Nicolas Bourriaud, “Art of the 1990’s”, from Relational Aesthetics, Paris: les presses de reel, 2002, pp.25-40.
Who is Nicolas Bourriaud?
Nicolas Bourriaud (born 1965) is French curator and art critic. He is now Gulbenkian curator of contemporary at Tate Britain, London.
Bourriaud talks about relational art as being based on human social relations rather than an independent and private space. He talks about artists as being facilitators in events. He says that instead of a utopian agenda, today’s artists have microtopian agendas- they are learning to inhabit the world in a better way. So relational art is said to set up microtopias, focusing on the “here and now”.
Claire Bishop presents a critique of Bourriad’s relational aesthetics in “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics”, where she asks questions the purpose of relational art because it does not take into account the power relationship between the artist and the participant. She describes artists who have relational aspects to their work but whose work acts against Bourriad’s idea of social togetherness and makes the power relationships more evident as part of the work. She cites Santiago Sierra as an artist who uses the relational aspects but in a more controversial way, thus standing against Bourriad’s description of an artist like Rirkrit Tiravanjam, who creates feel-good work. The result, instead of inclusion, is a feeling of exclusion by the participant.
This effect highlights the role of the artist in the making and imposing of meaning of relational work. The democratic notion of viewing and participating in a relational work is ultimately defined by certain political and power structures which are put into play by the artist. This does not seem to re-create or facilitate everyday relational activity except to perhaps make us aware of hidden agendas. Once again as in Lyotard’s account of Post-modernism - there seems to be this idea of being made evident only by being made absent- so are we really any further advanced in our quest for a utopian here and now?
Nicolas Bourriaud, “Art of the 1990’s”, from Relational Aesthetics, Paris: les presses de reel, 2002, pp.25-40;p31
Bishop, Claire. "Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics." October 110: 51-79.
Ibid;p77
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The way Bishop isolates and references artists whose works can be approached as relational but not necessarily emphasised as such by the artist provocative. It gives weight to and expands on your noting the role the artist plays in making and imposing the meaning of a relational work but to a slightly different degree. What is bought into focus is an influence the artist has over a work even in an external sense.. that is their framing of it under a specific category or field, or an emphasis on a particular quality in effect dictating it's function and reception from the outset. Couldn't any art work be held up as relational to some extent?..a shared experience between viewers,work and artist? For what would it mean to engage with Tirivanija's "Pad Thai" as a performance?or approach it as a scultpural installation once all food has gone and all that's left are cups and dishes?Despite a supposed focus on the role of the viewer it seems more and more evident that so called relation works are one for and by the artist only.
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