many contradictions within our history and present. One of these is the belief in democracy, which is now clearly undergoing disintegration in the Western world.

Instead of developing and practising citizen participation as a form of democracy within the decision-making process concerning our immediate environment in relation to the burning question of climate change on a global scale, we had to start practising participation on the streets of our cities, demonstrating. Demonstrating to be heard, defending democracy against capitalism, which is transforming itself into the most inhumane form of economic organisation - to necrocapitalism,[2] “a contemporary form of organisational accumulation that involves dispossession and the subjugation of life to the power of death”.

Apolonija Šušteršič is a visual artist, architect, researcher, and teacher. Her research-based practice is situated across different fields of spatial practice and critical theory. She works on projects that foster cooperation among people or groups. She would create processes for engagement and platforms for action where people are able to reconnect with their own sense of agency by getting involved in working with space and place.

She has a PhD in Performing and Visual Art from Lund University, Malmö Art Academy. Her professional experience includes three international professorships at renowned institutions, including the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, the Royal College of Art, London and the Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm. She works as an independent researcher in the field of artistic research and collaborates on several research projects across academia, focusing on social and spatial justice.

She participated in a number of internationally published and exhibited projects within and beyond contemporary art institutions around the world, such as Moderna Museet Stockholm, Berlin Bienale 2, Luxembourg City of Culture, Moderna Galerija Ljubljana, Marian Goodman, Paris, 12th Architecture Biennale, Venice, Artes Mundi 5, Gwangju Biennial 2016, Timișoara Biennial 2019, and Diriyah Biennial 2024, among many others.