Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
c
a
a
aa
Nicolas Bourriaud¶s a
(Les presses du réel, 1998; English translation 2002) undeniably has
been an effective generator of debate. In the wake of critical responses by Claire Bishop (in
in 2004 and
in 2006) Grant Kester (in
, 2004, and in
in 2006), Stewart Martin (in
in 2007) and Julian Stallabrass (
, 2004), the strengths and limits of Bourriaud¶s book will
be no secret. Our remarks at this point will not be
, but we think it may still be helpful to formulate some
critical propositions with a sharper
orientation.
Bourriaud champions art that understands itself as an experimental production of new social bonds ± as ³the
invention of models of sociability´ and ³conviviality.´ (³Rirkrit Tiravanija organizes a dinner in a collector¶s home,
and leaves him all the ingredients required to make a Thai soup. Philippe Parreno invites a few people to pursue
their favorite hobbies on May Day, on a factory assembly line.´[pp. 7-8]) His case for what he calls the ³art of the
1990s´ is a great improvement over discourses fixated on more traditional, object-based artworks. There of
course are risks involved in gathering diverse practices into this new category of ³relational art.´ Some
differences in political outlook and position ± those between a Philippe Parreno and a Vanessa Beecroft, for
example ± are no doubt lost in the reduction. Nor is it self-evident that these practices and Bourriaud¶s
characterization of them always correspond as seamlessly as is usually assumed. That said, Bourriaud has been
an effective advocate for the contemporary tendency to emphasize process, performativity, openness, social
contexts, transitivity and the production of dialogue over the closure of traditional modernist objecthood, visuality
and hyper-individualism. The fiercest enemies of relational art, after all, are conservative critics of the ³back to
beauty and painting´ kind. Bourriaud¶s preemptive defense of Tiravanija,
. has to be understood in large part
as a blast against Dave Hickey¶s influential
. Forced to choose between Bourriaud and the new
Dave Hickeys, we¶ll gladly take the former.
If in the end we can¶t take him either, it will be for different reasons. Bourriaud claims that the new relational
models are principled responses to real social misery and alienation. But he acknowledges that the artists he
writes about are not concerned with changing the
± capitalism, in our language.
Relational artists tend to accept what Bourriaud calls ³the existing real´ and are happy to play with ³the social
bond´ within the constraining frame of the given. Bourriaud tries to put the best face on this kind of practice,
characterizing it as ³
´ (p. 13) But in spite of his approving allusions to
Marx, there is no mistaking that this is a form of artistic interpretation of the world that does not aim to overcome
the
!
. At most, relational art attempts to model the bandaging of
social damage and to ³patiently re-stitch the social fabric´: ³Through little services rendered, the artists fill in the
cracks in the social bond.´ (p.36)
It would be one thing if relational art claimed to be no more than a production of modest alleviative or
compensatory gestures. As such, it would reflect the ³end of history´ common sense dominant in the 1990s and
would exemplify neo-liberal strategies for outsourcing managerial innovation and ³human resources´ research in
conditions of post-Fordist production, as well as processes of privatization with their accompanying rhetoric
promoting ³community,´ voluntarism and the ³third sector.´ But Bourriaud goes much further, positioning
relational art as the heir to the twentieth century avant-gardes: ³Whatever the fundamentalists clinging to
yesterday¶s
may say and think, present-day art is roundly taking on and taking up the legacy of the
twentieth-century avant-gardes, while at the same time challenging their dogmatism and their teleological
doctrines.´ (p. 45)
At stake, then, is the whole legacy ± and so also the present and future ± of the avant-garde project. This legacy
being one of our passions, we can¶t be indifferent to Bourriaud¶s claim. Leaving aside our suspicions that many
relational artists evidently couldn¶t care less about the avant-gardes and would not subscribe to Bourriaud¶s use
of this term, we¶ll address the argument for what it is: a claim about the historical importance of relational art as
the new cutting edge of politicized cultural practice. The assumptions behind this claim are clear enough. In
a
, we are in the register of post-structuralist commonplaces: Foucault¶s ³technologies of the
self,´ Félix Guattari¶s delirious subjectivity machines, Michel de Certeau¶s ³Practice of Everyday Life,´ micro-bio-
politics as an ethic of love and a
of living ± an orientation rather easily deflected in practice into what
Stuart Hall has called ³adaptation´ as opposed to ³resistance.´
The old avant-gardes, Bourriaud tells us, were oriented toward conflict and social struggle; relieved of this
dogmatic radical antagonism and macro-focus on the global system, relational-alleviational art ³is concerned with
negotiations, bonds, and co-existences.´ (p. 45) The new relational avant-gardistes ³are not naïve or cynical
enough µto go about things as if¶ the radical and universalist utopia were still on the agenda.´ (p. 70) We would
put it differently. Precisely formulated, relational aesthetics represents the
!
of the avant-garde
project of radical transformation. In 1998, Bourriaud saw this as a virtue. Today, we see it as the main limitation
of relational art ± and one that negates any claim it makes to the legacy of the avant-gardes. While we would
defend relational art from its conservative and reactionary critics, we would also insist that it not come to stand in
for the radical project it falls short of ± and indeed refuses. Undoubtedly, the avant-garde tradition continues to
be transformed by its own process of self-critique. But it does not give up the radical, macro-historical aim of a
real world beyond capitalist relations. And it doesn¶t settle for the experience of gallery simulations.
It¶s not that experiments in forms and models of sociability are not needed today ± they certainly are. But to be
politically relevant and effective, such experiments need to be grounded in (or at least actively linked to) social
movements and struggles. (And there is no social progress without contestation and struggle: this for us is a
basic materialist truth that makes any blanket refusal of ³conflict´ problematic.) As a gallery-based game,
relational practices are cut off by an institutional divide from those who could use them. Who are the consumers
of relational art? The cultural élite of the dominant classes, primarily, supplemented by the socially ambitious
layers of a de-classed general public ± the ³culture vultures´ and would-be cultural élite who form the crowds
passing through the big biennials and exhibitions. (And this is a very different demographic from those
marginalized communities whose members are sometimes enlisted for roles in relational works, such as those by
Superflex or Marjetica Potrc.) In general, this audience does not tend to overlap with the people actively
attempting to generate pressure for deep social change. There are exceptions, we know. But this is how the
disruptive utopian energies that
exist in relational art are managed and kept within tolerable limits: the social
separations, stratifications and (self-)selections of the art system enact a liberalization ± that is, a
"
!
± of social desire.
Meanwhile, the radical processes of social experimentation are taking place elsewhere: in the streets and squats
and social forums, in the communes, like Oaxaca, that flare up in struggle, and in the ongoing work of creating
counter-publics and counter-institutions ± in short, wherever people are trying to organize themselves to find a
way beyond the
of exploitative relations. The politically salient site where non-capitalist social relations
are modeled today is not the gallery or exhibition-based relational art project; it is the activist affinity group ± and
the popular assemblies, forum and network processes, activist camps and mass mobilizations that articulate it
with larger social movements and emergent struggles. We¶re sure effective collaborations between artists and
social movements are possible. But we don¶t think such collaborations need the neutralizing institutional
mediations implicit in Bourriaud¶s relational art. Although ³institutions´ in the sense of organizational
infrastructure might be necessary from a pragmatic perspective, we question the assumption that art institutions
are the most productive or appropriate form of institutionality here. We put no faith in the #
of
sociability from the art world; what we see too much of is the appropriation and displacement of social desire from
the streets into the aesthetic forms and affirmative circuits of administered art.
Debates about relational aesthetics were at times heated in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and provided a focus
for those oriented to ³progressive´ cultural practices, after YBA (³Young British Artists,´ known critically as ³High
Art Lite´)and before the current proliferation of art fairs. Now that these debates are winding down and their
shape becomes clearer, we can ask what was occluded and think about where these discussions could go. The
main responses to Bourriaud¶s book ± and Claire Bishop¶s have certainly been the most visible ± somehow
managed to leave the impression that this is as interesting and ³political´ as it gets in mainstream art discourse.
For us, what these debates around a
most of all reveal are the potentials and limits of art
discourse itself, as it is developed in magazines and journals such as
,
and $
. The
more vital convergences of culture and social transformation still form a glaring blind-spot of these and other
market-oriented ³art world´ publications.