This class has been so different from any other theory I have taken before and I agree with Jessica in that it’s a good one to finish up the course with. I spent many weeks scratching my head, or more pulling out my hair, attempting to critically engage with topics I had never given much thought or significance to. The other night I was going through my small collection of art books and felt genuinely limited by my once prized resources; I have a drive to further my knowledge and continue contemplating art in this new light. I feel I have developed an awareness of conceptual, relational practices that is making me ask questions about my own material based artworks. I think that the most significant thing this class has helped me be aware of is how relevant and powerful art can be as a facilitator for activism.
The blogs have been an interesting element for me. I was required to write about the weekly readings for my theory class last semester so I already valued the motivation needed to sit down and process my thoughts before each class. Putting it in a blog format was nothing short of confronting to start with. This is was my first blog experience but even this helped to understand how relational art can take on its own life and continue to stimulate thought in online conversational settings.

Is this blog worth it?

The environmental impacts of running the July MCA exhibition In The Balance: Art for a Changing World was considered and documented by participating artist, Lucus Ihlein for his work Environmental Audit. The exhibition, whose participants focused on environmental concerns, essentially questions the value of such an event when the environmental cost of running it may outweigh the awareness it creates in the first place. Ihlein, who admits is not a professional environmental auditor, was not presenting true statistics or precise analytical assessments of the environmental impacts of the exhibition but it does successfully force the exhibition and the viewers to question itself, ultimately asking “was it worth it?”. Within the audit Ihlein includes his own workings such as the resources, time and overall value of the project. I find this continuous doubling back fascinating. ‘Here is my work, was it worth it, was considering whether it was worth it worth it…’
The Environmental Audit project contains several different parts: the experience of the audit, the prints he made of his findings and his blog. Blogs play a big role in a lot of environmental activist’s work. It is used by Lucas and Diego to regularly document and discuss the progress of their gardens growth and impact. I realize blogs enable art to be opened up to involve people in a much greater social space, however I find the relationship somewhat problematic. I wonder if this stems from doubts in relation to the way online conversing has affected communication OR if the relationship between environmental activism and the computer is somewhat hypocritical. I do feel that it is something worth exploring further.

"Mass culture is an aesthetics machine"

The article ‘Aesthetics and Politics’ by Nikos Papastergiadis discusses the topics of art, activism, and the role of visual representation. The author considers how the role of imagery has changed. Images have become something which circulates in a saturated, ever expanding flow with power to exacerbate the viewer’s experience to the point of trauma. Papastergiadis refers to the repeated screening of the September 11 attacks as an example of how imagery functions as an enhancer and globalizer of trauma. This reminded me of my studies I did last semester on collective memory which is shaped through the medium of mass imagery. It is increasingly apparent that technology has changed the way we receive information and pictorial experiences. We define ourselves and the society we live in within our own imaginations.
I am interesting in how that role of the artist has changed as a result of the extreme availability of pictures today. Mass culture pumps out images through many mediums- TV, print, internet, mobile technologies etc. the author points out that artists, since modernity and even more so now, have ceased to be the creator of images but rather the “navigator” through the established visual world choked with symbols and pictures. This view, while initially feeling somewhat limiting, also places power in the hands of the artist, allowing them a place to interoperate the politics of everyday life.

Unknown Knowns

After reading Slavoj Zizek’s chapter on Laibach I found the critique of ideology to be multifaceted and interesting, though it may not be an effective form of intervention for contemporary society. As explored in the article, the 1980’s group Laibach attempted to “move the underground” through an ideological critique which did not try to change the law but rather intervene in its obscene qualities. One example used in the article was the isolation of homosexuals in the military community. Homosexual Individuals identified in the military community may be treated with violence and oppression. This behavior is supported and sustained by the “underground” intolerance of obscene homosexual jokes. This negative thought pattern is often unspoken and denied by society but plays a large role in violent behavior as it applies pressure on individuals to act a particular way to homosexuals. The Laiback group attempted to teach people not to take norms so seriously and to recognize that they are governed by unacknowledged injunctions.
Another aspect of the reader which I found interesting, was the distinctions between types of knowledge as categories identified by Donald Rumsfeld. These are: Known knowns (things which we are aware that we know) Known Unknowns (things which we are aware of not understanding) unknown unknowns (things which we are completely unaware of not knowing) and a forth category added by the author Slavoj Zizek unknown knowns (things which we are not consciously aware that we know, the content of our unconscious).
This categorization of thought process has helped me to understand the critique approach of the Laibach group in that they endeavored to reveal that it’s the “unknown knowns” the unconscious ignored tendencies which make up the “background” of a societies values.

Miwon Kwon

Reading the text by Miwon Kwon changed my understanding of the term “site specific” art. The relationship between the site and the artwork is a complex and problematic one which extends beyond the physical space to the very community who live there. While certainly complex, this ambiguity surrounding community based art seems to create many possibilities to further our understanding and strengthen the art worlds relationship to the broader urban community.
Through expanding art from a traditional institutional context to a public context, art can become something which actively has a positive impact on relationships within society. There seems to be many approaches to community based art. One particularly emphasised by Kwon are “invented” communities which only exist because of the artwork: its activities or events are specified by the artist. Some invented communities are ephemeral while others are more permanent, continuing to exist beyond the exhibition context.
One influential factor of these community projects is the relationship the artist shares with the collective community group. Some may be considered local artists due to geographical location and past involvement while others may conduct their artwork as an outsider. Kwon identifies advantages and disadvantages of both positions. Local artists with “home-team advantage” tend to have a well grounded capability for communication and trust to pass between themselves and the collective community. Issues can be processed quickly so the day-to-day function of the invented community can operate smoothly. Having said that, the book does raise the point that the work of local artists are not necessarily more or less successful than outsider artists. I find artists who operate from a distance to be more interesting in some ways because, according to Kwon, they are more likely to depend on an outside art institution to sponsor and act as a mediator between the community/artist collaboration. This can be a positive arrangement as there is a middle party which can compromise between the wants of the artist and the wants of the community.
After reading the text I feel the most confusing yet interesting factors are the similarities and differences between the art world, the artist and the participants of the urban community. Each has its own take on the activities of the artwork and each has a different capacity to understand art. Identity is also an important factor and the community artworks seem to merge all participants’ identities into a complex and instable system which proves to be a highly interesting exploration of relationships.

conversation as medium

I understand conversation art to be a shift in focus from within the gallery space to the outside world using materials of dialogue and exchange. Stemming from community, public and performance art, conversation artists initiate social interactions, creating ‘a “concrete intervention” in which traditional art materials of marble, canvas, or pigment (was) replaced by “sociopolitical relationships”.’ The reader by Grant H. Kester compares the shift from object based art to the relational operation of conversation art, to the shift Dadaists created when breaking free from accepted mainstream conventions by placing objects/images/text in juxtaposing contexts. Impressionisms demise of neoclassicism is another example used by the author. While I realise that there are many differences, as well as the mentioned similarities, between conversational art and modernist practices, I do wonder whether conversational art, in its endeavor for “new” actually calls for its end, like transcendent modernist practices. One theory of abstract painting is that is it nihilistically worked from beginning to end, towards its death as everything that operates on a linear timeline must eventually do. Could it be that conversation art, while perhaps not a movement itself, like these modernist movements, attempts to break the previous mode of accepted thought in relation to art and in doing so begins an ephemeral life? I used the word death loosely, I’m not suggesting that conversation and relationships will cease to exist, but, like painting, may be worked through to a conclusion (though considering the very technological format of this forum perhaps technology is having this effect already). What implications would the death of conversation and human relationships as an artistic medium have on art and society?

Another question I have is in regards to the author’s suggestion that the socio political/activist qualities of the artworks can be distinguished from the art itself and that this is essentially what makes it art rather than just social activism. I have trouble believing one factor can be distinguished from the other. What does the work consist of other than the social interaction of the communities included? Why are we so focused as defining something as art at all? While I sound very cynical about all this I really do think that this kind of art/life is a positive, active thing worth exploring.

Disruptive Monsters

The chapter Disruptive Monsters: From Representing to Constructing Situations from Gerald Raunig’s book Art and Revolution gave me an understanding of the work of Situalionist International. S.I., formed in 1957, considered the experiences of life in the realm of globalized capitalism. Through the construction of partly arranged situations the group created social experiments in order to investigate and expose ideas of art and life.
Covered in the chapter are some of the pre-situationist works which led to the happenings of S.I. Guy Debord, one of the leading participants in S.I.’s theoretical work, created films in the early 50’s (prior to S.I.) which I found helpful in understanding the concepts involved in their later works. The aim of his films was to create art which takes the viewer from a passive spectator to an active participant with power over the outcome of the plot. An example of this is Hurlements en faveur de Sade, where fragments of text were shown on the screen, intermittently interrupted by black, soundless pauses which increased in duration until a final pause of 24 minutes. The audience objected to the film during the first pause and under their direction the film was stopped, a reaction Debord may have hoping for.
This interaction forced from the audience can also be recognized when considering the happenings instigated by the S.I. Through organized occurrences the relationship between action and representation can be questioned and pulled apart. This can occur because, through activating these occurrences, one can contemplate how situations can be constructed in today’s social spaces.
Some of the things which are raised by the situations include the expansion of the art form and the closed art spaces into the setting of urban city space. The space is made anew, creating an “active formation of environments, a free play with urban space as playing field”. Like Debord’s film’s the comfortable stage setting is expanded into everyday life, disrupting what is familiar.
The S.I. activities also questioned the role of the participant and the viewer by creating a context in which making something and receiving something becomes the same thing. The S.I. made situations that were intended to be lived by the people who came together to construct it. Therefore there was no passive “public” but rather “viveurs”-a termed used to describe those who were living the situation.
The situations seem to quickly flow from the control of the fabricator of the situation to that of the viveurs, however it certainly didn’t occur naturally in the first place. Is it this construction which gives the situation its significance and power to break down traditional experience? Or is it merely pointing out the fact that no experience, natural or otherwise, is really what it seems?

Institutal Critique

While I found the algebra-like format of Institutional Theory of Art by Robert J. Yanal off-putting to say the least, there were some interesting points which helped me to piece together the link between relational art and institutional critique. The first thing I think of when contemplating institutional critique is Duchamp’s readymades. By placing a material object in an institutional context the object could be freed from its original meaning and become an art object. The example used in the article was Duchamp’s Fountain, explaining that while the fixture was materially identical to other urinals sold in stores, it had the status of art due to its institutional context. Yanal continues to say that “institutional status is not a material but a relational property. Accordingly, is art, upon analysis, is revealed to be not a one-place predicate but a multi-place relation”.
Michael Asher’s work has further enabled me to see how interactions within the gallery space can engage with ideas of the institution and it’s affect on art objects and audience. I was particularly interested in an artwork mentioned in a 2008 article from Frieze Magazine titled Thinking Space http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/thinking_space/ . For the self titled exhibition at the Santa Monica Museum of Art Asher recreated every ephemeral wall constructed for display purposes within the museum since 1998. Also part of the work was a room in a nearby gallery which held historical documentation of for the constructed layouts of the 40 exhibitions shown at the SMMoA. The exhibition, described as a “skeleton map of exhibition design” allowed viewers to actively recognize the repeated reinvention of the space. Revealing this aspect of the museums function questions the logic of the organization and allows the audience to consider the way they have been positioned by the institution in order to receive art in a particular way.

Information as Readymade

The article ‘Arty Party’ gave me some much needed insight into the artworks which Foster described as a blending of installation, performance and documentation. I was particularly drawn to the idea that these kinds of works could be readymades. Early readymades utilized and reprocessed objects and text. Here the very format of installation and collaborative projects are reprocessed. As suggested by the article, information can be a readymade, particularly today during the ‘postproduction’ era where it’s a given that ‘work’ can be anything, including information. Formats of communicating and exhibition can be reworked, pushing ideas of originality and authorship even further than traditional readymades while also incorporating the postmodern issues of global capitalism.
Collaboration appears to be a prominent devise, particularly when approaching the subject of originality. Fosters example, No Ghost Just a Shell, is an ongoing project by Huyghe and Philippe Parreno where artists are encouraged to participate by making artworks featuring a Japanese animation character called Annlee. Fosters poses the question: is the buying of Annlee a gesture of liberation or of serial bondage?
Also raised in the text is the audience’s role in the dialogue that is the artwork. Artist’s position the once inert audience members as part of an ephemeral “community” which collectively interacts with the work.
I have been having trouble defining what these ‘arty parties’ are. I’m beginning to see that it’s this ambiguity which enables this fusion of installation and performance to be so fascinating.

I found Bourriaud’s article interesting, raising many points in regards to art as an arena for interconnectivity. While I agree that art can be a relational object, bridging the audience and the external world, I do feel that this process is not strictly required in order to validate something as art.

I also found the examples of artistic collaboration, particularly between artists and gallery owners, mentioned in Bourriaud’s article fascinating. One such example was Maurizio Cattelan, an artist who worked on the physical body of the gallery owner. He created a rabbit-penis suit which Emmanuel Perrotin had to wear for the duration of the month long exhibition in 1994, pictured above. This relationship between artist and gallery owner is fundamental to art which is displayed in the gallery institution but also an example of how general human relationships can outline an artistic act.