Social Interstice or capitalist collusion?

Relational Aesthetics, as put forward by Nicolas Bourriaud, is a theoretical premise which seeks to locate contemporary art practice within the era of late capitalism. As the result of all human relationships becoming defined within a capitalist society - Bourriaud cites Debord's "Society of The Spectacle" -m the artist seeks to shift his/her practice to event based manipulations in which the object is abandoned. Instead, a set of practices which are concerned with the inter-human relations and their socio-poloitical context has been adopted.

The relational artist as proposed by Bourriaud, no longer seeks to transform society or believes in the Western construct of a future Utopia. Instead, the artist is "learning to inhabit the world in a better way" and in doing so sets up micro-utopias in which an 'interstice' is created. This interstice is sought by the artist in order to transcend the capitalist context of most human interactions and create a space of co-existence which is assessed by the quality of the relations produced.

Rirkrit Tiravanija is a socially engaged artist whose artistic praxis has been embraced by Bourriaud as one in which comes under the umbrella of Relational Aesthetics. For Tiravanija, it is the whole situation which constitutes the work, not just one element and certainly not an object. Tiravanija's practice aims to erode the distinction between artist and viewer and also between the rarified space of the gallery and that of 'everyday' social space. He is interested in extending the notion of the Duchampian "un-art object" by putting the concept of everyday life into an art context. Thus, in works such as "Untitled" 1992 in Gallery 303, the gallery becomes a social space in which the everyday running of business becomes transparent and where the involvement of the audience as they are served food, becomes the focus of the work.

One may ask whether Tiravanija has succeeded in creating a successful interstice - according to the principles of Marxist theory - or whether he is colluding with the intrinsically mercantile nature of the commercial gallery by allowing for and profiting from the sale of empty crates of beer bottles as Duchampian readymades through the Gavin Brown Enterprises Gallery. Tiravanija makes the claim that his aim is to 'extend the notion of the everyday as the subject and his medium is rawlife' yet we are left with the notion that however noble his intentions, the outcome is definitely within the framework of capitalist trade. The commodification of the object is certainly part of an outcome of practice which had proposed the abandoning of the object. A further limitation of his work is the institutionalised space of the gallery which does restrict the audience, as Bishop suggests, to a certain socio-demographic background. We may extend this limitation to the questioning of the validity of an artistic practice when it becomes part of the specific theoretical program of an institution such as The Palais de Tokyo. Does it retain its avant-garde impetus and are we being asked to be pragmatists who no longer seek to transform and change a society but are " condemned to create a series of minor modifications..."?