The New Situationist

Contemporary Art: From Studio to Situation
The New Situationist

Claire Doherty

Doherty, Claire. "The New Situationist." Contemporary Art: From Studio to Situation. London: Black Dog Pub., 2004. 8-13. Print.

Date: 11/09/2012

List of primary claims made in this reading:

As “site-specific” work become more of a demand in the art world circuit, those involved (artist, commissioners, curators, etc.) must have realistic expectations for the project outcome and be cognizant of the demands they are placing on the artist-as-organizer and the community with whom they are working.

Key Quotes:

The increasing institutional interest in current site-oriented practices that mobilise the site as a discursive narrative is demanding an intensive physical mobilization of the artist to create works in various cities throughout the cosmopolitan art world.” (Pg. 9, Miwon Kwon)

“And finally, as cultural experience has become recognised as a primary component of urban regeneration, so the roles of artist have become redefined as mediators, creative thinkers and agitators, leading to increased opportunities for longer-term engagement between an artist and a given group of people, design process or situation.” (Pg. 10)

“As an artist you’re non-threatening, because no one expects you to have power.” (Pg. 11, Kathrin Bohm)

“It is important to attempt to find a language for engagement, because the gaps between the current rhetoric of engagement and actual experience may lead to confusion about the aims and potential outcomes of a project.” (Pg. 12)

“Given that these processes of engagement and intervention need interlocutors, as Bourriard notes, the role of the curator or commissioner as mediator becomes vital.” (Pg. 12)

“As practitioners, commissioners, participants and viewers, we need to understand the complex processes of initiation, development and mediation of this work. We need to make the distinctions between the types of engagement that are occurring and the promises that are being made. We need to question what levels of support this work needs (information, time, technical resources, distribution mechanisms and personnel).” (Pg. 12)

Key Figures/Works:

Neville Gabie and Leo Fitzmaurice - FURTHER UP in the Air
 
Francis Alys - When Faith Moves Mountains, 2002.
"his practice as a whole is 'complicit' rather than 'investigative'" (Pg. 9)

Questions of the reading?

FYI : Citing Specific Works in an Anthology

FYI : Citing Specific Works in an Anthology

Questions to ask yourself:

1. Was the portion of the anthology that you are citing written specifically for the anthology, or was this piece written independently?
2. How many individuals compiled/edited the anthology?
3. Are you citing the anthology as a whole, or are you choosing to focus on a single chapter/section/essay?

Use this format found on the Purdue Owl:

Lastname, First name. "Title of Essay." Title of Collection. Ed. Editor's Name(s). City of Publication: Publisher, Year. Page range of entry. Medium of Publication.

Example: 
 
Verwoet, Jan. "Control I'm Here: A Call For the Free Use of the Means of Producing Communication, in Curating and in General." Curating and the Educational Turn. Ed. Paul O'Neill and Mick Wilson. London: Open Editions, 2010. 23-31. Print.

ALSO, note that new to MLA Handbook for Writers and Research Papers (2009) "italics [are] now used everywhere in place of underlining—for titles, for words, etc."

Russell, Tony, Allen Brizee, Elizabeth Angeli, Russell Keck, Joshua M. Paiz, and Purdue OWL Staff. "Welcome to the Purdue OWL." Purdue OWL: MLA Formatting and Style Guide. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Nov. 2012. <http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/06/>.

 

What is Institutional Critique?

Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists' Writings

What was institutional critique?

Blake Stimson

Stimson, Blake. "What Is Institutional Critique?" Institutional Critique: An Anthology of Artists' Writings. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2009. 21-41. Print. 

Date: 10/8/2012

List of primary claims made in this reading:

Historically, institutions reflect and/or define societal constructs and expectations, as such, institutions, including art institutions, are political agencies “that devise constraints that shape human interaction.” (Pg. 21)

Once an institution is established its service to society and purpose as an institution is undisputed. As a result, institutions are not held accountable for upholding their commitment to the socialist implications of institutionality, in which “social thinking, institutional thinking, class thinking, ... could be made available to consciousness” leading to “self-realization” through the social practice of “self-abstraction” – negating individuality in order to achieve greater human (as species) potential.  (Pg. 22, 25)

Institutional critique as an artistic genre aims to hold institutions accountable to “it’s commitment to the old promise of institutionality,” was “born in protest against the changes in the way we think about and experience institutions.” To do this, institutional critique publically examined institutions’ relations with privatized, capitalist industries that disregarded the institutional aim for greater human potential, stagnating or settling for “average” as an institutional/human experience. (Pg. 26, 29)

Stimson argues that with the evolution of technology and “peer-to-pear social organizations,” grand institutions – government, religion, museums - that served as “hierarchical social organizations that aided and abetted social life” are no longer the primary stage for public debate and societal consensus, making the need for institutional critique debatable since the platform for self-realization became a global platform, not just an institutional one.  (Pg. 32)

I think it’s important to take note and question institutional restrictions, perimeters, and expectations in your own practice because you might inadvertently be supporting and perpetuating discrimination, exclusiveness, political abuse, etc. Institutional critique initiates public awareness and education as an art practice, which reintroduces the public as key members of instituionality, which I believe is key in holding both parties accountable to the aim for institution to be a service to society.

Key Quotes:

“Once an institution becomes established it becomes autonomous” and, thus, “outstrips its function, it’s ends, and it reason for existing.” As a result, what could have been seen as an ensemble of institutions in service of society becomes a society in the service of institutions.” (Pg. 22)

“It is commonplace to assume institution to be “the rules of the game in society or, more formally, …the humanely devised constraints that shape human interaction.” (Pg. 21)

“When the laborer co-operates systematically with others…he strips off the fetters of his individuality, and develops the capabilities of his species.” (Pg. 25)

“Typology was itself social thinking, institutional thinking, class thinking, and it was only as such that the truth of class could be made available to consciousness, even if it occasionally devolved from meaningful abstraction into philosophical, political, and anthropological.” (Pg. 27)

“The substance or purpose or meaning of the institution of art has always been this battle line, and institutional critique as a genre – like modernism as a whole – routinely attempted to reverse that precess of unbecoming, to call art back to the sociality of its expression, to wrench it away from the overwhelming dehumanizing process of becoming a “social hieroglyph” or “fantastic form of a relation of things.” (Pg. 30)

What is sometimes not adequately appreciated is the origin of this tactic – an thus of modernism as a whole – in capitalism, itself, in experiencing oneself as a commodity, as a quantum of labor defined not by human self-realization but instead by its relational position in “a given state of society, under certain social average conditions of production, with a given social average intensity, and average skill of the labor employed.” (Pg. 29)

“Today, just as yesterday, art wants to save us from death a living image of our passions and our sufferings.” (Pg. 36)

“The great irony and great surprise, for our purpose, is that, contrary to Burger and the period anti-institutionalism that his study grew out of, that institution would come to be most powerfully defended, articulated and renewed b the art development that presumed to the greatest degree of institutional self reflexivity – that is, what we all have come to call ‘institutional critique.’” (Pg. 24)

List of facts/stats discussed in this reading:

In regards to “renewed surge of corporate institutionality” and “shift from public accountability and public enfranchisement toward private gain and limited accountability,” 1973 tied to three significant events: the OPEC oil embargo, the Chilean coup, and the found of the Heritage Foundation.  (Pg. 32)

Institution critique was arguable from 1968 – 1989.

Questions of the reading?

Is institution critique still necessary? Do we agree with Stimson in believing it is outdated in the way institutions are outdated?

Do institutions influence our “human interactions” and play an active role in defining “social life?”

Do peer-to-peer organizations later evolve into institutions, making them at-risk for privatization and limited accountability?

Were institutional critiques effective? Are their quantifiable results that are evidence of their effectiveness?

The (un)Sitings of Communities

One Place after Another: Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity
The (un)Sitings of Communities

Miwon Kwon

Kwon, Miwon. "The (un)Sitings of Communities." One Place after Another: Site-specific Art and Locational Identity. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2002. N. pag. Print.

Date: 10/10/2012

List of primary claims made in this reading:

“Aesthetic evangelism”

Key Quotes:

“In his view, the artist is typically an outsider who has the institutionally sanctioned authority to engage the locals in the production of their (self-)representation.” (Pg. 138)

“…the desire to engage “real” (nonart) places can prepare the way for the conversion of abstract or derelict (non-)spaces into “authentic” and “unique” locales ripe for development and promotion, os the engagement of “real” people in community-based art can install new forms of urban primitivism over socially neglected minority groups.” (Pg. 138)

“The ‘other’ of the dominant culture thus becomes objectified once again to satisfy the contemporary lust for authentic histories and identities.” (Pg. 138)

“…community-based artists ay inadvertently aid in the colonization of difference – for benevolent and well intentioned gestures of democratization can have effects of colonialism, too – in which the targeting of marginalized community groups (serving as Third Worlds found in the First World) leads to their becoming both subject and coproducer of their own self appropriation in the name of self-affirmation.” (Pg. 139)

“While the power of intimate personal transformation cannot be underestimated, such a focus, in Kester’s view, naturalizes social conditions of poverty, marginalization, and disenfranchisement as an extension of an individual’s inherent character flaw (lack of initiative, diligence, inner resolve, moral rectitude, self-esteem, etc.). “(Pg. 143)

“We are from the belly of the beast trying to be responsible for an to people and things seriously wronged and wrong, that need work all around us in our immediate environment.” (Pg. 144, Flemming)

Questions from the reading?

Relational Aesthetics

Relational Aesthetics 

Nicolas Bourriad

Bourriaud, Nicolas. "Relational Form." Relational Aesthetics. [Dijon]: Leses Du Réel, 2002. 11-24. Print.

Date: 10/17/2012

List of primary claims made in this reading:

Bourriand argues that modern technology and urbanization has led to limited “encounters” that reflect real relationships. Relational aesthetics aims to create an “arena for exchange” that encourages human interaction and comradery.

Bourriand suggests that art is never ending stream of encounters, the artwork is the structure or “binding agent” for specific encounters in history.

Looking at relational art, Bourriaurd asks that we not look at the work as “forms” but as “formations,” for the reason that “relational art” is activated by the viewer’s relation with the art, artists, and environment. 

I agree with Bourriand in that art is/has always been a place of encounter for the viewer. In present-day, the object seems to have been removed from that “encounter” and what is focused on in relational art is the encounter, finding a different “game” for that encounter. 

Key Quotes:

“Nowadays, modernity extends into the practice of cultural do-it-yourself and recycling, into the invention of the everyday and the development of time lived, which are not objects less deserving of attention and examination than Messianistic utopias and the formal “novelties” that typified modernity yesterday.” (Pg. 14)

“The possibility of relational art (an art taking as its theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an independent and private symbolic space)…” (Pg. 14)

“I see and perceive, I comment, and I evolve in a unique space and time. Art is the place that produces a specific sociability.” (Pg. 16)

“This interstice term was used by Karl Marx to describe trading communities that elude the capitalist economic context by being removed from the law of profit: barter, merchandising, autarkic types of production, etc. This interstice is a space in human relations which fits more or less harmoniously and openly into the overall system, but suggests other trading possibilities that that is in effect with in this system. This is the precise nature of the contemporary art exhibition in the arena of representational commerce: it creates free areas, and time spans whose rhythm contracts with those structuring everyday life, and it encourages an inter-human commerce that differs from the “communication zones” that are imposed upon us.” (Pg. 16)

“The essence of humankind is purely trans-individual, made up of bonds that link individuals together in social forms which are invariably historical (Mark: the human essence is the set of social relations).” (Pg. 18)

“A new game is announced as soon as the social setting radically changes, without the meaning of the game itself being challenged.” (Pg. 19)

“The contemporary artwork’s form is spreading out from its material form: it is a linking element, a principle of dynamic agglutination. An artwork is a dot on a line.” (Pg. 21)

“In observing contemporary practices, we ought to talk of “formations” rather than “forms”. (Pg. 21)

List of facts/stats discussed in this reading:

Gabriel Orozco, Crazy Tourist, 1991

Gabriel Orozco, Hamoc en la moma, 1993

Jens Haaning, Turkish Jokes, 1994.

Questions from the reading?

Has the issue of commodity been a defining factor in the evolution of “relational aesthetics”?

I think it’s interesting to think “relational art” is art, has always been art, etc. Do you think art is going to circle back around to objectivity or commodifiable objects?

Does this present two art markets, completely separate of one another, if not, where might they intersect? How?

Contingent Factors: A Response to Claire Bishop's "Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics"

Letters and Responses

Contingent Factors: A Response to Claire Bishop's "Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics"

Liam Gillick

Gillick, Liam. "Contingent Factors: A Response to Claire Bishop's "Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics"" Editorial. October Magazine Oct. 2006: 95-107. Print.

Date: 10/15/2012

List of primary claims made in this reading:

In Bishop’s text, Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics, there were many factual errors and misrepresentations made by the critic, Bishop, on behalf of the artists she references in regards to the structure of “relational art” constructed by Bouirriaud’s text, Relational Aesthetics.

This response by Liam Gillick, one of the artists’ work whom she references, corrects the research errors in Bishop’s article as well as tries to rectify the misinterpretation, poor presentation, and over simplification of both his and Tirivanija’s work, leveling the playing field for further critique.

Bishop responds to Liam Gillick by thanking him for his thorough fact checking and noting his lack of theoretical and methodological discourse on the argument presented in Bishop’s Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics, which had initiated the correspondence. 

Gillick corrects many of the factual errors in Antagonism and Relational Aesthtics,  but did little else in furthering the argument of  democracy executed in relational art. I think it is important to “stand-up” for your practice, as Gillick does, and “right” obvious misrepresentations, but I also feel that there is no avoiding critics’ using strategic elements of an artists’ practice to validate their personal argument or discourse. That being said, both responses were attacks on the others’ professionalism disguised in a “debate” of the structure of “relational aesthetics.”

 Key Quotes:

“This tension between democracy and liberalism should not be conceived as one existing between two principles entirely external to each other and establishing between themselves simple relations of negotiation. Were the tension conceived this way, a very simplistic dualism would have been instituted.” –Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox (2001)

“This is the true nature of Mouffe’s plea for a more sophisticated understanding of the paradox of liberal democracy, which concerns the recognition of the antagonism suppressed within consensus-based models of social democracy, not merely a simple two-way relationship between the existing sociopolitical model and an enlightened demonstration of its failings.” (Pg. 100)

“It is not true that so-called “relational art” insists on use rather than contemplation.” (Pg. 100)

List of facts/stats discussed in this reading:

Bourriaud curated an exhibition, Traffic, at CAPC in 1996.

Relational Aesthetics was published in 1998.

Question of the reading?

Is it necessary for the artist to “stand up” for his/her work? Or is it the responsibility of the critic to represent artist in a format he/she chooses to be represented?

How can conversations such as these be productive?

Institutionalizing Social Sculpture

Institutionalizing Social Sculpture

Beuys' Office for Direct Democracy through Referendum Installation (1972)

Claudia Mesch

Mesch, Claudia, and Viola Maria. Michely. "Institutionalizing Social Sculpture." Joseph Beuys: The Reader. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2007. 198-211. Print. 

Date: 10/8/2012

List of primary claims made in this reading:

Beuy implemented a “grassroots” process for public debate and discussion by creating an “unmediated public sphere” which became the “realization of social sculpture.” (Pg. 199)

Beuy recognized this public forum gaining momentum as more than just an “art” practice and began using his platform as an artist in an institution to re-establish true democracy by organizing open public discussions, lectures, public education committees, voting, etc.

In addition to “social sculpture,” Beuys uses the juxtaposition of materials and object as a vehicle for education, protest, and activism. 

List of facts/stats discussed in this reading:

Joseph Beuys founded the “German Student Party” in 1967. Later reconfigured into the “Organization of Direct Democracy” (1972).

Key Quotes:

“Buey institutionalized a public sphere within the museum, thereby reforming the museum in to a site for broad public rational discourse on matters of social and political change.” (Pg. 201)

“The Organization of Non-Voters hoped to replace a party-system vote with one that proposed alternative programmes and policies, and to transform citizens in all levels of society into activist in granting them a voice within a public debate.” (Pg. 204)

“Human compassion must also remain an element of rational thought in order for creative change to be implemented.” (Pg. 206)

“However, these routes of ‘infiltration’ into institutions, or of ‘doing something outside’ of them, are not anarchistic end goals but part of what Beuys called the ‘educational process.’” (Pg. 209)

“This process has nothing to do with the teacher-pupil relationship, but with the awakening of consciousness which begins ‘not at schools, but also in grocery stores…as soon as people talk to one another about these things’ (i.e. individual creativity to be used for the good of the social organism)”

(Pg. 209)

For Beuys, discussion is less the stud of ‘an example of the object of my thought or the object that I am trying to community to you’, as Wilson phrased it, but instead manipulates language as a creative and individual contribution to discussion which can benefit the greater social whole.” (Pg. 211)

How can you relate what you have read from this reading and directly apply it to your own practice, and/or present-day Social Practice?

I appreciate Beuy’s parallel process, of both having exhibitions that asked the viewer to participate, to become part of a movement and also having exhibition that featured his own personal activism and protest regarding issues he felt strongly about bringing to the table. I also find it appropriate that there is seemingly a clear division in instances where as a social practice artist he completely take the back seat in the process outside of organizing the scenario, the end product not being a resemblance of his voice but being an unadulterated discussion by the public.

Questions from the reading?

Was hosting these open public forums in institutions effective in actually giving the public a voice?

Does it matter to the premise of the work as a whole that the “open public forum” is still a very exclusive museum audience, as opposed to a more diverse audience if it was held outside the institution?