[-empyre-] queer relational

[Kip Jones]

Bourriaud's thinking is important to my own efforts to convince social
scientists  that they can move from theorising to creating outputs
which reach wider audiences through the use of tools from the arts in
spaces of conviviality and socialisation.  In my own work,  the
relational comes from thinking about social constructionism.  Being
able to refer to a contemporary aesthetic is a mechanism by which to
stave off the 'scholarly' critics whose considerations of truth and
beauty have not moved on from the 19th Century.

I
suppose that, if Bourriaud does not fit with what an artist is doing
(rather than saying), then fair enough: criticism of his thinking might
help that artist move to a more comfortable framework in which to
produce art.  I do worry when I hear/read artists themselves getting
lodged into a theoretical cul du sac instead of producing art.  In
qualitative research, we believe that we generate theory, not prove it.
I believe  that this should be the case for practice as well, no matter
what the field.  I certainly see art fitting more comfortably within
this paradigm than some obtuse justification of work based upon several
dead philosophers!!  All  this theoretical chatter can become no more
than what I like to refer to as this year's shade of lipstick.
 
My biggest worry recently when looking at the world of art from some
distance is that museums and galleries are more easily funded and built
than the art to go into them.  In two recent examples, one actually has
no art at all and the second, houses a show of some quite unresolved
pieces and some spaces  for 'meetings'.  I believe that Warhol  did the
first museum opening with empty walls back in the 60s (I was there),
but I think that that was driven by considerations other than the
glorification of bricks and mortar as art funding.

cheers,
kip

Dr Kip Jones

Reader in Qualitative Research

Centre for Qualitative Research

Leader, Performative Social Science Group



School of Health & Social Care and The Media School

Bournemouth University

Bournemouth, UK

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Website: www.kipworld.net

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