http://place.unm.edu/relational_art.html
Happy to Meet You: An Introduction to Relational Art
Relational Art is an emerging movement in art identified by Nicolas Bourriaud, a French philosopher, who recognized a growing number of contemporary artists used performative and interactive techniques that rely on the responses of others: pedestrians, shoppers, browsers—the casual observer-turned-participant. As an art critic, Bourriaud has reviewed many internationally renowned exhibitions and performances. Over the course of writing editorials for the French magazine Documents sur l’Art, Bourriaud came to term what he was seeing—more accurately, experiencing—as a movement in Relational Art. Bringing together his many essays on the subject of these artists and their activities, Nicolas Bourriaud, in 1998, launched his theory and book entitled Relational Aesthetics. While art critics, theoreticians, and historians have argued whether Nicolas Bourriaud was accurate in naming what he was seeing as a new movement—or, even a movement at all—artists have been busy carrying out their relational activities.
Bourriaud observed something different in the art practices of today. Artists across all disciplines were collapsing the distance between their art form and the average citizen. No longer were actors up on stages telling stories at people. Now, the stage was gone and the actor was merging into the general public and the “story” was theirs to tell. The artist no longer clung to making objects that were set before an adoring gallery visitor, instead the artist merged into a cyber world prompting an anonymous, global public to interact through telepresence. Now, musicians are innovators, designing and creating new musical instruments, software and compositions that prompt the random passerby to interact, conduct and perform a musical piece that is uniquely their own. While artists have long since challenged the constrictions of museums, stages, and performance halls, Bourriaud observed a significant turn in context and meaning.
Below are a few links to some artists engaged in relational art activity. We encourage you to look at these examples now before we go on.
Corpos Informaticos Research Groups: http://www.corpos.org
Walk and Squawk Performance Project: http://walksquawk.org
In relational art, the artist is no longer at the center. They are no longer the soul creator, the master or even celebrity. The artist, instead, is the catalyst. They kick-start a question, frame a point of consideration, or highlight an everyday moment. And then, they wait. They wait for a response from the random stranger, the passerby, the usual suspect—you and me. We are the missing piece and until we react, respond or relate, the “art” lies in wait to say: “Happy to meet you. I’ve been waiting for you.”
To Bourriaud’s mind, and the artists who’s aesthetic is you and I, the relational aspect of their activities is the fundamental difference between today’s art experience and previous art activities such as Fluxist, Happenings and Performance Art to name a few. Moreover, today’s relational art emerges from the profound and ever-changing impact of media technologies. Technologies capable of sending us into spaces that are inhabited by anonymous, disembodied others—the good, bad, and ugly—but who we can nevertheless relate to through this technology. Whether relational artists are high tech or low tech, what Bourriaud insists they have in common is the desire and intention to relate across the artificiality of time and space whether physical, social or institutional space.
Ironically, many of Bourriaud’s examples of artists and activities from the mid-to-late 1990s were still within the domain of traditional institutions of art (museums, performance centers, etc.) despite their intentions to comment on and/or break through these socially defined borders of space. Nonetheless, considerable relational arts practice is happening all around us. Much of the activity is happening outside of the traditional institutional channels that alert us to an event, a fashion, or celebrity. For this reason, it is harder to report on relational arts practice since it resists seeking the institutional channels of art presentation, but it is out there—and it is in here!
Since relational arts practice operates in different places and spaces than what we have been trained to seek out, we encourage you to do your own investigation. Explore the internet for relational art that either uses the internet to document and report relational activity or uses the internet as its relational form for activity. It’s tricky stuff to talk about, but makes more sense when you see/experience more examples.
If you find some internet examples of relational art you want us to post for others, email us with the web link and we’ll put it here.
Here are a few more links to activities that we think are relational in practice:
“bourriaud’s … theoretical leaning, summarized as ‘relational art,’ gives a new interpretation of the aesthetic object. the object is no longer materially or conceptually defined, but relationally. “what do relations eventually create? relations to the artistic work, institutions and so on? - context.” art magazine boiler #1, 1999″ Quoted from the website: http://straddle3.net/context/03/en/2004_02_10.html on August 16, 2004.
Check out an interview with Bouriaud at http://www.boiler.odessa.net/english/raz1/n1r1s02.htm
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Published: 12.4.06 / 6pm
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