Clair Bishop, Relational antagonism
‘But Bourriaud is at pains to distance contemporary work from that of previous generations. The main difference, as he sees it, is the shift in attitude toward social change: instead of a “utopian” agenda, today’s artists seek only to find provisional solutions in the here and now; instead of trying to change their environment, artists today are simply “learning to inhabit the world in a better way”; instead of looking forward to a future utopia, this art sets up functioning “microtopias” in the present (RA, p. 13). Bourriaud summarizes this new attitude vividly in one sentence: “It seems more pressing to invent possible relations with our neighbors in the present than to bet on happier tomorrows” (RA, p. 45). This DIY, microtopian ethos is what Bourriaud perceives to be the core political significance of relational aesthetics. (Bishop, 2004 p54)
‘it installs a new relationship between the contemplation and the utilization of a work of art’ (Umberto Eco in Bishop 2004 p 62)
‘ it is Eco’s contention that every work of art is potentially “open,” since it may produce an unlimited range of possible readings; it is simply the achievement of contemporary art, music, and literature to have foregrounded this fact. Bourriaud misinterprets these arguments by applying them to a specific type of work (those that require literal interaction) and thereby redirects the argument back to artistic intentionality rather than issues of reception. His position also differs from Eco in one other important respect: Eco regarded the work of art as a reflection of the conditions of our existence in a fragmented modern culture, while Bourriaud sees the work of art producing these conditions. The interactivity of relational art is therefore superior to optical contemplation of an object, which is assumed to be passive and disengaged, because the work of art is a “social form” capable of producing positive human relationships. As a consequence, the work is automatically political in implication and emancipatory in effect.(ibid P 62)
Participatory art : ‘political in implication and emancipatory in effect’
Installation art:
This problem is exacerbated by the fact that relational art works are an outgrowth of installation art, a form that has from its inception solicited the literal presence of the viewer. Unlike the “Public Vision” generation of artists, whose achievements—largely in photography—have been unproblematically assimilated into art-historical orthodoxy, installation art has been frequently denigrated as just one more form of postmodern spectacle. For some critics, notably Rosalind Krauss, installation art’s use of diverse media divorces it from a mediumspecific tradition; it therefore has no inherent conventions against which it may self-reflexively operate, nor criteria against which we may evaluate its success. Without a sense of what the medium of installation art is, the work cannot attain the holy grail of self-reflexive criticality. I have suggested elsewhere that the viewer’s presence might be one way to envisage the medium of installation art, but Bourriaud complicates this assertion. He argues that the criteria we should use to evaluate open-ended, participatory art works are not just aesthetic, but political and even ethical: we must judge the “relations” that are produced by relational art works’ (ibid, p63 64)
‘Bourriaud wants to equate aesthetic judgment with an ethico political judgment of the relationships produced by a work of art. But how do we measure or compare these relationships? The quality of the relationships in “relational aesthetics” are never examined or called into question. When Bourriaud argues that “encounters are more important than the individuals who compose them,” I sense that this question is (for him) unnecessary; all relations that permit “dialogue” are automatically assumed to be democratic and therefore good. But what does “democracy” really mean in this context? If relational art produces human relations, then the next logical question to ask is what types of relations are being produced, for whom, and why? (ibid, p 65)
Good question!
Antagonism:
‘Laclau and Mouffe argue that… a democratic society is one in which relations of conflict are sustained, not erased’. (ibid P65, 66)
‘the presence of what is not me renders my identity precarious and vulnerable, and the threat that the other represents transforms my own sense of self into something questionable.’(ibid, p66)
‘I dwell on this theory in order to suggest that the relations set up by relational aesthetics are not intrinsically democratic, as Bourriaud suggests, since they rest too comfortably within an ideal of subjectivity as whole and of community as immanent togetherness. There is debate and dialogue in a Tiravanija cooking piece, to be sure, but there is no inherent friction since the situation is what Bourriaud calls “microtopian”: it produces a community whose members identify with each other, because they have something in common.(ibid, p67)
Participatory art and diversity: My Wishing trees have had very diverse audiences –passers-by in 4 different communities and my followers and strangers on social media.
‘I would argue that Tiravanija’s art, at least as presented by Bourriaud, falls short of addressing the political aspect of communication—even while certain of his projects do at first glance appear to address it in a dissonant fashion’ (ibid p68)
‘His installations reflect Bourriaud’s understanding of the relations produced by relational art works as fundamentally harmonious, because they are addressed to a community of viewing subjects with something in common’ (ibid.p68)
Crisis in common: my audiences, worldwide, have the Covid 19 crisis in common, some living in Bristol and some maybe me, but otherwise they are diverse.
‘Tiravanija’s microtopia 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)
My audiences are mixed – some will be gallery goers, many of the passers-by maybe not, but I don’t know!
‘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)
Participatory art, unease and discomfort: ‘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’ I have experienced some of this through the complaints I’ve had about the Wishing trees.
Collaborators from diverse backgrounds: ‘An integral part of this tension is the introduction of collaborators from diverse economic backgrounds.’ I have no idea about the backgrounds of my audience, but I imagine that economics isn’t the only aspect where this tension would apply. I think in the case of the complainants about the Wishing trees was about anxiety about the environment and littering, so maybe possibly the tension is caused more by their environmental world view and that the trees are art in unexpected places. Also, that they are situated in public (and that I left my contact details) probably gives permission for people to complain.
‘“Context” is a key word for Gillick and Tiravanija, yet their work does little to address the problem of what a context actually comprises. (One has the impression that it exists as undifferentiated infinity, like cyberspace.) Laclau and Mouffe argue that for a context to be constituted and identified as such, it must demarcate certain limits; it is from the exclusions engendered by this demarcation that antagonism occurs. It is precisely this act of exclusion that is disavowed in relational art’s preference for “open-endedness.”’ (Bishop, 2004 p72)
Wishing trees and inclusion: I think that one very interesting aspect of the Wishing trees has been how inclusive they have been.
‘Instead of aggressively hailing passers-by with their trade, as they did on the street, the vendors were subdued. This made my own encounter with them disarming in a way that only subsequently revealed to me my own anxieties about feeling “included” in the Biennale. Surely these guys were actors? Had they crept in here for a joke? Foregrounding a moment of mutual nonidentification, Sierra’s action disrupted the art audience’s sense of identity, which is founded precisely on unspoken racial and class exclusions, as well as veiling blatant commerce. It is important that Sierra’s work did not achieve a harmonious reconciliation between the two systems, but sustained the tension between them’. (Bishop, 2004 p73)
‘I do not want to do an interactive work. I want to do an active work. To me, the most important activity that an art work can provoke is the activity of thinking. Andy Warhol’s Big Electric Chair (1967) makes me think, but it is a painting on a museum wall. An active work requires that I first give of myself (Thomas Hirschorn in Bishop 2004 p62)
Thomas Hirschorn and active work: ‘I do not want to do an interactive work. I want to do an active work. To me, the most important activity that an art work can provoke is the activity of thinking…An active work requires that I first give of myself’ (Thomas Hirschorn in Bishop 2004 p62)
‘The tasks facing us today are to analyze how contemporary art addresses the viewer and to assess the quality of the audience relations it produces: the subject position that any work presupposes and the democratic notions it upholds, and how these are manifested in our experience of the work.’ (Bishop, 2004 p78)
Documentation: Here, Bishop has given me a scaffold for the analysis of my Wishing trees, but am I equipped to do it??
‘The tasks facing us today are
Bishop. C. (2004) Antagonism and relational aesthetics Available at: http://www.teamgal.com/production/1701/SS04October.pdf (Accessed 18 December 2019)
‘But Bourriaud is at pains to distance contemporary work from that of previous generations. The main difference, as he sees it, is the shift in attitude toward social change: instead of a “utopian” agenda, today’s artists seek only to find provisional solutions in the here and now; instead of trying to change their environment, artists today are simply “learning to inhabit the world in a better way”; instead of looking forward to a future utopia, this art sets up functioning “microtopias” in the present (RA, p. 13). Bourriaud summarizes this new attitude vividly in one sentence: “It seems more pressing to invent possible relations with our neighbors in the present than to bet on happier tomorrows” (RA, p. 45). This DIY, microtopian ethos is what Bourriaud perceives to be the core political significance of relational aesthetics. (Bishop, 2004 p54)
‘it installs a new relationship between the contemplation and the utilization of a work of art’ (Umberto Eco in Bishop 2004 p 62)
‘ it is Eco’s contention that every work of art is potentially “open,” since it may produce an unlimited range of possible readings; it is simply the achievement of contemporary art, music, and literature to have foregrounded this fact. Bourriaud misinterprets these arguments by applying them to a specific type of work (those that require literal interaction) and thereby redirects the argument back to artistic intentionality rather than issues of reception. His position also differs from Eco in one other important respect: Eco regarded the work of art as a reflection of the conditions of our existence in a fragmented modern culture, while Bourriaud sees the work of art producing these conditions. The interactivity of relational art is therefore superior to optical contemplation of an object, which is assumed to be passive and disengaged, because the work of art is a “social form” capable of producing positive human relationships. As a consequence, the work is automatically political in implication and emancipatory in effect.(ibid P 62)
Participatory art : ‘political in implication and emancipatory in effect’
Installation art:
This problem is exacerbated by the fact that relational art works are an outgrowth of installation art, a form that has from its inception solicited the literal presence of the viewer. Unlike the “Public Vision” generation of artists, whose achievements—largely in photography—have been unproblematically assimilated into art-historical orthodoxy, installation art has been frequently denigrated as just one more form of postmodern spectacle. For some critics, notably Rosalind Krauss, installation art’s use of diverse media divorces it from a mediumspecific tradition; it therefore has no inherent conventions against which it may self-reflexively operate, nor criteria against which we may evaluate its success. Without a sense of what the medium of installation art is, the work cannot attain the holy grail of self-reflexive criticality. I have suggested elsewhere that the viewer’s presence might be one way to envisage the medium of installation art, but Bourriaud complicates this assertion. He argues that the criteria we should use to evaluate open-ended, participatory art works are not just aesthetic, but political and even ethical: we must judge the “relations” that are produced by relational art works’ (ibid, p63 64)
‘Bourriaud wants to equate aesthetic judgment with an ethico political judgment of the relationships produced by a work of art. But how do we measure or compare these relationships? The quality of the relationships in “relational aesthetics” are never examined or called into question. When Bourriaud argues that “encounters are more important than the individuals who compose them,” I sense that this question is (for him) unnecessary; all relations that permit “dialogue” are automatically assumed to be democratic and therefore good. But what does “democracy” really mean in this context? If relational art produces human relations, then the next logical question to ask is what types of relations are being produced, for whom, and why? (ibid, p 65)
Good question!
Antagonism:
‘Laclau and Mouffe argue that… a democratic society is one in which relations of conflict are sustained, not erased’. (ibid P65, 66)
‘the presence of what is not me renders my identity precarious and vulnerable, and the threat that the other represents transforms my own sense of self into something questionable.’(ibid, p66)
‘I dwell on this theory in order to suggest that the relations set up by relational aesthetics are not intrinsically democratic, as Bourriaud suggests, since they rest too comfortably within an ideal of subjectivity as whole and of community as immanent togetherness. There is debate and dialogue in a Tiravanija cooking piece, to be sure, but there is no inherent friction since the situation is what Bourriaud calls “microtopian”: it produces a community whose members identify with each other, because they have something in common.(ibid, p67)
Participatory art and diversity: My Wishing trees have had very diverse audiences –passers-by in 4 different communities and my followers and strangers on social media.
‘I would argue that Tiravanija’s art, at least as presented by Bourriaud, falls short of addressing the political aspect of communication—even while certain of his projects do at first glance appear to address it in a dissonant fashion’ (ibid p68)
‘His installations reflect Bourriaud’s understanding of the relations produced by relational art works as fundamentally harmonious, because they are addressed to a community of viewing subjects with something in common’ (ibid.p68)
Crisis in common: my audiences, worldwide, have the Covid 19 crisis in common, some living in Bristol and some maybe me, but otherwise they are diverse.
‘Tiravanija’s microtopia 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)
My audiences are mixed – some will be gallery goers, many of the passers-by maybe not, but I don’t know!
‘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)
Participatory art, unease and discomfort: ‘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’ I have experienced some of this through the complaints I’ve had about the Wishing trees.
Collaborators from diverse backgrounds: ‘An integral part of this tension is the introduction of collaborators from diverse economic backgrounds.’ I have no idea about the backgrounds of my audience, but I imagine that economics isn’t the only aspect where this tension would apply. I think in the case of the complainants about the Wishing trees was about anxiety about the environment and littering, so maybe possibly the tension is caused more by their environmental world view and that the trees are art in unexpected places. Also, that they are situated in public (and that I left my contact details) probably gives permission for people to complain.
‘“Context” is a key word for Gillick and Tiravanija, yet their work does little to address the problem of what a context actually comprises. (One has the impression that it exists as undifferentiated infinity, like cyberspace.) Laclau and Mouffe argue that for a context to be constituted and identified as such, it must demarcate certain limits; it is from the exclusions engendered by this demarcation that antagonism occurs. It is precisely this act of exclusion that is disavowed in relational art’s preference for “open-endedness.”’ (Bishop, 2004 p72)
Wishing trees and inclusion: I think that one very interesting aspect of the Wishing trees has been how inclusive they have been.
‘Instead of aggressively hailing passers-by with their trade, as they did on the street, the vendors were subdued. This made my own encounter with them disarming in a way that only subsequently revealed to me my own anxieties about feeling “included” in the Biennale. Surely these guys were actors? Had they crept in here for a joke? Foregrounding a moment of mutual nonidentification, Sierra’s action disrupted the art audience’s sense of identity, which is founded precisely on unspoken racial and class exclusions, as well as veiling blatant commerce. It is important that Sierra’s work did not achieve a harmonious reconciliation between the two systems, but sustained the tension between them’. (Bishop, 2004 p73)
‘I do not want to do an interactive work. I want to do an active work. To me, the most important activity that an art work can provoke is the activity of thinking. Andy Warhol’s Big Electric Chair (1967) makes me think, but it is a painting on a museum wall. An active work requires that I first give of myself (Thomas Hirschorn in Bishop 2004 p62)
Thomas Hirschorn and active work: ‘I do not want to do an interactive work. I want to do an active work. To me, the most important activity that an art work can provoke is the activity of thinking…An active work requires that I first give of myself’ (Thomas Hirschorn in Bishop 2004 p62)
‘The tasks facing us today are to analyze how contemporary art addresses the viewer and to assess the quality of the audience relations it produces: the subject position that any work presupposes and the democratic notions it upholds, and how these are manifested in our experience of the work.’ (Bishop, 2004 p78)
Documentation: Here, Bishop has given me a scaffold for the analysis of my Wishing trees, but am I equipped to do it??
‘The tasks facing us today are
- ‘to analyze how contemporary art addresses the viewer’
- ‘to assess the quality of the audience relations it produces’
- to assess ‘the subject position that any work presupposes’
- to assess ‘the democratic notions it upholds’
- to ascertain ‘how these are manifested in our experience of the work.’
Bishop. C. (2004) Antagonism and relational aesthetics Available at: http://www.teamgal.com/production/1701/SS04October.pdf (Accessed 18 December 2019)