Relational Aesthetics

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Collection Documents sur I'art Available in french Nicolas Bourriaud, Esthétique relationnelle, 1998 Lionel Bovier & Christophe Cherix, Prise directe,2003 Dan Graham, RocUMusic Textes, 1999 Robert Nickas, \/ivre Libre ou mourir,20O0 Vincent Pécoil, (éd.), P rière s américaines, 2002 Fabian Stech, J'ai parlé avec lnvier Annette Messager Sylvie Fleury, Hirschhorn, Pierre Huyghe, Delvoye, D.G.-F., Hou Hanru, Sophie Calle, Ming, Sans et Bourriaud,2007 Nicolas Thély,Vu à lawebcam (essai sur laweb-intimité),2002 Eric Troncy, Le docteur Olive dans Ia cuisine avec le revolver, 2002 Eric Troncy, Le colonel Moutarde dans la bibliothèque avec le chandelier, 1998 Elisabeth Wetterwald, Rue sauvage, 2003 Chen Zhen, Les entretiens,2003 Avalaible in english Nicolas Bourriaud, Re lational Ae st hetic s, 2O02 Robert Nickas, Live Free or Die,2000 Chen Zhen, The Discussions,2O03 O Les presses du réel, 1998, 2009 O Les presses du réel, 20O2 (for the english translation) www.lespressesdureel.com Relational Aesthetics

Transcript of Relational Aesthetics

Page 1: Relational Aesthetics

Collection Documents sur I'art

Available in frenchNicolas Bourriaud, Esthétique relationnelle, 1998

Lionel Bovier & Christophe Cherix, Prise directe,2003Dan Graham, RocUMusic Textes, 1999

Robert Nickas, \/ivre Libre ou mourir,20O0Vincent Pécoil, (éd.), P rière s américaines, 2002Fabian Stech, J'ai parlé avec lnvier Annette Messager Sylvie

Fleury, Hirschhorn, Pierre Huyghe, Delvoye, D.G.-F., HouHanru, Sophie Calle, Ming, Sans et Bourriaud,2007Nicolas Thély,Vu à lawebcam (essai sur laweb-intimité),2002Eric Troncy, Le docteur Olive dans Ia cuisine avec le revolver,

2002Eric Troncy, Le colonel Moutarde dans la bibliothèque avec le

chandelier, 1998

Elisabeth Wetterwald, Rue sauvage, 2003Chen Zhen, Les entretiens,2003

Avalaible in englishNicolas Bourriaud, Re lational Ae st hetic s, 2O02

Robert Nickas, Live Free or Die,2000Chen Zhen, The Discussions,2O03

O Les presses du réel, 1998, 2009

O Les presses du réel, 20O2 (for the english translation)

www.lespressesdureel.com

Relational Aesthetics

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Foreword

Where do the misunderstandings surrounding 1990s' art comefrom, if not a theoretical discourse complete with shortcomings?An overwhelming majority of critics and philosophers are reluctantto come to grips with contemporary practices. So these remain

.essentially un¡eadable, as their originality and their relevance

are beins raised these davs by afists. What are the real challengesof contemporny art? What are its links with society, history andculture? The critic's primary task is to recreate the complex set ofproblems that a¡ise in a particular period or age, and take a closelook at the various answers given. Too often, people are happydrawing up an inventory of yesterday's concerns, the better tolament the fact of not getting any answers. But the very firstquestion, as far as these new approaches are concerned, obviouslyhas to do with the material form of these works. How are theseapparently elusive works to be decoded, be they process-related orbehavioural by ceasing to take shelter behind the sixties art history?Let us quote several examples of these activities. Rirkrit Tiravanijaorganises a dinner in a collector's home, and leaves him all theingredients required to make a Thaï soup. Philippe Parreno invitesa few people to pursue their favourite hobbies on May Day, on a

ins them on the basis of

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factory assembly line. Vanessa Beecroft dresses some twentywomen in the same way, complete with a red wig, and the visitoilerelV ge_ts a glimpse of them through the doãrway. tvtau¡zioCattelan feeds rats on "Bel paese,' ãh""r" and sells them asmultiples, or exhibits recently robbed safes. In u Cop"Jug"nsquare, Jes Brinch and Henrik prenge Jacobsen install an upturñedbus that causes a rival riot in tne ãity. christine Hill works as acheck-out assistant in a supermarkei, organises a weekly gymworkshop in a gallery. ca¡sten Höller iecreates the chemicalformula of molecules secreted by the human brain when in love,builds^an inflatable plastic yacht, and breeds chaffinches with thãaim of teaching them a new song. Noritoshi Hirakawa puts a smallad in a newspaper to find a girl to take part in his show. pierreHuyghe summons peopre to a casting session, makes a TV

blic, and puts a photograph offew yards from the building site.

the riveriest racror rhat is praved #tffi'5:n:.ïi#îi#ilÏido with interactive, user-friendly and relational concepts.

These days, communications are plunging human contacts intomonitored areas that divide the social uono up into (quite) differentproducts. Artistic activity, for its part, strives to achieve modestconnections, open up (One or two) obstructed passages, andconnect levels of reality kept apart from one another. The muchvaunted "communication superhighways", with their toil prazasand picnic a¡eas, th¡eaten to heçs¡¡s the only possible ttrorouifrfarefrom a point ro anorher in the human world. îne soperhigt *ul _ãywell actually help us to travel faster and more efFróientty, y"tit t

".the drawback of turning its users into consumers of miles and theirby-products. we feel meagre and helpless when faced with theelectronic media, themg nar.kg, user_friéndly places, and the.pr*aof compatible forms of sociability, like the laboratory rat doàmedto an inexorable itinerary in its cage, littered with chunks of cheese.

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The ideal subject of the society of extras is thus reduced to thecondition of a consumer of time and space.

For anything that cannot be marketed will inevitably vanish.Before long, it will not be possible to maintain relationshipsbetween people outside these trading areas. So here we aresummonsed to talk about things around a duly priced drink, as asymbolic form of contemporary human relations. You arelooking for shared warmth, and the comforting feeling of wellbeing for two? So try our coffee... The space of current relationsis thus the space most severely affected by general reification.The relationship between people, as symbolised by goods orreplaced by them, and signposted by logos, has to take onextreme and clandestine forms, if it is to dodge the empire ofpredictability. The social bond has turned into a standa¡disedartefact. In a world governed by the division of labour and ultra-specialisation, mechanisation and the la'ù/ of profitability, itbehoves the powers that human relations should be channelledtowards accordingly planned outlets, and that they should bepursued on the basis of one or two simple principles, which canbe both monitored and repeated. The supreme "separation", theseparation that affects relational channels, represents the finalstage in the transformation to the "Society of the Spectacle" as

described by Guy Debord. This is a society where humanrelations are no longer "directly experienced", but start tobecome blurred in their "spectacular" representation. Herein lies.the most burnins issue to do with art toda)/: is it still possible togenerate relationshins with the wnrld, in a nractical field art-

was a reservoir of examples of what had to be tangibly"achieved" in day-to-day life, artistic praxis appears these daysto be a rich loam for social experiments, like a space partlyprotected from the uniformity of behavioural patterns.The workswe shall be discussing here outline so manv hands-on utopias.

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Some of the following essays were originally published inmagazines -for the most part in Docuàents sur l,art, and.exhibition catalogues', but have been considerably reworked, notto say re-ordered, here. Others are previously unpublished. Thiscollection of essays is also rounded off Uy u glossary, which readersmay refer to whenever a problematic concept rears its head. Tomake the book that much easier to come to gdps with, may wesuggest to turn right away to the definition of the word ,,Art,,.

L. "Le paradigme esthétique (Férix Guattari et L'art)" was pubrished by the magazinechimères,1993; "Reration écran" was published in the catarogue for the 3rd LyonContemporary fu1 Biennial, 1995.

Relational form

Artistic activity is a game, whose forms, patterns and functionsdevelop and evolve according to periods and social contexts; it isnot an immutable essence. It is the critic's task to study this activityin the present. A certain aspect of the programme of modernity has

been fairly and squarely wound up (and not, let us hasten toemphasise in these bourgeois times, the spirit informing it). Thiscompletion has drained the criteria of aesthetic judgement we are

heir to of their substance, but we go on applying them to present-day artistic practices. The new is no longer a criterion, exceptamong latter-day detractors of modern art who, where the much-execrated present is concerned, cling solely to the things that theirtraditionalist culture has taught them to loathe in yesterday's art.

In order to invent more effective tools and more valid viewpoints,it behoves us to understand the changes nowadays occurring in thesocial arena, and grasp what has already changed and what isstill changing. How are we to understand the types of artisticbehaviour shown in exhibitions held in the 1990s, and the lines ofthinking behind them, if we do not start out from the same situationas the artists?

Contemporary artistic practice and its cultural planThe modern political era, which came into being with theEnlightenment, was based on the desire to emancipate individualsand people. The advances of technologies and freedoms, the

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decline of ignorance, and improved working conditions were allbilled to free humankind and tritp to usher in ä b"tt", society. Thereare several versions of modernity, however. The 20th

""n,í.y *u,

thus the arena for a struggle between two visions of the world: amodest, rationalist conception, hailing from the lgth century_angþ

#Soqhy of. spontaneity and liberation through rhe irrational

of history?

because they are no longer presented like the precursory phenomena

of an ineviøble historical evolution. Quite to the contary, theyapryæ fragmentary and isolated, like orphans of an overall view ofthe world bolstering them with the clout of an ideology.It is not modernity that is dead, but its idealistic and teleologicalversron.Today's fight for modemity is being waged in the same terms as

yesterday's, barring the fact that the avant-garde has stopped

, patrolling like some scout, the troop having come to a cautious

¡p, standstill around a bivouac of certainties. Art was intended to

f prepare and announce a future world: today it is modelling possible*€ universes.

The ambition of artists who include their practice within the

slipstream of historical modernity is to repeat neither its forms norits claims, and even less assign to art the same functions as it. Theirtask is akin to the one that Jean-François Lyotard allocated to post-modern a¡chitecture, which "is condemned to create a series oLminor modifr.cations in a space whose modernit! it inhpritt, ond.

"chance" can be summed up in just a few words:learning to inhabit the world in a better way, instead of trying toconstruct it based on a preconceived idea of historical evolution.Otherwise put, the role of artworks is no longer to form imaginaryand utopian realties, but to actually be ways of living and modelsof action within the existing real, whatever the scale chosen by theartist. Althusser said that one always catches the world's train on themove; Deleuze, that "gass grows from the middle" and not fromthe bottom or the top. The artist dwells in the circumstances thepresent offers him, so as to turn the setting of his life (his links with

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the physical and conceptual world) into a Iasting world. He catchesthe world on the move: he is a tenant of culture, to borrow Michelde Certeau's expression'. Nowadays, modernity extends into thepractices of cultural do-it-yourself and recycling, into the inventionof the everyday and the development of time lived, which are notobjects less deserving of attention and examination thanMessianistic utopias and the formal "novelties" that typifredmodernity yesterday. There is nothing more absurd either than theassertion that contemporary art does not involve any politicalproject, or than the claim that its subversive aspects a¡e not basedon any theoretical terrain. Its plan, which has just as much to dowith working conditions and the conditions in which curturalobjects are produced, as with the changing forms of social life, maynevertheless seem dull to minds formed in the mould of culturalDa¡winism. Here, then, is the time of the "dolce utopia,,, to useMaurizio Cattelan's phrase...

Armvork as social intersticeThe possibility of a rerational a¡t (an art taking as its theoreticalhorizon the realm of human interactions and its social context,rather than the assertion of an independent and private symbolicspace), points to a radical upheaval of the aesthetic, cultural andpolitical goals introduced by modern art. To sketch a sociology ofthis, this evolution srems essenrially from the bifh of a world-lideurban culture, and from the extension of this city model to more orless all cultural phenomena. The general growth of towns andcities, which took offat the end of the Seconã World War, gave risenot only to an extraordinary upsurge of social exchanges,-but alsoto much greater individual mobiliry (through the devãlopment ofnetworks and roads, and telecommunications, and the gradualfreeing-up of isola¡ed places, going with the openinglup ofattitudes). Because of the crampedness of dwelring rpu"". in ttrisurban world, there was, in tandem, a scaling_down of iurniture andobjects, now emphasising a greater manoeuvrability. If, for a long

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period of time, the artwork has managed to come across as a luxurylordly item in this urban setting (the dimensions of the work, as

well as those of the apartment, helping to distinguish between theirowner and the crowd), the development of the function of artworksand the way they are shown attest to a growing urbanisation of theafistic experiment. What is collapsing before our very eyes isnothing other than this falsely a¡istocratic conception of the

arrangement of works of art, associated with the feeling ofterritorial acquisition. In other words, it is no longer possible toregard the contemporary work as a space to be walked through (the"owner's tour" is akin to the collector's). It is henceforth presented

discussion. The city bag_j¡shqred in and spread the hands-on

Rousseau, a jungle hampering any lasting encounter..Once raised tothe power of an absolute rule of civilisation, this system ofintensive encounters has ended up producing linked artisticpractices: an art form where the substrate is formed by inter-subjectivity, and which takes being-together as a central theme, the"encounter" between beholder and picture, and the collectiveelaboration of meaning. Let us leave the matter of the historicity ofthis phenomenon on one side: art has always been relational invarying degrees, i.e. a factor of sociability and a founding principleof dialogue. One of the virtual properties of the image is its powerof linlcage (Fr- reliance), to borrow Michel Maffesoli's term: flags,logos, icons, signs, all produce empathy and sharing, and allgenerate bont. Art (practices stemming from nainting andsculpture which come across in the form of an exhibitionl turns outto be particularly suitable when it comes to e*pressingthis hands-On civilisation.hecatse iÍ tightens the space of relrtinnt ¡n'like'lY

, confasting with that dense and "ûouble-free"

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of.private consumption, and also unlike theatre and cinema whichbring small groups together before specific, unmistakable images.Actually, there is no live comment made about what is ,""n i,t "discussion time is put off until after the show). At an exhibition, onthe other hand, even when inert forms a¡e involved, there is thepossibility of an immediate discussion, in both senses of the term.I see and perceive, I comment, and I evolve in a unique space andtime. At is the place that produces a specific sociabiliìy. Iiremainsto be seen what the status of this is in the ,"t of ,,states ofencounter" proposed by the city. How is an art focused on theproduction of such forms of conviviality capabre of re-launchingthe modern emancipation plan, by compiementing it? How ¿oes ípermit the developmenr of new politicaland cultu;al designs?Before giving concrete examples, it is well worth reconsiãering theplace of artworks in the overalr economic system, be it symboiic ormaterial, which governs contemporary society. Over aná above itsmercantile nature and its semantic value, the work of art representsa social interstice- This interstice term was used by Karl i¿-^ todescribe trading communities that elude the capitalist economiccontext by being removed from the law of profit: barter,

other tradin

When Gabriel Orozco puts an orange on the stalls of a deserted

Brazilian ma¡ket (Craay Tourist,1991), or slings a hammock in the

MoMA garden in New York (Hamoc en Ia moïu4 1993), he isoperating at the hub of "social infra-thinness" (l'inframince social),that minute space of daily gestures determined by thesuperstructure made up of "big" exchanges, and defined by it.Without any wording, Orozco's photographs are a documentaryrecord of tiny revolutions in the common urban and semi-urban life(a sleeping bag on the grass, an empty shoebox, etc. ). They recordthis silent, still life nowadays formed by relationships with the

other. When Jens Haaning broadcasts funny stories in Turkishthrough a loudspeaker in a Copenhagen square (Turkish Jokes,

1994), he produces in that split second a micro-community, one

made up of immigrants brought together by collective laughterwhich upsets their exile situation, formed in relation to the workand in it. The exhibition is the special place where such momentarygroupings may occur, governed as they are by differing principles.

an rnter-human commerce

neighbourhood relationships fizzle. @social functions gradually reduces the relatioq4l . Just a few

beines. but now we are wokenautomatic cash machine has

are modelled on the effrciency of the

move into the relational realm bv turning it into an iqsrrc.

possibilities than those in é within this

And depending on the iredthe nature of the works and the

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other words, by analysing the coherence

C-or.*c¡^ac- -+ 1"",.^n I ",-W*¿rg ^,^.!- J -!*-s þo-r ?a.oùræ--l-Þ\ .(- ^/,+ìff"t14'

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artlst must assume the symbolic models he shows. Allrepresentation (though contemporary art models more than itrepresents, and fits into the social fabric more than it drawsinspiration therefrom) refers to values that can be transposed intosociety. As a human activity based on commerce, art is at once theobject and the subject of an ethic. And this all the more so because,unlike other activities, i¡s sore function is to be exposed to th¡icommerce.Art is a state of encounter.

Relational aesthetics and random materialismRelational aesthetics is part of a materialistic tradition. Being"materialistic" does not mean sticking to the triteness of facts, noîdoes it imply that sort of na¡row-mindedness that consisis inreading works in purely economrc terms. The philosophicaltradition that underpins this rerationar aesthetic *ui d"fin"ã in unoteworthy way by Louis Althusser, in one of his last writings, asa "materialism of encounter", or random materialism. Thisparticular materiarism takes as its point of departr¡re the worldcontingency, which has no pre_existing origin or sense, norReason, which might allot it a purpoie. So the essence ofhumankind is purely trans-individual, made up of bonds that linkindividuals together in social forms which a¡e invariably historical(Marx: the human essence is the set of sociar relations). There is nosuch thing as any possible "end of history" or "end of art,,, becausethe game is being forever re-enacted, in relation to its function, inother words, in relation to the players and the system which theyconstruct and criticise. Hubet Damisch saw in the "end of arf'theories the outcome of an irksome muddle between the "end of thegame" and the "end of play". A new game is announced as soon asthe social setting radically changes, without the meaning of the

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game itself being challenged'. This inter-human gøze which formsour object (Duchamp: "Art is a game betvveen all people of allperiods") nevertheless goes beyond the context of what is called"art" by commodity. So the "constructed situations" advocated bythe Situationist International belong in their own right to this"game", in spite of Guy Debord who, in the final analysis, deniedthem any artistic character. For in them, quite to the contrary, he saw"art being exceeded" by a revolution in day-to-day life. Relationalaesthetics

What do we mean by form? A coherent unit, a structure(independent entity of inner dependencies) which shows the typicalfeatures of a world. The artwork does not have an exclusive hold onit, it is merely a subset in the overall series of existing forms. In thematerialistic philosophical tradition ushered in by Epicurus andLucretius, atoms fall in parallel formations into the void, followinga slightly diagonal course. If one of these atoms swerves off course,it "causes an encounter with the next atom and from encounter toencounter a pile-up, and the birth of the world"... This is howforms come into being, from the "deviation" and random encounter

through this viable world state, because they get elements held apart

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a "world" a collection of disparate element (installation, for ii'staace)

umts to

of socmile Durckheim, considering the ".o"i¿@

artistic "thing" sometime offers itself as a "fact" o. - "nr"rnble of

facts that happens in the time or space, and whose unity (making it aform, a world) can not be questioned. The setting is widening;ãfterthe isolated object, it now can embrace the whole scene: the fãrm ofGordon Matta-cla¡k or Dan Graham's work can not be reduced tothe "things" those two artist "produce"; it is not the simple secondaryeffects of a composition, as the formalistic aestheúc would like táadvance, but the principle acting as a trajectory evolving throughsigns, objects, forms, gestures... flie contemporary artwork,s formis spreading out from its material form: it is a linking element, aprinciple of dynamic agglutination. An a¡twork is a dot on a line.

Form and others'gazeIf, as Serge Daney writes, "all form is a face looking at us", whatdoes a form become when it is plunged into the dimension ofdialogue? What is a form that is essentially relational? It seems

worth while to discuss this question by taking Daney's formula as

a point of reference, precisely because of its ambivalence: as formsare looking at us, how are we to look at them?Form is most often defined as an outline contrasting with a content.But modemist aesthetics talks about "formal beauty" by referring toa sort of (con)fusion between style and content, and an inventivecomparibility of the former with the latter. we judge a workthrough its plastic or visual form. The most common criticism to dowith new artistic practices consists, moreover, in denying them any"formal effectiveness", or in singling out their shortcomings in the"formal resolution". In observing contemporarv artistic practices.

encounterproposition with other formations, artistic or otherwise.There a¡e no forms in nature, in the wild state, as it is our gaze thatcreates these, by cutting them out in the depth of the visible. Formsate developed, one from another. What was yesterday regarded as

formless or "informal" is no longer these things today. When theaesthetic discussion evolves, the status of form evolves along withit, and through it.In the novels of polish writer Witold Gombrowicz, we see howeach individual generates his ownþrm through his behaviour, hisway of coming across, and the way he addresses others. This formcomes about in the borderline area where the individual struggleswith the Other, so as to subject him to what he deems to be his"being". So, for Gombrowicz, our "form" is merely a relationalproperty, linking us with those who reify us by the way they see us,

to borrow a Sartrian terminology. When the individual thinks he is

to meet: for example, death and the media in Andy ìWa¡hol. Deleuzeand Guattari were nor saying anything different when they definedthe work of art as a "block of affects and percepts " . Ãrt keepstogether moments of subjectivity associàted

-with singuia.

experiences, be it cézanne's apples or Buren's striped structureslThecomposition of this bonding agent, whereby encountering atomsmanage to form a word, is, needless to say, dependeni on thehistorical context. what today's informed public understands by"keeping together" is not the same thing t¡at ttris public imagineáback in the lgth century. Today, the "glue" is less obviour, uI ou.visual experience has become more complex, enriched by a centuryof photographic images, then cinematogaphy (introauction of thlsequence shot as a new dynamic unity), enabling us to recognise as

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The face, Lévinas asserts, is "what orders me to serve another","what forbids me 1o kill"l . Any "inter-subjective relation" proceeds

by way of the form of the face, which symbolises the responsibilitywe have towa¡ds others: "the bond with others is only mqde as

responsibility", he writes, but don't ethics have a horizon other thanthis humanism which reduces inter-subjectivity to a kind of inter-servility? Is the image, which, for Daney, is a metaphor of the face,

only therefore suitable for producing taboos and proscriptions,through the burden of "responsibility"? When Daney explains that"allform is aface looking at us", he does not merely mean that weare responsible for this. To be persuaded of as much, suffrce it torevert to the profound significance of the image for Daney. Forhim, the image is not "immoral" when it puts us "in the place wherewe were not"t, when it "takes the place of another". What isinvolved here, for Daney, is not solely a reference to the aesthetics

of Bazin and Rossellini, claiming the "ontological realism" of the

cinematographic art, which even if it does lie at the origin ofDaney's thought, does not sum it up. He maintains that form, in an

image, is nothing other than the representation of desire. Producing ,

a form is to invent possible encounters; receiving a form is to creafe.

the conditions for an exchange. the wav vou return a service in a

is flte representative of desire in the imaee. It is the horizon based

on which the image mav have a meaning. bv pointinq to a desired

based on which his own desire can rebound, This exchange can be

summed up by a binomial: someone shows something to someonewho returns it as he sees fit. The work tries to catch my gaze, theway the new-born child "asks for" its mother's gaze. In La Vecommune, Tzvetan Todorov has shown how the essence ofsociability is the need for acknowledgement, much more thancompetition and violence'. When an a¡tist shows us something, he

uses a transitive ethic which places his work between the "look-at-me"

and the "look-at-that". Daney's most recent writings lament the

As Daney suggested, form becomes "face" through the effect ofthis invention of relations. This formura, needless to add, calls tomind the one acting as the pedestal f.or Emmanuel Lévinas,thinking, for whom the face represents the sign of the ethical taboo.

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end of this "Show/See" pairing, which represented the essence ofa democracy of the image in favour of aìother pairing, this oneTV-related and authoritarian, "promote/recelvË,,, mlting tfr"advent of the "Visual". In Daney's thinking, ,,all

form fs ã ¡ac"looking et me", because it is summonrng -i to dialogue with it.

levels

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9

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Art of the 1990s

Participatíon and trønsitivity

A metal gondola encloses a gas ring that is lit, keeping a large bowlof water on the boil. Camping gears is scattered around the gondolain no particula¡ order. Stacked against the wall a¡e cardboa¡d boxes,most of them open, containing dehydrated Chinese soups whichvisitors are free to add the boiling water to and eat.

This piece, by Rirkrit Tiravanija, produced for the Aperto 93 at theVenice Biennial, remains a¡ound the edge of any definition: is it a

sculpture? an installation? a performance? an example of socialactivism? In the last few years, pieces such as this have increasedconsiderably. In international exhibitions we have seen a growingnumber of stands offering a range of services, works proposing aprecise contract to viewers, and more or less tangible models ofsociability. Spectator "participation"- theorised by Fluxus happeningsand oerformances. has become a constant feature of artistic oractice.As for the space of reflection opened up by Marcel Duchamp's "artcoefficient", attempting to create precise boundaries for thereceiver's held of activity in the afwork, this is nowadays beingresolved in a culture of interactiviry which posits the transitivity ofthe cultural object as a fait accompli. As such, these factors merelyratify a development that goes way beyond the mere realm of art. Theshare of interactivity grows in volume within the set of

l. Jean-François Lyotard: "The post modem explained to chi!àren',,London, Tuma¡ound,1992.

4 ^\*

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