[-empyre-] Returning to Relational Aesthetics, Queerly

[Simon Biggs]

That was a refreshing post.

Relational Aesthetics took off in quite a big way in the visual arts over
the last decade. Strangely, it has had little impact outside this domain.
Discussing elements of Bourriaud¹s work, whether with anthropologists or
literary scholars, I am struck by how little travelled his ideas are.
However, what also becomes apparent is how the ideas he proposes are clearly
evident within other prior theoretical frameworks.

A key concept that could be mentioned here is Ointertextuality¹, drawing on
Derrida¹s deconstructive methodologies, Kristeva¹s work on interculturality
and, before both of them, Bakhtin¹s work on pre-texts and etymological
context. All of these approaches situate how meaning is constructed as a
social process, where the relations between things establish their value.
Initial critical practices that engaged this theory in more than a cosmetic
manner included reader-reception theory, which has been a well established
framework in literary theory since the 1970¹s. Latour has also drawn
explicitly on this line of thought when he developed, with John Law,
actor-network-theory, seeking to articulate expanded forms of agency that
reflect how things happen in a highly mediated world.

Bourriaud¹s book seems, in this context, a rather late comer to the
demolition of modern tropes and narrowly constrained to a very specific
readership.

Regards

Simon


Simon Biggs
Research Professor
edinburgh college of art
s.biggs at eca.ac.uk
www.eca.ac.uk
www.eca.ac.uk/circle/

simon at littlepig.org.uk
www.littlepig.org.uk
AIM/Skype: simonbiggsuk



From: Robert Summers <robtsum at gmail.com>
Reply-To: soft_skinned_space <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Date: Sat, 4 Jul 2009 19:53:39 -0700
To: <empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Subject: [-empyre-] Returning to Relational Aesthetics, Queerly

I would like to re-turn us to the text that started this discussion,
namely, Bourriaud's _Relational Aesthetics_ (RA). So, where to begin?
Here ...

In the "forward" to Bourriaud's text he argues, "What are the real
challenges of contemporary art?  What are its links with society,
history, culture?  The critic's primary task is to recreate the
complex set of problems that arise in a particular period or age, and
take a close look at the various answers given" (7).  This resonates
with what Preziosi has written in _Rethinking Art History_.  In the
text he states, "The art S critic is the implied practitioner or
operator of a revelatory machinery, working at the recuperative task
of reconstituting for a lay audience an originary fullness of meaning
and reference, a semiologically articulatable presence of real being"
(22).

Bourriaud enacts the art critic who revels the "truth²; he sanctions
certain artists (he desires) who guarantee his narrative and theory
via their agreement or acquiescence.  Yet, this type of relationality
(one touched by desire) is not surfaced in RA, but it is not hard to
imagine why.  Bourriaud¹s staging must seem "natural" -- given he is
exploring a "real" situation "and [he] take[s] a close look at the
various answers given" (7).

But who is _left out_ of Bourriaud's staging?  How does Bourriaud's
construction of RA both legitimize certain practices even as it
de-legitimizes others?  What is "wrong" with RA?  And, by "wrong" I
mean "disagreement" -- to borrow from Rancière; so, what ³wrong² can
be surfaced in a discussion of RA?  Who are those who have been
"wronged"?

I¹m not arguing for a more inclusive Bourriaudian RA: an additive one.
 And, I¹m not arguing for tossing out the term tout court.  I¹m
arguing that RA must be re-thought and re-deployed; it must be
un-moored from its current location(s); it must become more than a
neo-liberal theory on art and its practices.

As ever, Robert

Robert Summers, PhD/ABD
_______________________________________________
empyre forum
empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
http://www.subtle.net/empyre


Edinburgh College of Art (eca) is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC009201


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://mail.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/attachments/20090705/0efa60d6/attachment.html