1.2.21 Why antagonism?
A couple of days after I was a panellist on a webinar called Just Imagine: Break the rules, I received and email from someone who had attended the webinar. She asked if I could give her more details about my research into relational antagonism and why people might respond negatively to something creative. This is what I sent her:
Having read and reflected on this, so far I have found several reasons why people might react negatively to something:
In the late nineties, art critic and curator Nicolas Bourriaud first coined the term 'relational aesthetics' and published a book of the same name. As is often the case, a few years later, in 2004, the art historian Claire Bishop issued a response to Bourriaud's theories and described the term 'relational antagonism'. Here is her first article setting up her counter arguments to Bourriaud:
http://www.teamgal.com/production/1701/SS04October.pdf
Here is a brief synopsis of Bishop's ideas:
Bishop felt that Bourriaud focussed solely on the feel good factor of relational art because the works he cited took place in the safety of a gallery or studio space and the audience was made up of gallery-goers.
She says 'Bourriaud’s understanding of the relations produced by relational art works (are) fundamentally harmonious, because they are addressed to a community of viewing subjects with something in common’ (Bishop, 2004, p68) and 'gives up on the idea of transformation in public culture and reduces its scope to the pleasures of a private group who identify with one another as gallery-goers’ (ibid p 69)
Bishop proposes instead a 'relational antagonism' found in certain projects by the artists Santiago Sierra and Thomas Hirschhorn:
‘By contrast, Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of democracy as antagonism can be seen in the work of two artists conspicuously ignored by Bourriaud in Relational Aesthetics and Postproduction: the Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn and the Spanish artist Santiago Sierra. These artists set up “relationships” that emphasize the role of dialogue and negotiation in their art, but do so without collapsing these relationships into the work’s content. The relations produced by their performances and installations are marked by sensations of unease and discomfort rather than belonging, because the work acknowledges the impossibility of a “microtopia” and instead sustains a tension among viewers, participants, and context. An integral part of this tension is the introduction of collaborators from diverse economic backgrounds, which in turn serves to challenge contemporary art’s self-perception as a domain that embraces other social and political structures. (Bishop, 2004 p69-70)
So basically she is saying that this work produces unease, discomfort and tension rather than ‘belonging’ because the audience is more diverse, but also, I think, because it is set in a more public space. (I’ve started to read Laclau and Mouffe, but need to research this further!)
2. Private/publicI also think that taking something out of the private sphere (in this case art gallery or church) and placing it in a more public setting makes it political and thus might provoke negative responses:
I’ve written about this on my research website https://loubakerartist.weebly.com/29320-participation-public-and-private.html :
‘The German philosopher, Jürgen Habermas, first discussed the public /private divide of spheres in the 60s in his book, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. It was an attempt to classify ‘the formation of public opinions and the legitimisation of state and democracy in post-war Western societies’ (mwengenmeir, no date). Historically, women were excluded from this public sphere, and
‘(t)his distinction between the public and private spheres can help to explain why … women had to fight for the right to vote in order to participate in politics, and why gender stereotypes about women "belonging in the home" linger today’ (ibid).
This binary of influence has a racial element as well, as black and ethnic minority groups have been excluded from the public sphere and are still under represented in politics in the USA and the UK (ibid).
mwengenmeir goes on to say that Habermas’ theory is ‘widely accepted … but has also been widely challenged as the concept of the public sphere is constantly developing’ (ibid). Crossman states, ‘the boundary between the public and private sphere is not fixed; instead, it is flexible and permeable, and is always fluctuating and evolving’ (2019).’
3. ‘Matter out of place’This leads to what Jonny and I were talking about on Thursday evening, the space between binaries- order/disorder, self/other, private/public, secular/sacred etc etc The anthropologist Mary Douglas talks about order and disorder as anomaly and ambiguity. She describes dirt as ‘matter out of place’ -so shoes on the shoe rack are fine, but shoes on the table are not, hair is beautiful, until it’s in your soup. Douglas suggests that these boundaries provide certainty but considering them as thresholds acknowledges them as flexible which leads to disquiet and a range of conflicting responses. She says ‘anomalous and ambiguous things are often seen as disgusting, disruptive, and dangerous. However, these are not the only possible reactions; there is a “whole gradient on which laughter, revulsion and shock belong at different points and intensities” according to the type of transgression (Douglas 1966, p 47).
She also says that ambiguity ‘symbolises both danger and power.’ (ibid, p. 94)
So, maybe part of the negativity is a response to challenging cultural/ social /religious expectations?
4. Contamination anxiety Linked to Douglas’ blurring of the boundaries of order/disorder is Julia Kristeva’s ‘aesthetics of contamination’… ‘the other encountered in a work of art may have an infectious function.’ (Sjoholm, 2005, p104)
I think at the moment many people have especially high levels of anxiety including contamination anxiety, which is ubiquitous and utterly valid, not just associated, as it usually is, with mental health disorders like OCD. I think that some of the reactions to my Wishing trees might have been about this specifically as many of the complaints were about fear of litter. Here’s my documentation of the first few months of the Wishing trees. I reflect on the antagonism they received on pages 155-158.
5. Art vs artivismMore recently, in 2012, Claire Bishop wrote Artificial hells:
‘ ...Art, she eventually concludes, reaches an impasse: “At a certain point, art has to hand over to other institutions if social change is to be achieved: it is not enough to keep producing activist art.” This separation strikes to the core of Artificial Hells, an uneasy (and not completely unproblematic) separation between the aesthetic and the political, the activist and the artistic. When participatory art increasingly resembles corporate brainstorming sessions, where precisely does art fit? ...Bishop calls for a participatory art of resistance in Artificial Hells, but a resistance that avoids considerations of the ethical in favor of aesthetically probing power relations as they stand.’ (Henry, 2012)
I wonder again whether this applies to what we’re trying to do? Some people like compartmentalise things, whether it’s art, church, politics etc, so when this order is disrupted it creates conflict. And we’re back to Mary Douglas’ blurring of boundaries again.
6. Having a voice! I think, sadly, that a rather worrying culture of antagonism is developing. Social media makes people feel they have a right to complain about anything and everything – rudely and vociferously, with some anonymity and distance. I haven’t researched this in depth, but I have observed how easy it is now to ‘have a voice’. Obviously, there are two sides to that as well… some important aspects and some difficult ones. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, of course, but how and where that is aired seems to have blurred yet another private/public boundary.
Artspace (2016) What is relational aesthetics? Available at: https://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/book_report/what-is-relational-aesthetics-54164 (Accessed 23 February 2020)
Bishop. C. (2004) Antagonism and relational aesthetics Available at: http://www.teamgal.com/production/1701/SS04October.pdf (Accessed 18 December 2019)
Bishop, C. (2012) Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London & New York: Verso, Available at: https://selforganizedseminar.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/bishop-claire-artificial-hells-participatory-art-and-politics-spectatorship.pdf (Accessed: 17 December 2019)
Bourriaurd, N. (2002) Relational aesthetics. Paris: Les Presses du Reel
Crossman, A. (2019) Understanding Private and Public Spheres Available at: https://www.thoughtco.com/private-and-public-spheres-3026464 (Accessed 25 March 2020)
Douglas, M (1966) Purity and Danger. An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
Felluga, D. (2011) ‘Modules on Kristeva: On the Abject’ in Introductory Guide to Critical Theory Available at: https://cla.purdue.edu/academic/english/theory/psychoanalysis/kristevaabject.html (Accessed 5 May 2020)
Habermas, J. (1964) The public sphere Available at: https://www.konstfack.se/PageFiles/24768/habermas-1964-the-public-sphere.pdf (Accessed: 25 March 2020)
Henry, J (2012) Straight to Hells Available at: https://thenewinquiry.com/straight-to-hells/ (Accessed: 30 November 2020)
Kristeva, J (1980) Powers of horror Available at: https://users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/touchyfeelingsmaliciousobjects/Kristevapowersofhorrorabjection.pdf (Accessed: 6 December 2019)
Pickering, H. and Rice, T. (2017) ‘Noise as “sound out of place”: investigating the links between Mary Douglas’ work on dirt and sound studies research‘, Journal of Sonic Studies, 14 Available at: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/374514/374521/0/0 (Accessed: 19 December 2020)
Sjoholm, C. (2005) Kristeva and the political Available at: file:///C:/Users/TEMP/Downloads/1005927.pdf (Accessed 5 May 2020)
Smith, K. (2012) Difference Between Public and Private Space Available at: https://kailasmithemsociallanguagedigitalmedia.wordpress.com/2012/11/08/difference-between-public-and-private-space/ (Accessed: 25 March 2020)
A couple of days after I was a panellist on a webinar called Just Imagine: Break the rules, I received and email from someone who had attended the webinar. She asked if I could give her more details about my research into relational antagonism and why people might respond negatively to something creative. This is what I sent her:
Having read and reflected on this, so far I have found several reasons why people might react negatively to something:
- Relational antagonism vs relational aesthetics
In the late nineties, art critic and curator Nicolas Bourriaud first coined the term 'relational aesthetics' and published a book of the same name. As is often the case, a few years later, in 2004, the art historian Claire Bishop issued a response to Bourriaud's theories and described the term 'relational antagonism'. Here is her first article setting up her counter arguments to Bourriaud:
http://www.teamgal.com/production/1701/SS04October.pdf
Here is a brief synopsis of Bishop's ideas:
Bishop felt that Bourriaud focussed solely on the feel good factor of relational art because the works he cited took place in the safety of a gallery or studio space and the audience was made up of gallery-goers.
She says 'Bourriaud’s understanding of the relations produced by relational art works (are) fundamentally harmonious, because they are addressed to a community of viewing subjects with something in common’ (Bishop, 2004, p68) and 'gives up on the idea of transformation in public culture and reduces its scope to the pleasures of a private group who identify with one another as gallery-goers’ (ibid p 69)
Bishop proposes instead a 'relational antagonism' found in certain projects by the artists Santiago Sierra and Thomas Hirschhorn:
‘By contrast, Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of democracy as antagonism can be seen in the work of two artists conspicuously ignored by Bourriaud in Relational Aesthetics and Postproduction: the Swiss artist Thomas Hirschhorn and the Spanish artist Santiago Sierra. These artists set up “relationships” that emphasize the role of dialogue and negotiation in their art, but do so without collapsing these relationships into the work’s content. The relations produced by their performances and installations are marked by sensations of unease and discomfort rather than belonging, because the work acknowledges the impossibility of a “microtopia” and instead sustains a tension among viewers, participants, and context. An integral part of this tension is the introduction of collaborators from diverse economic backgrounds, which in turn serves to challenge contemporary art’s self-perception as a domain that embraces other social and political structures. (Bishop, 2004 p69-70)
So basically she is saying that this work produces unease, discomfort and tension rather than ‘belonging’ because the audience is more diverse, but also, I think, because it is set in a more public space. (I’ve started to read Laclau and Mouffe, but need to research this further!)
2. Private/publicI also think that taking something out of the private sphere (in this case art gallery or church) and placing it in a more public setting makes it political and thus might provoke negative responses:
I’ve written about this on my research website https://loubakerartist.weebly.com/29320-participation-public-and-private.html :
‘The German philosopher, Jürgen Habermas, first discussed the public /private divide of spheres in the 60s in his book, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. It was an attempt to classify ‘the formation of public opinions and the legitimisation of state and democracy in post-war Western societies’ (mwengenmeir, no date). Historically, women were excluded from this public sphere, and
‘(t)his distinction between the public and private spheres can help to explain why … women had to fight for the right to vote in order to participate in politics, and why gender stereotypes about women "belonging in the home" linger today’ (ibid).
This binary of influence has a racial element as well, as black and ethnic minority groups have been excluded from the public sphere and are still under represented in politics in the USA and the UK (ibid).
mwengenmeir goes on to say that Habermas’ theory is ‘widely accepted … but has also been widely challenged as the concept of the public sphere is constantly developing’ (ibid). Crossman states, ‘the boundary between the public and private sphere is not fixed; instead, it is flexible and permeable, and is always fluctuating and evolving’ (2019).’
3. ‘Matter out of place’This leads to what Jonny and I were talking about on Thursday evening, the space between binaries- order/disorder, self/other, private/public, secular/sacred etc etc The anthropologist Mary Douglas talks about order and disorder as anomaly and ambiguity. She describes dirt as ‘matter out of place’ -so shoes on the shoe rack are fine, but shoes on the table are not, hair is beautiful, until it’s in your soup. Douglas suggests that these boundaries provide certainty but considering them as thresholds acknowledges them as flexible which leads to disquiet and a range of conflicting responses. She says ‘anomalous and ambiguous things are often seen as disgusting, disruptive, and dangerous. However, these are not the only possible reactions; there is a “whole gradient on which laughter, revulsion and shock belong at different points and intensities” according to the type of transgression (Douglas 1966, p 47).
She also says that ambiguity ‘symbolises both danger and power.’ (ibid, p. 94)
So, maybe part of the negativity is a response to challenging cultural/ social /religious expectations?
4. Contamination anxiety Linked to Douglas’ blurring of the boundaries of order/disorder is Julia Kristeva’s ‘aesthetics of contamination’… ‘the other encountered in a work of art may have an infectious function.’ (Sjoholm, 2005, p104)
I think at the moment many people have especially high levels of anxiety including contamination anxiety, which is ubiquitous and utterly valid, not just associated, as it usually is, with mental health disorders like OCD. I think that some of the reactions to my Wishing trees might have been about this specifically as many of the complaints were about fear of litter. Here’s my documentation of the first few months of the Wishing trees. I reflect on the antagonism they received on pages 155-158.
5. Art vs artivismMore recently, in 2012, Claire Bishop wrote Artificial hells:
‘ ...Art, she eventually concludes, reaches an impasse: “At a certain point, art has to hand over to other institutions if social change is to be achieved: it is not enough to keep producing activist art.” This separation strikes to the core of Artificial Hells, an uneasy (and not completely unproblematic) separation between the aesthetic and the political, the activist and the artistic. When participatory art increasingly resembles corporate brainstorming sessions, where precisely does art fit? ...Bishop calls for a participatory art of resistance in Artificial Hells, but a resistance that avoids considerations of the ethical in favor of aesthetically probing power relations as they stand.’ (Henry, 2012)
I wonder again whether this applies to what we’re trying to do? Some people like compartmentalise things, whether it’s art, church, politics etc, so when this order is disrupted it creates conflict. And we’re back to Mary Douglas’ blurring of boundaries again.
6. Having a voice! I think, sadly, that a rather worrying culture of antagonism is developing. Social media makes people feel they have a right to complain about anything and everything – rudely and vociferously, with some anonymity and distance. I haven’t researched this in depth, but I have observed how easy it is now to ‘have a voice’. Obviously, there are two sides to that as well… some important aspects and some difficult ones. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, of course, but how and where that is aired seems to have blurred yet another private/public boundary.
Artspace (2016) What is relational aesthetics? Available at: https://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/book_report/what-is-relational-aesthetics-54164 (Accessed 23 February 2020)
Bishop. C. (2004) Antagonism and relational aesthetics Available at: http://www.teamgal.com/production/1701/SS04October.pdf (Accessed 18 December 2019)
Bishop, C. (2012) Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London & New York: Verso, Available at: https://selforganizedseminar.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/bishop-claire-artificial-hells-participatory-art-and-politics-spectatorship.pdf (Accessed: 17 December 2019)
Bourriaurd, N. (2002) Relational aesthetics. Paris: Les Presses du Reel
Crossman, A. (2019) Understanding Private and Public Spheres Available at: https://www.thoughtco.com/private-and-public-spheres-3026464 (Accessed 25 March 2020)
Douglas, M (1966) Purity and Danger. An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
Felluga, D. (2011) ‘Modules on Kristeva: On the Abject’ in Introductory Guide to Critical Theory Available at: https://cla.purdue.edu/academic/english/theory/psychoanalysis/kristevaabject.html (Accessed 5 May 2020)
Habermas, J. (1964) The public sphere Available at: https://www.konstfack.se/PageFiles/24768/habermas-1964-the-public-sphere.pdf (Accessed: 25 March 2020)
Henry, J (2012) Straight to Hells Available at: https://thenewinquiry.com/straight-to-hells/ (Accessed: 30 November 2020)
Kristeva, J (1980) Powers of horror Available at: https://users.clas.ufl.edu/burt/touchyfeelingsmaliciousobjects/Kristevapowersofhorrorabjection.pdf (Accessed: 6 December 2019)
Pickering, H. and Rice, T. (2017) ‘Noise as “sound out of place”: investigating the links between Mary Douglas’ work on dirt and sound studies research‘, Journal of Sonic Studies, 14 Available at: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/374514/374521/0/0 (Accessed: 19 December 2020)
Sjoholm, C. (2005) Kristeva and the political Available at: file:///C:/Users/TEMP/Downloads/1005927.pdf (Accessed 5 May 2020)
Smith, K. (2012) Difference Between Public and Private Space Available at: https://kailasmithemsociallanguagedigitalmedia.wordpress.com/2012/11/08/difference-between-public-and-private-space/ (Accessed: 25 March 2020)