This course has broadened my understanding of what art is. I had never even heard of relational aesthetics before starting this class, and it has been really interesting to see how artists approach the idea. The art I make is vastly different from anything that could be considered relational art. Having said that I always really like it when people come and talk to me about my work, whether they love it or hate it. To me, it’s that interaction that validates the process.

Week 12: network cultures, spatial aesthetics, cultural utopianism

The article by Meg Ulman, (although it looks like it was written by Patrick Jones, it’s actually Meg Ulman) Because You’re Worth It, acted as an exploration of consumption and waste in art, critiquing In The Balance: Art For a Changing World, a show at the Museum of Contemporary Art. While the show featured works relating to environmental issues, Jones raised issues about the sustainability of the show. According to the MCA website, “The exhibition reflects the diversity of environmental debates and concerns within and beyond Australia today, and features works that address a spectrum of issues including sustainability and recycling.” The content of the artworks related to the environment, there was no action given to counter-act or explore the affect of the show itself on the environment.

Lucas Ihlein, exhibition, raises some interesting questions in an environmental audit as part of the exhibtion. “How many lights are on the third floor of the MCA where the exhibition is? How many smoke alarms? How many emails were sent by museum staff to set up the exhibition? How many phone calls made? How many pages printed? How did the artwork arrive? By car? By courier? In bubble wrap?” here's a link to his blog: http://www.environmental-audit.net/

I thought Raquel Ormella’s work, was the most interesting in the show. The idea was that you could draw a picture on a special kind of whiteboard, and if you chose to, you could print it out. There was a plaque asking people to “please think about the environment before you press print”. The roll of paper ran out in the first week. This work was more successful than others in the show because it raised issues about consumption and sustainability in a way that allowed people to interact. It made people consider what Ihlein questions about whether the ecological factors balance out if the outcome creates a cultural good.

I think the idea of an environmental audit is really interesting. Maybe an environmental audit of the grad show is a good idea, at the very least to raise more awareness about these issues...

“It means his audit is not about having a final say, about reaching one definitive conclusion, but about highlighting our methods and processes, our ability to speculate and question, and our obsession with cultural objects that for too long we have prized, but not prised open.” (Meg Ulman, Because You’re Worth It)

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.”

Definititions (courtesy of Wikipedia)

Augenmusik: Describes graphical features of scores that when performed are unnoticeable by the listener.

Humoresque: is a genre of romantic music characterized by pieces with fanciful humor in the sense of mood rather than wit.

For me, the idea of Schumann’s, Humoresque, 1894 is really interesting. Zizek describes it as “…a song, without the vocal line…”By considering the musical notation, a third “virtual” intermediate level between the first and third levels, (which are played by the left and right hand) is created. For structural reasons it is impossible to be played, it becomes a nonvocalised internal melody. It is seen as a third line between the higher and the lower parts of the piece, between the right and the left hand. It is created as a link between the two parts.

Zizek suggests that this third line should be read as an “inner voice,” added by Schumann in the written score, to create a piece of music which becomes stripped of its main melody. Unless I misunderstand, Schumann has given form to the idea of absence. The silence exists in a representational form, in the annotated musical staff. Zizek suggests it exists only as “Augenmusik”, or “music for the eyes, in the guise of written notes.” This is a kind of paradox, it exists on paper, but the nature of silence and absence suggests something of the intangible.

The link to ideas of Really Existing Socialism can be seen in this quote: “In Really Existing Socialism, the explicit ideology of socialist democracy was sustained by a set of implicit (unspoken) obscene injunctions and prohibitions, teaching the subject how not to take some explicit norms seriously and how to implement a set of publicly unacknowledged prohibitions.”

Most of the issues with public art in the article revolved around an apparent disconnect with the public/community and the artwork. An example of this was Richard Serra’s steel sculpture called “Tilted Arc”, installed in 1981. The work has since been removed. Miwan Kwon suggested that one of the problems with the work was that its creation had been dictated by beureaucrats and a panel of art experts, rather than involving members of the public and the wider community. Likened to the Modernist sculpture of the 1960s, the work had few qualities to link it to the concept of “public” other than it’s imposition on the space. It is important for artists to work with the community in the process of creation. Kwon suggested it was important objective in the creation of community-based site specific art to make members of the public “as simultaneously viewer/spectator, audience, public and referential subject”, to see something of themselves in the work, “of being affirmatively pictured or validated.” Serra’s sculpture received a negative response from the public, perhaps this was because his focus in art making was elsewhere. Rather than making art for the community, Kwon suggests he was interested in merging sculpture and architecture into a new “hybrid form”, with the aim of obliterating categorical distinctions. In this sense Serra’s work can be seen as a success.

Here are some pics of a work by Simone Decker, from the Venice Biennale, 1999. They're interesting to consider as public works, although they were shown in the exhibition as photographs.

art is something of genius

“…art is something of genius. It goes beyond conventional standards and thus cannot be measured by these standards.” (WochenKlausur website)

The artist group WochenKlausur (created in 1993) are a collective of artists focused around conducting social interventions. Dedicated to creating change in the community, WochenKlausur’s art projects explore the possibilities of artistic activity. WochenKlausur’s work is interesting, “A Vacant House for Students”, 2010, ultilises the student community by involving them in the project to renovate an empty house. The argument surrounding art + money/art’s marketable quality is interesting to consider in relation to this artwork. According to the WochenKlausur website, “The most effective critique of the traditional position is the constant advocacy of a new conception of art that also gets by without material artworks.”

“Since the city of Porto is landlord of many vacant buildings, WochenKlausur contacted an official in charge and addressed a proposal to him: A couple of students could be commissioned by the city with refurbishing one of these empty houses and will in return get the permission to stay and live there for some years without paying rent.”

“The history of the S.I. is that of a development from an avant-gardist art collective to a political agitation troop.” (184, Raunig)

The Situationist International were dedicated to exploring the fulfillment of primitive human desires, through the creation of situations. Approaching this concept with an underlying belief in Marxism, the Situationist International created situations where political awareness would be raised. The culmination of arts and technologies, as well as the links between humans and the environments are factors that were explored. As revolutionaries in the field, they promoted Marxism as an alternative to Capitalism, with their work was centered around the construction of situations to raise thought.

“From the beginning however, Debord left no doubt that situations are not to be taken as romantic ideals, but rather as the active formation of environments, a free play with urban space as playing field.” (173, Raunig)

I read Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists’ Writings by Alberro and Stimson (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2009), and I found the discussion of the art institution quite interesting. Alberro raised issues regarding the collections in the museum, his discussion centered around who determines what is collected, and how their collections are amassed. I don’t think art has to be in a gallery to be considered art, although it needs to be placed within the context of art somehow. Even by an artist saying it is art, or thinking of it as art, I think that is enough. The art institution seems to be a way (maybe an outdated way) to achieve a sense of broad appeal, to house the art, to spread the word, to reach more people. But maybe art isn’t as easily definable as it once was.

I often find myself walking around on household clean-up night in my suburb, where there are old mattresses and bits of furniture out on the street. The junk always seems to take on some bizarre sculptural form. I always come back to the same question, “is it art?” Taken out of the context of an art institution, and placed into the everyday- classifiable as “trash”- I have come to the conclusion that art is determined by the audience. Just like the saying “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, so is art determined by the beholder.

“…Bourriaud does not regard relational aesthetics to be simply a theory of interactive art. He considers it to be a means of locating contemporary practice within the culture at large…”
(Clare Bishop, “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics”(October, Vol. 110, Autumn 2004 p54)

In “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,” by Clare Bishop, there was an artwork mentioned called “Cinema Liberte” (1999) by Rikrit Tiravanija that piqued my interest. Bishop suggests that local audiences nominated their favourite films, and then the films were screened outdoors at the intersection of two streets in Glasgow. In my research I found out about a past exhibiton titled, theanyspacewhatever, at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (Oct 2008 – Jan 2009). According to the official press release, “For these artists, an exhibition can comprise a film, a novel, a shared meal, a social space, a performance, or a journey.” The exhibition featured works by Angela Bulloch, Maurizio Cattelan, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordon, Carsten Höller, Pierre Huyghe, Jorge Pardo, Philippe Parreno, Rirkrit Tiravanija, in a culmination of diverse practices linked through an interest in social and political issues.

In this exhibition, a collaborative work by Rikrit Tiravanija and Douglas Gordon was shown, titled “Cinéma Liberté/Bar Lounge” (1996). Films that had been banned for political reasons were shown, including Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street (1945). Linked to Relational Aesthetics, this work created a sense of community among the participants. By creating a coffee bar, and by providing bean bag chairs, Tiravanija and Gordon created a social environment.

Marriage is often viewed as the ultimate step in fulfilling romantic relationships, it is seen as something official. Sanctioned by law, the partnership is taken to an authoritative level.

The work of Alix Lambert, as mentioned in Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics, was of particular interest to me. Through Wedding Piece, 1992, Lambert explored the “contractual” side of relationships, by marrying and divorcing four different people in six months. By ‘collaborating’ with four of her good friends, three male and one female, Lambert explored the institution of marriage from a personal standpoint. Linked to the concept of Relational Aesthetics, Lambert’s artwork can be seen as an exploration of this official partnership.

Lambert says of the piece, “we knew it was an art project, but we didn't tell other people that. We had this whole other experience of being really aware of how other people treat you as a couple.”(http://www.nerve.com/content/wedding-project-an-interview-with-alix-lambert) The wedding certificates, divorce documents and wedding portraits were displayed alongside wedding gifts as an installation.

Excerpt from an interview with the artist by Rachel Greene:
(http://www.nerve.com/content/wedding-project-an-interview-with-alix-lambert)

Interviewer: How did you feel after you got married? Did you feel like you belonged to
somebody? Connected to somebody?
Alix Lambert: I felt really weird. One of my husbands wrote an article about it, because even though we knew it was an "art" project, it was really emotional, intense and frightening.