Papastergiadis explores the success and failure of artistic collectives in his text, “Aesthetics and politics in the age of ambient spectacles”. Drawing on Claire Bishop’s essay, ‘The Social Turn: Collaboration and Its Discontents’, Papastergiadis makes connections between the artistic collective and the over the top claims that are made in regard to the impact their practice will have on the world. Papastergiadis suggests, “When the autonomists adorned themselves in Native American costumes and went fishing in Italy, or the Situationists invited Parisians to go for a derive, there was a tendency for critics to mark these gestures in hyperbolic claims, as if this was the beginning of the downfall of the State.”

The value and appeal of relational aesthetics is critiqued, using Ranciere’s theories as a means to vary the discussion. Ranciere describes the effect of relational art as “undoing the alliance between artistic radicality and political radicality”. In this sense Ranciere is suggesting that relational art is not effective in achieving change. Ranciere “…dismisses contemporary artists engaged in relational aesthetics for being merely derisive of power and turning art in on itself.”