Cutting edge canon or nihilistic dinner party?

Bourriard claims that the current avant garde is the highly politicised cultural practice of human relations, a post-structuralist, technocratic, subjective quotidian beholden in the personages of the 'everyday' art gallery attendee. Examening works by Rikrit Tiravanija, he explains that the substance of an artwork is contained in the exchange between the people that view an artwork. While he claims that the historic avant-garde was oriented toward conflict and social struggle, today's micro-utopias existing within the consuming of a meal or access to an artist's makeshift residence, are too mundane to exact any form of cultural development. Claire Bishop argues that a truly democratic society is one in which 'relations of conflict are sustained, not erased.' She continues to say that 'without antagonism there is only the imposed consensus of authoritarian order - total suppression of debate and discussion,' meaning that the idea of relational aesthetics as Bourriard explains it does not challenge the status quo of society enough to consider itself a permanent canon.