SAN JOSE, CA.- This spring, the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) will examine art as social exchange in an audience-driven exhibition of workshops, installations, and performance art. Audiences will attend a wedding, participate in workshops, receive advice, and even make food in interventionist works that blur the line between life and art. Rooted in conceptual practices, This Show Needs You relies on the willingness of audiences to co-author both its production and intimation.

In both the Focus Gallery and Cardinale Project Room, each of 11 participating artists will use modest and widely understood means of exchange to collaborate with viewers. Pieces will extend outside of the gallery and will engage passing pedestrians while serving as subtle advertisement for the ideas inherent in the exhibition. From May 15 – 17th, at the conclusion of the exhibition at the ICA , there will be a conference at the University of California , Santa Cruz (UCSC) entitled Intervene! Interject! Rethinking Art as Social Practice

This Show Needs You will be on view March 28 – May 16, 2008. The ICA will host an opening reception for the exhibition on Friday, March 28 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

This Show Needs You - As computer screens and text messages replace face-to-face communication, artists respond with work that requires human interaction. While all art is participatory, the work in This Show Needs You, actively engages audiences in the process of creating. Evoking Joseph Beuys’s exclamation that “everyone is an artist,” Michael Smit’s ongoing conversational piece How Have You Been an Artist Today? provocatively asks what it means to create. It is in this same spirit that Linda Montano, a seminal figure in contemporary feminist performance art, invites the audience to either “sit down with her in silence” or “sit down and receive Art/Life/Laughter Counseling” during her performance Re-Seeing: Being Blindfolded in California; 7 hours/ 4 days. Montano will also conduct a crash course in performance art called, You Too Are a Performance Artist of Your Life: A Workshop with Linda M. Montano.

Collaborators and partners Elizabeth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle will present Love Art Laboratory, an experiment in exploring love as art. During the course of this seven-year performance art piece, now in its fourth year, the artists are married each year. Stephens and Sprinkle will exhibit memorabilia from their weddings including dresses, invitations, and gifts made by friends. In conjunction with the UCSC conference, the couple will renew their vows on May 17, at the UCSC campus.

Collaborators Ted Purves and Susanne Cockrell will rely on the participation of local gardeners to realize their installation Everyday is Lemon Day. Inspired by San Jose ’s agricultural history, Cockrell and Purves will collect garden-grown lemons from the area and preserve them during the exhibition. Rows of the yellow jarred fruits will be displayed and Cockrell and Purves will provide opportunities for individuals to share recipes and stories that involve cooking with lemons. A lemon-infused picnic will convene in the gallery May 2, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., and during the last week of the exhibition individuals may take home a jar of lemons.

Other projects continue the creative engagement. Harrell Fletcher and Miranda July give assignments to visitors to complete and post online in their interactive web project Learning to Love You More. Christian Jankowski’s work involves collaborations with strangers. Lori Gordon’s text paintings ask, “What color does your body need?” and Sara Thacher enlists neighbors and businesses to host and curate The Distributed Exhibition.

The work in this exhibition needs multiple audiences, including those who participate in the creation of the work and those who witness art in-the-making. This Show Needs You, encourages discussion and exploration of what art means and what art is in the context of collective social experience.