slides from class lecture

1. RELATIONAL AESTHETICS
AND
ITS DISCONTENTS

2. TODAY
• What is R.A.?
• What are critiques of R.A.?
• Design a relational activity for next week’s class

3. NICOLAS BOURRIAUD
RELATIONAL AESTHETICS, 2002
“Where do the misunderstandings surrounding 1990s art come from, if not a
theoretical discourse complete with shortcomings?”

4. ART FROM
GENERATION
X
Generation of artists born in the early 1960 and coming of
age in late 1970s/early 1980s
• Rirkrit Tiravanija
• Liam Gillick
• Christine Hill
• Douglas Gordon
• Philippe Parreno
• Pierre Hughye
• Gillian Wearing
• Christine Hill
• Andrea Zittel
• Tinho Segal
• Jason Rhoades
• Gabriel Orozco
• Thomas Hirschhorn

5. RELATIONAL AESTHETICS
• Term created by curator Nicolas Bourriaud in the 1990s to describe the tendency to
make art based on, or inspired by, human relations and their social context
• Human relations become the raw material of art making
• Mostly took place within or sponsored by galleries, museums, biennials – not
public art (social practice)
• Bourriaud is mostly discussing European/European-based artists (some US-based)

6. R.A. IS A PRESENT FORM
“Relational art is not the revival of any movement, nor is it the comeback of any style.
It arises from an observation of the present and from a line of thinking about the fate
of artistic activity.”

7. ISSUES THAT FOR THE 1990s GENERATION
CHANGE SOCIAL INTERACTION
Communication
systems
Consumerism

8. COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS
“The much vaunted ‘communication superhighways’, with their toll plazas
and picnic areas, threaten to become the only possible thoroughfare from
a point to another in the human world. The superhighway may well
actually help us to travel, faster and more efficiently, yet it has the
drawback of turning its users into consumers of miles and their by-
products. We feel meagre and helpless when faced with the electronic
media, theme parks, user-friendly places, and the spread of compatible
forms of sociability, like the laboratory rat doomed to an inexorable
itinerary in its cage, littered with chunks of cheese.”

9. CONSUMERISM
• “anything that cannot be marketed will inevitably vanish. Before long, it
will not be possible to maintain relationships between people outside
these trading areas.”
• “The relationship between people, as symbolised by goods or replaced
by them..”

10. ALSO…
• Generation of artists born in the early 1960 and coming of age in late 1980s/1990s
as artists
• Failure of the 1960s (and exhaustion)
• AIDS epidemic defines their young adulthood
• Utopia/social revolution no longer seen as possible
• [in US - student debt, Reaganism, MTV, NEA culture wars]

11. “Social Utopias and revolutionary hopes have given way to everyday micro-utopias
and imitative strategies, any stance that is ‘directly’ critical of society is futile, if based
on the illusion of a marginality that is nowadays impossible, not to say regressive.”

12. MICRO-
UTOPIA
DEFINED
Micro-utopias are temporary manifestations of an
ideal civic culture where participants test an
aspirational political concept, process or social
interaction.

13. KEY
CONCEPT
“It seems more pressing to invent possible
relations with our neighbors in the present than to
bet on happier tomorrows”

14. “The possibility of a relational art (an art taking as its theoretical horizon the realm of
human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an
independent and private symbolic space), points to a radical upheaval of the
aesthetic, cultural and political goals introduced by modern art.”
[modern art = always ahead of its time, always looking forward, forging new paths,
focus on the future, utopian goals of the future]

15. “ARTWORK AS SOCIAL INTERSTICE”
Art as intervening social space to create temporary relations, bonds, interactions,
moments of shared understanding, communal experiences, conviviality
(friendliness):

16. WHAT DOES R.A. LOOK LIKE?

17. R.A. ART
FORMS
“Meetings, encounters, events, various types of
collaboration between people, games, festivals, and
places of conviviality, in a word all manner of
encounter and relational invention thus represent,
today, aesthetic objects likely to be looked at as such,
with pictures and sculptures regarded here merely as
specific cases of a production of forms with something
other than a simple aesthetic consumption in mind.”

18. R.A. FORMS
• “These "relational" procedures (invitations, casting sessions, meetings, convivial
and user-friendly areas, appointments, etc.) are merely a repertory of common
forms, vehicles through which particular lines of thought and personal relationships
with the world are developed.
• The subsequent form that each artist gives to this relational production is not
unalterable, either.
• These artists perceive their work from a threefold viewpoint, at once aesthetic
(how is it to be "translated" in material terms?), historical (how is to be
incorporated in a set of artistic references?) and social (how is it to find a coherent
position with regard to the current state of production and social relations?).”

19. Lack of understanding of this work
No traditional artistic objects created
(relationships)
is it a sculpture? an installation? a
performance? an example of social activism?

20. EXAMPLES

21. TWO STRANDS
OF R.A. OUTLINES
Various ways of exploring social bonds have to
do with already existing types of relations,
which the artist fits into, so that he/she can
take forms from them (parties, dinners,
meeting spaces, invitations)
Other practices are aimed at recreating socio-
professional models and applying their
production methods. Here, the artist works in
the real field of the production of goods and
services, and aims to set up a certain
ambiguity (stores, generosity, services)

22. UNTITLED (FREE/STILL)
1992/1995/2007/2011
RIRKRIT TIRAVANIJA
“Untitled (Free) was the title of Tiravanija’s
first solo exhibition, held in 1992 at the 303
Gallery in the SoHo neighborhood of
Manhattan. For the occasion, the artist moved
the contents of the gallery’s back rooms into
the exhibition space, placing the business of
art on display, and transformed the emptied
office into a temporary kitchen, where he
prepared Thai vegetable curry and served it
free to anyone who wanted it.
The work has had several iterations since
then. The word “still” was added to the title
later
https://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/20
12/02/03/rirkrit-tiravanija-cooking-up-an-art-
experience/

23. THE VOLKSBOUTIQUE (1991-PRESENT)
CHRISTINE HILL The Volksboutique is a series of small
shops that have popped up around
the world. The small businesses
combine the tradition of East German
community shops—stocked by
products made in her studio, the
Volksboutique Products Division—
with optimistic slogans rendered in
red, white, and blue text
The project began as a thrift
store/sculptural installation in Berlin
back in the ’90s when she left New
York and landed in Germany. Visitors
would open the door to her
underground shop, tea was served,
clothes were cheap, and people
congregated to discuss topics
ranging from identity and self
presentation, to weather and the
effect of tourism on the
neighborhood.
Takes place in galleries, museums,
biennials, art fairs.

24. “Hill is standing behind a magnificent oak vitrine in which the
most ordinary of everyday objects — a white plastic Presto letter
opener, a metal tea ball in the shape of a house, a notepad from
a long-gone stationery store crowned with a jaunty obsolete
letterhead, GDR paper bags with beautifully faded prints of fruit
on them — are displayed and take on the status and presence of
valuable art objets. But one can’t just select the Presto letter
opener and walk furtively out of Small Business with it; for sale is
something much more intangible, historicized, and ritualistic. A
conversation between Hill and the customer occurs, during
which a selection of objects is made that will all go into a
Whitman’s sampler–like cardboard box, sealed with Hill’s
trademark green Volksboutique sticker (all for a flat price — far
less than purchasing one of Hill’s works from her gallery, which is
part of the point).”

26. WAFFLES FOR AN OPENING
(1991)
BEN KINMONT
”The piece was a stack of paper plates,
stamped with an invitation to go to the
artist’s house for a waffle breakfast sometime
during the run of his show at White Columns
in NYC. The piece involved mutual trust. In
letting you into his house, he trusted you not
to steal or break anything other than your
fast; you trusted him not to poison or
otherwise abuse you. At the end of the meal
both signed the invitation as a record that
whatever conversations you had had
constituted a piece. I went on the next to last
day and had a group experience, shared with
ten other waffle-procrastinators.”
Bill Arning

27. “For a two-month period people came to our house for waffle breakfasts. I was
thinking about if it was safe for my family, how many would come, and who was
trusting most. My biggest surprise was how my friends didn't come, but strangers
did. We signed the paper plates as a thanks for coming and I started to see it as the
gift sculpture object.
New York City. White Columns and my home over thirty-one days. 432 people took
invitations. Thirty-two people ate waffles. Project can be repeated.”
Ben Kinmont

28. BIG CONFERENCE CENTRE
LIMITATION SCREEN (1998)
LIAM GILLICK
Big Conference Centre Limitation Screen,
by Liam Gillick, explores architecture’s role
in human interactions. Part Minimalist
sculpture, part corporate capitalist
architecture, his structure is seen
ultimately as a mere “backdrop or décor”
for the interactivity of audiences.
Installed at The Tate Modern

29. A BETTER LIFE FOR RURAL
WOMEN (1999)
TORO ADENIRAN-KANE (MAMA
TORO)
MERZ BARN PROJECT
created as part of the "ArtBarns: After Kurt Schwitters"
exhibition organized in the U.K. by Projects Environment
'Toro was born and raised in Nigeria but has been living
in Manchester for many years. For her ArtBarns project,
Mama Toro used the traditions of Nigerian wall painting
to transform the barn interior into a performance space
which was used for a variety of dances and other
activities by African women who traveled to Bowland
from Manchester during the course of the exhibition
(Manchester has a large African immigrant population).

30. TORO’S BARN WAS UTILIZED MATERIALS SUCH AS COW
DUNG IN THE TRADITIONAL NIGERIAN STYLE, PAINTED,
AND INSET WITH COWRIE SHELLS.

31. A–Z PIT BED CUSTOMIZED BY THE
SAN FRANCISCO ART INSTITUTE
(2002)
ANDREA ZITTEL
interpreted and built from the artist's
blueprints by students.
“The Pit Bed was a large platform with
sunken area in the middle for socializing and
sleeping. The floor and sides of the bed were
carpeted with the same carpet that covered
the rest of the room. There was bedding (a
comforter, bottom pad and pillows) in the
cubbies that could be pulled out for
sleeping. Ultimately, it was decided that
while the Pit Bed was more comfortable, at
times it could feel slightly confining or
oppressive. The Platform Bed offered less
shelter and comfort but more freedom.”

32. BATAILLE MONUMENT (2002)
DOCUMENTA 11, KASSEL, GERMANY
THOMAS HIRSCHHORN
“Hirschhorn worked with locals in a nearby
low-income, immigrant neighbourhood to
erect a temporary structure that served as a
site for community debates on the writings of
French philosopher Georges Bataille.
Participants from the neighbourhood could,
and did, voice their opinions on Bataille in the
monument’s makeshift television studio, thus
becoming part of the art while viewing it.”

33. AN EXHIBITION IN YOUR MOUTH
(2002+)
BEN KINMONT
“a six course menu of ten recipes ranging from
a Futurist dish to cheeses based on Sol Lewitt’s
Forms Derived from a Cube. The meal includes
Aerofood by Luigi Colombo Fillìa (1931), a
cucumber salad by Louise Bourgeois (1977), a
steak tartare by Marcel Duchamp (1961),
Basque Bass from Gordon Matta-Clark’s
restaurant Food (1971), Clouds by Geoff
Hendricks (1969), and Specific Cheeses by
Nicolas Boulard (2009)
FRAC in Montpellier (2002); NYU (2011); etc.
• https://vimeo.com/49129647

34. STREAMSIDE DAY (2003)
PIERRE HUYGHE (HWEEG) The work consisted in part of a parade and
celebration in a suburban development. In
an interview with Art21, the artist explained:
“Streamside is a little town, north of New
York. It was under construction when I
found it, and I created—or invented—a
tradition for it. I was interested in the notion
of celebration, and what it means to
celebrate. I tried to find a story within the
context of the local situation, looking for
what the people there had in common.”
Members of the Streamside community can
choose to execute the celebration again
each year, not unlike playing a composer’s
score.

35. REAP WHAT YOU
SEW/MENDING FOR THE
PEOPLE (2009-?)
MICHAEL SWAIN
On the 15th of every month, from noon
to 6pm, performance artist Michael
Swaine sets up shop in San Francisco’s
blighted Tenderloin District. Pushing a
homemade cart mounted with a treadle-
operated sewing machine, Swaine offers
his services as a street tailor, mending
whatever garments the neighborhood’s
denizens bring him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G0J0RmcV8
c
.

36. TINHO SEGAL
“constructed situations”

37. CONSTRUCTED
SITUATIONS
Choreographer
“dance for museums”
constructs situations that defy the traditional context
of museum and gallery environments, focusing on
the fleeting gestures and social subtleties of lived
experience rather than on material objects.

38. THIS IS SO CONTEMPORARY
(2005)
In this work performers dance in a happy,
emphatic way around visitors entering the
exhibition space, singing, "Oh, this is so
contemporary, contemporary, contemporary.
Oh, this is so contemporary, contemporary,
contemporary.” The catchy melody and
exciting dances left some of the museum
visitors cheerful and dancing, themselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb6CQ3F8
xKY

39. THIS PROGRESS (2010)
(WHAT DO YOU THINK,
‘PROGRESS’ MEANS?”)
Exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum, New York,
the artist empties Frank Lloyd Wright's famed
spiral gallery of all art work. The museum visitor is
met at the base of the spiral by a child, who asks
a small group what they think progress is. As they
begin their ascent up the spiral ramp the visitors
continue their conversation until they are met by
a high school student who picks up the
conversation and asks further non-sequitur
questions. Further still, they are met by a young
adult and lastly an older adult who finishes their
ascent to the upper-most point in the
Guggenheim
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5V2fHB2sFk

40. RELATIONAL AESTHETICS
AND DISCOMFORT
Mammalian Diving Reflex/Darren O’Donnell/Social
Acupuncture

41. MAMMALIAN DIVING REFLEX
Our work is based on two assumptions about the world: people are generous and there is
abundance.
• Generosity: We believe that almost all people are generous and willing to share when
provided the right context. Within the context of our performances, we make connections
between people (us as artists, our collaborators, and the local attendees), triggering a
temporary situation characterized by social generosity.
• Abundance: We believe there is abundance in the world – enough for everyone to have their
basic social and material needs easily met. That there are starving, lonely people in the world
is just a matter of distribution.

42. SOCIAL ACUPUNCTURE
The abundance that is locked in social structures, institutions and dynamics creates
holding patterns of energetic stagnation. Social acupuncture playfully and creatively
pokes at these with a dual purpose: to disrupt holding patterns, yielding a greater
degree of equity and balance, as well as to dissipate and distribute energy, yielding
new and unexpected ways of relating to – and being with – one another. We are not
social engineers, making large-scale changes through central planning; we are
curious nerds sending gentle little shocks into the system to observe what happens
between people.

43. SLOW DANCE WITH TEACHER
2007
“Slow Dance With Teacher let desiring
viewers fulfill life-long fantasies. The
students and teachers got intimate in the
luminous atmosphere designed, by the
brilliant Rebecca Picherack and Michelle
Ramsay, swaying to the sound of slow
tunes supplied by the glamorous DJ Murr.
“
https://mammalian.ca/projects/slow-
dance-with-teacher/

44. HAIRCUTS BY CHILDREN
2006-PRESENT
• Haircuts by Children is exactly what it says on
the tin: a group of children are given a crash
course in hairdressing and run a salon where they
offer free haircuts to members of the public.
Haircuts By Children invites you to take part in an
event that will test your courage and faith in the
future. Let them cut your fears away as they prove
themselves creative leaders, capable and
responsible citizens and dedicated coiffures.
• https://mammalian.ca/projects/haircuts-by-
children/

45. ALL THE SEX I’VE EVER HAD
(2010-PRESENT)
• In our youth-obsessed culture, All the Sex
I’ve Ever Had re-establishes a community of
wise elders to whom we can turn for advice
gleaned from their vast wealth of life expertise.
It shows us that our elders have a lot to teach
us, a lot to share, and that aging can yield a
way of being in the world that is open,
generous and fearless.
• https://mammalian.ca/projects/all-the-sex-ive-
ever-had/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KDDFGxy
59k

46. ART + AGONISM

47. CLAIRE BISHOP
• Critical voice regarding certain aspects of Relational Aesthetics
• Critiques artists such as Tiravanija, Gillick, Kinmont, lack of criticality of
social relations
• Relations are constructed of an art public, a specific social class
• Do not democratize art but simply reinforce their pre-existing, closed art
world and thus ignore its implicit class politics.
• Limited world of social interactions – nothing radical here as Bourriaud
thinks
• Calls for art that pulls from Mouffe’s notions of agonism

48. CHANTAL MOUFFE
“Can artistic practices still play a critical role in a society where the difference
between art and advertising have become blurred and where artists and cultural
workers have become a necessary part of capitalist production? “
Chantal Mouffe

49. AGONISM
(MOUFFE AND ERNESTO LACLAU)
Agonism (from Greek ἀγών agon, "struggle") is a political theory that emphasizes
the potentially positive aspects of certain (but not all) forms of political conflict. It
accepts a permanent place for such conflict but seeks to show how people might
accept and channel this positively.

50. “What is at stake in what I call the ‘agonistic’ struggle, which I see as the core of a
vibrant democracy, is the very configuration of power relations around which a given
society is structured.”
What does an aesthetics of agonism look like? What does an aesthetics of agonism
that utilizes social relations as material look like?

51. CHANTAL MOUFFE
• Art can play a role in social/political change
• But it can’t just be consensus/convivality
• Activist art must be critical + agonistic
• Agonism reveals the limit of consensus
• Activist art must take place in public spaces (to be effective)

52. • Mouffe calls for “Counter-hegemonic artistic practices”
• Hegemony = the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence
exerted by a dominant group
• “Counter-hegemonic artistic practices” seek to shift power

53. “to grasp the …character…of artistic activism we need to see them as
counter-hegemonic interventions whose objective is to occupy the public
space in order to disrupt the smooth image that corporate capitalism is
trying to spread, bringing to the fore its repressive character” (p. 5)

54. WHAT DOES AGONISM IN
RELATIONAL WORK LOOK LIKE?

55. THE PEOPLE VS. BANKERSTERS
SNOWBALL FIGHT
(2009)
“As huge snowfalls brought London to a standstill in February
2009, we thought that we would go and play with the bankers
who have been recklessly playing with people’s money,
destroying the economy and the climate in the process. A flurry
of text messages and emails the night before was enough to
launch The People vs the Banksters: Mass Snowball Fight. 40
people gathered in front the Oil and Gas Bank (aka Royal Bank
of Scotland) in the City of London and challenged the workers
to a snowball fight. Most of them cowered behind the glass
frontage but a few came out and played.”
Space for social relationships, encounters, but not necessarily
friendly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6YB53wp5dA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-nUc1ZlWBY

56. “…they are performing their powerlessness in the face of power in a profoundly
powerful way. Politically, humor is a powerless power that uses its position of
weakness to expose those in power through forms of self-aware ridicule.”
Simon Critchly, Infinitely, Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance

57. CONFLICT KITCHEN
(2010- MAY 2017)
JON RUBIN + CMU STUDENTS
• Conflict Kitchen was a restaurant that serves
cuisine from countries with which the United
States was in conflict.
• Each Conflict Kitchen iteration was
augmented by events, performances,
publications, and discussions that seek to
expand the engagement the public has with
the culture, politics, and issues at stake
within the focus region
• The restaurant rotated identities in relation
to current geopolitical events
• Iterations included: Iran, Afghanistan, Cuba,
North Korea, Venezuela, Palestine, and the
Iroquois/Haudenosaunee nation.

58. Haudenosaun
ee Menu/
Palestinian
Menu

59. SANTIAGO SIERRA

60. SANTIAGO SIERRA
His works highlights the exploitation of humans/human labor taking place in systems of
economic exchange
He focuses on workers/individuals who are most exploited and yet who remain least ‘visible’ in
official terms: illegal immigrants, asylum seekers, sex workers, drug addicts and poor,
unemployed and homeless people
He employs these individuals to perform pointless or repetitive tasks that are often absurd or
degrading to highlight work they perform daily
Individuals seen as objects, or not seen at all, become the subject

61. 90 CM BREAD CUBE (2003)
SANTIAGO SIERRA
Read as a counter to Tiravanija – much
different audience
A solid bread cube was baked with the
indicated dimensions and offered as
charity to a homeless shelter in Mexico
City
https://www.santiago-
sierra.com/200305_1024.php

62. OTHER THEORISTS COUNTER
BOURRIAUD

63. “…any stance that is
‘directly’ critical of society
is futile” - Nicolas
Bourriaud
“I think he must mean
fertile” – Stevphen
Shukaitis

64. CHANGE MIGHT LOOK
DIFFERENT IN THE
1990S AND 2000S
Shukaitis – radical
marching bands,
knitting protests, bike
protests, clown armies
Stephen Duncombe –
arts inflected protest,
affective activism

65. AFFECTIVE ACTIVISM =
CREATING NEW RELATIONS

66. AFFECT = EMOTION

67. “First there was a scream. A shattering of an understanding of the world, dislocated by the shock of the
real. Suspended between that rupture in perception and the realization that it need not be this way
something happened. The chance spotting of a marker, a beacon marking the travels of others who no
longer wished to be involved in the bloody machinations of the world as is, but who struggled against it
not with a sense of stoic ardor but rather of insurgent joy. Do you remember it? Maybe it was the
rhythms of a marching band lingering over streets, or an absurd slogan scrawled on an alley wall, or the
appearance of a revolutionary army of clowns. In a passing, fleeting, ephemeral moment, perhaps not
even realized at the time: a minor motion, internal movement traced along the contours of an emerging
collective time. And in that moment, everything changes. Not that everything actually changed, but the
disruption from the usual rhythms of life allows the emergence of something else, the emergence of a
form of sociality, animated by temporary overlapping and con- joining of aesthetics, politics, and life. In
this point occurs the con- junction of artistic and revolutionary machines in the formation of new
imaginal machines, a space where Gerald Raunig argues they “both overlap, not to incorporate one
another, but to enter to into a concrete exchange relationship for a time”
Shukaitis, Stevphen. Imaginal Machines: Autonomy & Self-Organization in the Revolutions of Everyday
Life. New York: Autonomedia 2009.

68. RADICAL MARCHING BANDS
transform space to create new social
relations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15H
c2sA9gcU&list=PLgNn6gmzN5FqUMZd
763qHbqN5-6VEcyDh&index=5

69. “..let us return for a second to a particular kind
of moment of the breaking down of barriers
through affective composition, namely through
forming an affective space through and around
the performance of radical marching bands. A
moment where the passivity of the crowd
perhaps is broken, and the nature of the space
is transformed.
It is in this sense that radical marching bands
are of the most interest: in the ways they
undercut the usual space (and sometimes
relations) of performance and create mobile
and affective spaces in the streets where it
becomes possible for other forms of relations to
emerge.”
Stevphen Shukaitis

70. CIRCA: THE CLANDESTINE
INSURGENT REBEL CLOWN ARMY
“an artist activist group from
the UK that uses clowning and
non-violent tactics to act
against corporate globalisation,
war, and on other issues”
https://news.wttw.com/2012/05
/15/nato-protests-will-send-
clowns
https://www.youtube.com/watc
h?v=bOOLLk9xlkY

72. RELATIONAL ACTIVITY FOR NEXT CLASS
WHICH YOU WILL EVALUATE AFTER
• Meal, service, generosity activity
• Creates a social space for conviviality, relations, discussion, etc.
• How will this activity generate conviviality, or relations?
• What do we need to do this in the simplest way possible