Notes on Relational Aesthetics

Relational Aesthetics is an essay written by Nicholas

Boruiaude first published in 1992, that proposed a new
approach to contemporary art. By getting up close and
personal with the reasoning and the structure of the thoughts
of artists that are working today and revealing; "an aesthetic
of the inter human, of the encounter; of proximity, of resisting
social formatting."

The book looks at Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Louis Althusser,

Rikrit Tiravanija, and at the work of most creative artists
today.

The essay is proposing a new approach to how to think about

the work being made by creative artists today rather then a
theory, after thinking about the destiny of their work, based on
what DuChamp wrote about any work of art needing an
audience in order for it to be complete, artists are making
exactly that, social events. Bourriaud writes that this is by-
passing the recycled enlightenment philosophers and the work
of the DaDaists, that he thought was about "..creating
imaginary or utopia realities, but instead to actually be ways
of living and models of action within the existing real, what
ever chosen by the artist", also he used words like recycling
and novelty and modernity extending it self into cultural do-it-
yourself! Without going into the details Bourriaud sets about
disagreeing with the ideas that defined the art work from the
50s and 60s by talking about formations instead of forms and
like theorists/writers from the past that share similarities with
him.

For example; Rikrit Tiravanija offers people soup at art

galleries and institutions, so what is the work? sculpture?
performance? an installation? an example of social activism?
Well, Bourriaude likens it to audience participation art ideas
(from 50s and 60s), but that this is going beyond that
"attempting to create precise boundaries for the receivers
field of activity in the artwork", writing that this culture of
interactivity going beyond the realms of art by this
communication vehicle that has been created (meaning the
space with the possibility of making soup). On the other hand,
Bourriaude writes, this is happening with technology with the
internet and multimedia systems.

Bouriaude goes on to describe what DuChamp said about the

relation aspect to the artistic practice, the 'rendezvous'
between the work and its audience, and gives examples of
works that can be seen to have been made as a result of
realizing this need (work which is well known but not these
reasons).

To view made note that I have made on the rest of the book
click on the link below;

Bourriaude has divided is essay into segments the first being

about types. In this part Bourriaude talks about collaborating
(artists making contracts with galleries, artists with other
professional [actors], and artists with non-artists), and gives
examples of this. Artists working using professional relations:
Clienteles, and gives examples of artists/groups of artists
doing such work. Artists occupying gallery spaces, and gives
examples of this.
Next part is space-time exchange factors in which Bourriaude
again leans on what DuChamp had previously said, talks about
the banter that art works produce and this being connected to
there worth. The artist is therefore first and foremost making
decisions that will produce different relationships as an
outcome. This Bourriaude explains more by talking about the
subject of an artwork, "so they are all working within what we
might call the relational sphere, which is to today's art what
mass production was to Pop Art and Minimal Art", also making
the point of the context (financial situation of the time of work
being made) being deciding factors as to which 'era' the work
should look like it has come from (he talks about a pendulum).
Bouriidar writes here; "Relational art is not the revival of any
movement, nor is it the comeback of any style it arises from
an observation of the present and from a line of thinking about
the fate of artistic activity." Bourriaude writes more about the
subject of an artwork using words like 'social interstice', 'life
possibilities', 'alternative', and 'common sense rediscovered'.
So the subject is not looking back to the 50s/60s/70s but rater
continuing modernism and the subject has changed from
separating to joining. Next is space-time factors in 1990s art
in which Bourriaude writes that artists are bringing up for
discussion Fluxes, Conceptual Art, Minimal Art, but it is only
for the sake of a vocabulary, and that when these Relational
Artists talk about artists from previous eras they are covering
up what there work is actually about. Now to discover what
creative artists are doing you must look at the time that they
are creating not what they have done to space as it was in
previous decades.
In the next segment joint presence and availability: the
theoretical urgency of Felix Gonzalez- Torres Bourriaude talks
about objects being given away in these spaces that artists
have created. Under the title Homosexuality as a paradigm of
cohabitation Bouriade writes"...but also find common ground
around the priority they give to the space of human relations in
the conception and distribution of their works." "Including the
other is not just a theme. It turns out to be essential to formal
understanding of the work." Under Contemporary forms of the
monument Biourriaude writes "the object is just a 'happy
Ending’ to the exhibition process, as Philippe Parreno explains.
It does represent the Logical end of the work, but an event. A
Tiravaniji show, for example, does not dodge materialization,
but deconstructs the methods of making the art object into a
series of events, giving it a proper time frame, which is not
necessarily the conventional time of the picture being looked
at."
In the criterion of co-existence (works and individuals)
Bouriaude talks about people actually having to ask
themselves if they can live in the space-time structure
corresponding to it in reality? And so their are more parts to
this segment and many more segments in the book such as
screen relations, today’s art and its technological models, the
camera and the exhibition, post VCR art, and so on...