Dialogue, participation, relational aesthetics
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Debates around the idea that the interrelation or the interaction between artwork and viewers has been modified with the practice of Relational Aesthetics.
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Dialogue, participation, relational aesthetics
- 1. Contemporar y Situations: Dialogue, Participation, Relational Aesthetics Dr. Deborah Jackson
- 2. Dialogue, Participation, Relational Aesthetics Liam Gillick Discussion Bench Platform (2010) • discursive elements • social relations • performative process-based approach • public/audience participation
- 3. • The whole of human relations and their social context, rather than the autonomous physical art object • The social interactions created between the viewing audience and a work of art hold the true meaning of art
- 4. Relational Aesthetics Explores and exploits the relationship between the viewer, art object and relational space
- 7. “One could argue that in this context, project-based works-in-progress and artists- in-residence begin to dovetail with an ‘experience economy,’ the marketing strategy that seeks to replace goods and services with scripted and staged personal experiences.” Claire Bishop
- 9. Dialogue Freee Don't Let The Media Have The Monopoly On The Freedom Of Speech. (2007)
- 10. Dialogical Exchange Littoral Art: Kester proposes a ‘discursive aesthetic, which conceives of the artist primarily as a collaborator in dialogue rather than an expressive agent’
- 11. Participation This type of art raises important questions about notions of collective creativity, authorship
- 12. Participation Why and how should the public participate? VALIE EXPORT: Tap and Touch Cinema (1968-71)
- 13. Social Sculpture Allan Kaprow Yard (1967)
- 14. Relational Aesthetics Emphasis is placed on the use of the artwork Felix Gonzalez-Torres Untitled (Go-go Dancing Platform) (1991)
- 16. A declining ambition for the politics of participation Olafur Eliasson Weather Project (2003)
- 17. Would you like to participate in an artistic experience?
- 18. Lights in the City
- 20. Artur Zmijewski Repetition (2005)
- 22. Santiago Sierra 8-Foot Line Tattooed on Six Remunerated People 1999
- 23. Relational Antagonism Santiago Sierra Space Closed off by Corrugated Metal (2002)
Editor's Notes
- Dialogue, Participation, Relational Aesthetics This talk will provide an overview of Participatory and Relational Art in one way or another with these ideas/ Specifically what I will be talking about is the discussions around the idea that the interrelation or the interaction between artwork and viewers has been modified with the practice of Relational Aesthetics. The focus then is on art practices that take, what we can call discursive elements, as well as social relations as its subject and material, art practices which leave behind the art object aesthetic. By this I mean, leaving behind the traditions of object making, insomuch as these artists have adopted a performative process-based approach. This kind of practice is exemplified by, for example, Liam Gillick’s Discussion Bench Platforms, a work where he particularly demonstrates his concern for public/audience participation and integration into the work.
- Ideas about artists developing of a set of artistic practices that’s based in the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than the autonomous physical art object, was presented as a genre which was called relational aesthetics by French curator and art critic Nicolas Bourriaud in Relational Aesthetics, first published in France in 1998. His main claim is that the social interactions created between the viewing audience and a work of art hold the true meaning of art.
- In order to preface this talk I want to begin by showing you the Ben Lewis documentary, Relational Art: Is it an Ism? In this film Lewis analyses the contemporary shift in art that explores and exploits the relationship between the viewer, art object and relational space, and he aims to demonstrate how it functions within the larger art historical context. Watch film
- What is Relational Art? What are the artist’s motivations? CLAIMS Relational art incorporates collaboration, collective creative experience, viewer’s interaction and social dimensions. HOWEVER Relational Aesthetics maintains the artist in a position of authority Relational Aesthetics: a decisive break with modernism Artists were also working COLLECTIVELY Audience is seen as a community (however temporary or utopian this may be) Shift from a Goods to a service based economy: instead of making an object and selling it, artists were offering services, literally- like the artist Christine Hill massaging visitors to her exhibition at documneta X
- Antecedents, roots of Relational Art: The increasing importance of the viewer… (Yoko Ono Cut Piece Refer to performance art of 60s- our first hand encounter with the artist’s body) Also shift away from the individual, unique, portable, sellable, autonomous art object. Relational aesthetics draw from two other currents in contemporary art—Conceptual art and Installation art—the former, a projection of art as idea and the latter, an emphasis on art as experience. According to Bourriaud, relational aesthetics are a clear break from modernism (because its approach to art drastically opposes Clement Greenberg’s understanding of art as autonomous from other facets of life) and postmodernism (which rests on the idea that there is no set meaning in a work of art, because its interpretation is constantly changing).
- Claire Bishop: One of the first critics to really critique Relational Aesthetics, in Art Forum Article “ The Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents”. In this article Bishop critiques Relation Aesthetics, “social practice,” or participatory art. Through this article, Bishop draws on the importance to antagonise this relatively new movement called Relational Aesthetics…Bourriaud ascribed potentially positive societal effects to relational aesthetics. Bishop writes “One could argue that in this context, project-based works-in-progress and artists- in-residence begin to dovetail with an ‘experience economy,’ the marketing strategy that seeks to replace goods and services with scripted and staged personal experiences.” The Experience Economy: A marketing strategy that seeks to replace goods and services with scripted and staged personal experiences. …businesses events: the memory itself becomes the product - the "experience"… Critical of the work of Gillick and Tiravanija, it is mixed up in the cosy glamorous art world. And collapses into entertainment.
- All our attention was on YBAs in 1990s Bourriaud made the Important first step in identifying new and recent tendencies in contemporary art DIFFERENCES Relational Aesthetics: works meaning is elaborately collective rather than privately consumed Heavy emphasis on the importance of the viewer in the work
- discourse on socially engaged art or ‘art’s social turn’, conceptions of art and participation have been provided by theorist and curator Nicolas Bourriaud, in his concept of Relational Aesthetics, and more lately in exchanges between Grant Kester and Claire Bishop that interrogate recent trends in didactic and participatory art. Relational or participatory art has its critics. These were - topically - summarised by Dave Beech in Art Monthly (April 2008). Beech suggests that all too frequently the the nature of the participation on offer is 'convivial' and only convivial: taking the form of friendly, but rather bland social discourse. The participant is generally powerless to question or critique the art or the art-idea, nor are they - in any real sense - a collaborator within it. art doesn't ask to be judged; rather the public - as participants - are instead asked to complete the work through their participation. The artist's presence is elusive, and as they are no longer the sole author they are no longer accountable or answerable for it in the same way. More importantly, there is also the question of whether relational art can really live up to the claims that are made for it. Is it inclusive and democratic or does it merely replace the observer, audience, or viewer with another set of unequal relations?
- Dialogical Exchange Grant Kester writes about what he calls ‘Littoral Art’ based on a ‘discursive aesthetic based on the possibility of a dialogical relationship that breaks down the conventional distinction between artist, art work and audience –a relationship that allows the viewer to “speak back” to the artist in certain ways, and in which this reply becomes in effect a part of the “work” itself’. Kester proposes a ‘discursive aesthetic, which conceives of the artist primarily as a collaborator in dialogue rather than an expressive agent’ For Kester, art is supposed to fulfil religion’s traditional role in binding together community, functioning similarly to church, or other community-based clubs or groups that played a large role earlier in the twentieth century. The current generation of adults in their forties is perhaps the first generation to have missed out on the close-knit community based clubs and organizations of generations past.
- Claire Bishop, art historian and primary critic of Relational Aesthetics Participatory art of various kinds emerged as a distinct and important strand within fine art practice in the 90s. Arguably, it anticipated the rise of the internet and reality TV, which, in the mainstream media are comparable phenomena, at least in the way they appear to flatten the hierarchy between consumer and producer…domains such as Tumblr, Facebook and You Tube are treated by many as public space, when they are actually designed to generate private revenue from freely proffered content. Over the last two decades, the term 'participation' has become increasingly overused. Everything from the schoolroom to the Internet and from sport to the elimination of world poverty has, in the last twenty years, been reconfigured at various levels of intensity by the imperative to encourage participation. Participation has become a value…participation is not a value in itself but depends entirely on the value of the project in which the participation takes place. this type of art raises important questions about notions of collective creativity, authorship As critics have pointed out over the past two decades, contemporary art is undergoing a crucial change in that “the art object is no longer necessarily the primary focus of the encounter with art” (Beech, 2010, p. 20). The demotion of the passive, receptive viewer—rooted in conceptualism and a critique of opticality—has given rise to participatory artistic practices that seek to blur the boundaries between artist and audience, producer and consumer, actor and subject.
- How artists have engaged members of the public as essential collaborators in the art-making process. Why and how should the public participate? Open the institution to a greater level of community participation Shorthand for an egalitarian politics of public participation The percentage of the public who can participate is limited to those with the knowledge and skills The exchange of capital is symbolic – participants get the prestige of association (major question relates to incentives and the relationship between participation and labour) Tap and Touch Cinema belongs to VALIE EXPORT’s early guerilla performances which attained an iconic status in art history. VALIE EXPORT wore a tiny ‘movie theater’ around her naked upper body, so that her body could not be seen but could be touched by anyone reaching through the curtained front and into the dark of her mobile ‘theater.’ Tap and Touch Cinema was performed in the street and all passers-by, men, women, and children, were invited to ‘tap and touch’. Tapp- und Tast-Kino (Tap and Touch Cinema) was performed in ten European cities between 1968–71.
- Participation: All forms of arts require participation to some extend. After all, experiencing art (observing, listening, watching etc..) is also a kind of participation. Artworks have very rarely been created not to be experienced by a public. During the second half of the 20th century the relation between artists and the public has profoundly changed. The public has become a component of the creative process and participation has become a new territory to explore. During the 20th century the focus of art shifted and a new paradigm emerged placing inter-human relations at the center of contemporary art creation (post-modern art) thus creating a fertile ground for participative art to blossom. The emergence of Participatory Arts is informed by earlier AVANT-GARDE movements such as DADA, CONSTRUCTIVISM and SURREALISM, which raised questions with regard to notions of originality and authorship and challenged conventional assumptions about the passive role of the viewer or spectator. During the 60s, Conceptual Art has shown the way in freeing art from the object. Artists invited public participation as a component in the production of open artworks, with key examples being Allan Kaprow's happenings. Artworks often took the form of meetings and public demonstrations, HAPPENINGS or SOCIAL SCULPTURE, whereby the meaning of the work was derived from the collective engagement of the participants. How does relational aesthetics differ from earlier work that involves human interaction or relational components? In the 80’s and 90’s artists such as Rirkrit Tiravanija have developed art projects using participation as medium. In that perspective the artist creates the conditions for the gathering of participants and documents the meeting or event as it unfold, often being a participant himself. That latter form of participative art projects brings a new dimension to participative art through the blurring of the line between the participants and the artist. The artist is also a participant.
- Despite the fact that Bourriaud defines and outlines this practice as differing from participatory art of the twentieth century, relational aesthetics did not emerge from thin air but rather is related to participation-based predecessors Bourriaud's exhibitions shifted attention to forms of interaction between members of the public…In “Relational Aesthetic”, according to Nicolas Bourriaud (1998) every artist has his own world of forms, problematic and trajectory and there are not necessarily links in terms of stylistic, thematic or iconographic between them. But all of them work in the sphere of interhuman relationships, in which social exchange and interaction is offered. It is important how art is engaged in social issues and how it makes or form communities. Emphasis is placed on the use of the artwork.
- Relational or participatory art has its critics. These were summarised by Dave Beech in Art Monthly (April 2008). Beech suggests that all too frequently the the nature of the participation on offer is 'convivial' and only convivial: taking the form of friendly, but rather bland social discourse. The participant is generally powerless to question or critique the art or the art-idea, nor are they - in any real sense - a collaborator within it. art doesn't ask to be judged; rather the public - as participants - are instead asked to complete the work through their participation. The artist's presence is elusive, and as they are no longer the sole author they are no longer accountable or answerable for it in the same way. More importantly, there is also the question of whether relational art can really live up to the claims that are made for it. Is it inclusive and democratic or does it merely replace the observer, audience, or viewer with another set of unequal relations? The viewer becomes a constricted component within the framing of constructed situations in which extant social relations are either subverted or reproduced
- When examining artists’ motivations for turning to social participation as a strategy in their work, one repeatedly encounters the same claim: contemporary capitalism produces passive subjects with very little agency or empowerment…artistic practice can no longer revolve around the construction of objects to be consumed by a passive bystander. However, Beech “When you consider that participation in the new art includes having dinner, drinking beer, designing a new candy bar and running a travel agency, there seems to be justification in talking about a declining ambition for the politics of participation.”
- In Relational Aesthetics, the aesthetic value of any outcome (i.e. the production of an art “object”) is subordinated to the supposed value of the shared process of the encounter – the relational experience. Bishop: Who is the Public? How else shall we critique he work? What types of relations are being produced by these works? What does democracy mean in this context? How is culture made? All relations that permit dialogue are automatically assumed to be democratic and therefore good?
- Artists working within the idiom of relational aesthetics but they are tougher, more disruptive approach to relations than that proposed by Bourriraud Alfredo Jaar’s Lights in the City (1999).In Montreal, Jaar made a project connecting different homeless shelters and the city’s historic Copula. Every time a home- less person arrived in one of the shelters, she could (if she wanted) make herself visible by pushing a button that would immediately illuminate the Copula with red light. Jaar thus created a structure for making visible those who often feel invisible in society. “We wanted the Cupola to become a permanent monument of shame, and other shelters wanted to join us and get connected, but six weeks later the mayor canceled it. like all of my projects, it failed. We did not give the homeless a home. We did not resolve their problem. We gave them a brief, hopeful moment when they regained their humanity, when people started acknowledging their presence, smiled at them, when the press also contributed to the dialogue, but eventually they returned to their status as homeless. With these projects you change so little…”
- We have moved past various forms of relational aesthetics. For example, the sort of generous and take-away art practices (such as the work of Felix Gonzalez-Torres or Rirkrit Tiravanija) in which the concept of a gift is central and the audience is invited to participate are not seen any more with the newer and younger generation. Rather, they are explicitly playing with ideas of this sort. Cyprien Gaillard’s The Recovery of Discovery at KW Berlin 2011, for example, only looks at first sight like just another take-away project. The artist created a pyramid of 72,000 bottles of the Turkish beer Efes which visitors were invited to consume. In so doing, the public was partici- pating not by simply taking away, but rather in making a ruin, and thus the work deals more with the ideas of destruction and the image than with mere generosity to the public.
- In Repetition, 2005, Żmijewski revisits the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, a two-week investigation to respond to the following question: "What happens when you put good people in an evil place?" At the time, 24 undergraduates were selected to play the roles of both guards and prisoners and live in a mock prison. After six days, Philip Zimbardo was forced to end the experiment. The guards took great pleasure in exercising violence, humiliating and torturing the prisoners; the prisoners, too, lost their ability to distinguish what was real and what was simulated. Żmijewski recreated the experiment: 7 inmates and 9 guards (all of them unemployed people), other participants included psychologists responsible of stopping everything if it turned dangerous, a former prison inmate, and a sociologist involved in prison system reforms. The experiment collapsed after only few days as the participants collectively decided to leave the prison.
- a 92 years old Auschwitz survivor, Jozef Tarnawa. The tattoo has faded with the years and Zmijewski meets the old man in a tattoo parlor and tries to persuade him to have it 'refreshed'. The old man is not to be convinced easily. He wants to be left in peace. He is worried that the renewed tattoo will not be 'original.' In the end, Zmijweski gets his way and the poor man submits his arm unwillingly to the tattoo artist. Artists who problematize participatory projects by complicating the role of the artist within the production of work. In fact, it is difficult to see anything but complacency and complicity with established vested interests. One way of getting a handle on the limitations and constraints imposed on the participant is to contrast participation with collaboration. It is the shortfall between participation and collaboration that leads to perennial questions about the degree of choice, control and agency of the participant. Is participation always voluntary? Are all participants equal and are they equal with the artist?
- Since 1998, Sierra has hired or otherwise remunerated so-called “disenfranchised” people to do various things. Santiago Sierra: he paid heroin addicts, $30, the price of a fix, to line up in a row and then permit a continuous line to be tattooed across their backs. (arts relationship with capitalism) Similarly involves the literal setting up of relations …the relations are marked by sensations of unease and discomfort rather than belonging Collaborates with participants from a diverse economic background Sierra: Sets boundaries. Participants, money, location. Importance of context. Sierra creates Antagonism between two different spheres By sustaining an antagonism he raises questions. “I can’t change anything. There is no possibility that we can change anything with our artistic work. We do our work because we are making art, and because we believe art should be something, something that follows reality. But I don’t believe in the possibility of change”
- In 1997, for the reopening of a section of Galeria Art Deposit he destroyed its interior with fire in Gallery Burned by Gasoline. For the reopening of the Lisson Gallery in 2002 he had a corrugated shutter installed over the building front, so that he could simply leave the invited guests standing out on the street, in Space Closed off by Corrugated Metal. As a result, at least one of the gallery’s clients withdrew his account from the gallery. Nicholas Logsdail, the owner of the gallery, defended the work. ”Santiago’s idea – which I sympathise with – is that there is an exclusive club at the core of cultural activities, and he wanted them to experience the sensation of being excluded.” Sierra exploits all his subjects equally, be they of high or low status. Relational Antagonism is predicted not on social harmony but on exposing that which is repressed in sustaining the semblance of this harmony.
- The idea of participatory art practice, where the process is often more important then the final work, has come a long way since the sixties, and there remain ongoing discussions about relational aesthetics and other trends in art practice. RECAP… PARTICIPATORY ARTS refers to a range of arts practice, including RELATIONAL AESTHETICS, where emphasis is placed on the role of the viewer or spectator in the physical or conceptual realisation and reception of the artwork. The central component of Participatory Arts is the active participation of the viewer or spectator. Many forms of Participatory Arts practice foreground the role of collaboration in the realisation of an artwork, deemphasising the role of the professional artist as sole creator or author of the artwork, while building social bonds through communal meaning and activity. Relational Aesthetics describe a range of open-ended art practices, concerned with the network of human relations and the social context in which such relations arise. Relational Art also stresses the notion of artworks as gifts, taking multiple forms, such as meals, meetings, parties, posters, casting sessions, games, discussion platforms and other types of social events and cooperations. In this context, emphasis is placed on the use of the artwork. Art is regarded as information exchanged between the artist and the viewer which relies on the responses of others to make it relational.