Clare Bishop relational Aesthetics Antagonism

Clare Bishop Antagonism and relational Aesthetics 2004

October 110, fall 2004, p51-79 october magazine, Ltd.

Laboratory, construction site, relational exercise, project spaces, institutionalised studio activities, experience economy as a marketing strategy. Laboratory as leisure and entertainment. Work console, bar, reading lounge, cultural forms,

Greenbergian modernism is perhaps the change from private to public. Moving from private discrete, autonomous art that goes beyond its context to the infinity of connections that relational art has on its environment and audience.

The experience economy of contemporary art.

Palais de Tokyo opening 2002.

1.    How do we analyse how contemporary art addresses the viewer and asses the quality of the audience relations it produces?

2.     How are these manifested in our experience of the work? (Without effecting the quality of the experience?)

3.    how do you measure the silent presence of another person?

4.    Awkwardness and discomfort could be successful antagonism?

5.    Can the social harmony of the project be a measurement of success?

Esthétique Rélationnel

Palais de Tokyo’s improvised relationship to its surroundings has subsequently become a typical example of a visual tendency among Europian art venues to reconceptualise the “white cube” model of displaying contemporary art as a studio or “experimental laboratory”.

Tiravanija’s practice is a desire not just to erode the distinction between institutional and social space, but between artist and viewer, the phrase ‘lots of people’ regularly appears on his materials. Involvement of the audience is the main focus of his work, the food is a means to allow convivial relationships between audience and artist to develop. This is a unique way combining art and life in the gallery

For The ‘Cineboat’, community involvement, create something that is more than the object to trigger experience and conversations are all intrinsically the main focus. The use of a fishing boat that is no longer used as a fishing boat shows an absence of a past activity on the very site the Cineboat is in place. that makes the whole and the production of social relationships ie with the café owner, chef, future projects with Walmer Council, Walmer school children and parents, the development of the beach.

The activity of repurposing a two seated fishing boat  into a cinema is exciting, working with people I would never have got to know is exciting, and sharing the object/work/cineboat with others/strangers in an impromptu is equally exciting. It would be even more exciting to position the Cineboat into a gallery space out of its natural environment on the beach would I believe would have more of an impact on the projects message of how fisherman becoming out of place, boats redundancy, alienation, fragility and change.

I believe Bishop is saying in her essay Antagonism and relational Aesthetics, the term and meaning of ‘white cube’ is becoming outmoded and replaced by a new metaphor  “experimental laboratory”, ‘construction site’ and ‘art factory’ , which are also being applied to the notion of the studio and relational art, and where the exhibition is becoming a studio / experimental laboratory. This is a direct reaction to 1990’s open-ended works in perpetual flux, function over contemplation. The ‘laboratory’ is becoming a marketable space of leisure and entertainment, a reaction against the “white cube” and traditional museum exhibition curatorial modes that replaces goods and services with personal relational experiences, activated and participatory audiences, such as Pedro Reis‘s sanatorium to reconnect society and rejuvenate areas. Galleries seem to want inclusion rather than just ‘high art’ and borrow strategies and intervention, obscuring the boundaries between high art and community based projects.

My interpretation of Bishops text is suggesting that Bourriaud’s  Esthétique Rélationnel book declares the surface and spectacle is now unfit to be contemporary art and that “ The realm of human interactions and its social context”…  ie seeking to establish shared ideas to shape relations by more than one conscious mind, rather than the privatized space of individual consumption. Perhaps ‘privatized space ‘ means the mind of the individual or art establishment.  Artists need to shift towards social change in the here and now as a micro-utopian agenda where they can exist in the world in a better way in the present rather than focusing on the long term future.   I prefer to describe the work I am doing now, as both in the here and now with the mindfulness of sustaining something for the future, how aver it may change and alive.

Bourriaud’s argues that relational art privalages shared ideas to shape relations by more than one conscious mind over specific outcomes. Which Bishops says is not a new idea – it is borrowed from happenings, fluxus instructions and 1970’s performance art.

Evaluating relational art:

Bourriaud’s argues that these structures of an artworks produce a social relationship, connect people and create interactive communicative experience. I see Bourriaud’s relational aesthetic, Tiravanija and Gillicks work is the refusal of the hegemony of the arts councils funding criteria and government initiatives for regeneration and rejuvenation. They don’t need to shape their work around these hegemonies because they are self supporting artists who can do what they want. Artists like myself have to start somewhere. At the moment I am enjoying these funding structures because they are allowing me exercise my creativity that needs to be used, and the evaluative aspects are a formula for me to self reflect and validate what I am doing in the here and now.  I believe that what Bourriaud is saying that the evaluative aspect is  a private discrete and autonomous thing, that is the relational ‘outcome’ of their work, a poststructuralist outcome in the sense that the outcome is always unfixed, has no guaranty and is actually impossible to locate because there is always one more account of its reality.  It is an impossible to process all the alternative differences.  Though Bourriaud argues later on in this essay that “criteria of co-existance’ in other words, evaluative criteria to open-ended relational work is to politically judge the relations that are produced. Ie:

1.    Does this work permit me to enter into dialogue?

2.    Could I exist, and how, in the space it defines?

3.    What kind of model does the work produce?

Bishops argument to this is:

1- What social form is produced by a surrealist object? 2 - Do we value surrealist objects recycled outmoded commodities? 3 - Or that they explore the unconscious desires of anxieties?   Bishops says  Bourriaud ‘s questions are too difficult to answer and Gillick’s work just becomes a portrait of diversity in everyday life or just ‘NOKIA ART’ that produces interpersonal relations for their own sake and becomes just a free social space in the institution. I believe the advantages of doing this within the institution is that it protects the work from an undesirable audience.Bishops says this gives up the idea of transformation in public culture.  She suggests the answers to the questions below could determine the value, outcome, quality and validity of the work and measure relational success:

1. What types of relationships are being produced?

2. Who are these relationships being developed for?

3. Why are these relationships being developed?

Greenbergian modernism is perhaps the change from private to public. Moving from private discrete, autonomous art that goes beyond its context to the infinity of connections that relational art has on its environment and audience.

Gillicks work: is a backdrop to activities in the gallery space. To envisage change in the world, not as a targeted critique to present order but a potential trigger for participants.

Tiravanija’s work: is a combination of art and life in the gallery space, erodes the distinction between institution and social space, and artist and viewer. ..“Considered good because it permits networking among a group of art dealers and like-minded art lovers, evokes atmosphere, art-world gossip, exhibition reviews and flirtation” . he celebrates the gift but only to gallery goers and private groups (Bishop p67).

Suzanne Lacy: departs from the territory of institutionalised promotes values through ‘accessible’ visualisations of myth and narratives ’Locally sited’ interactions with broad and diverse audiences about issues directly relevant to their own lives based on engagement.