Response to Claire Bishop's paper on Relational Aesthetics

Circa 114, Winter 2005, pp. 37-39, Grant Watson

http://www.recirca.com/backissues/c114/p37-39.shtml
In her paper Claire Bishop critiques the easy assumptions and loose talk that goes on
around so called interactive art. In particular she takes to task 'Relational Aesthetics',
which has progressed from being the title to a collection of essays (referring to a
particular group of closely knit practitioners operating at a particular moment), to become
a term that gets bandied about in all sorts of contexts. Quite rightly Bishop is sceptical
about the line put forward by some proponents of this genre - that it is intrinsically good
to talk, that dialogue and interactivity is healthy and that this dialogue automatically leads
to a sense of community. One has to ask, as Bishop does, what are the effects of the
interactions which take place within certain art practices? Whom do they privilege, what
do they challenge and what do they leave unchallenged? These questions are pertinent
because one would assume that any practice of this kind would gesture towards new
social models, ones that are perhaps more collective, democratic, discursive, critical or
liberatory.
It is unfortunate (but strategic) that Bishop's only example of a relational artwork at first
hand is so far removed from any of the above. Jerry Saltz, describing his experience of a
work by Rirkrit Tiravanija for Art in America, gives us an exercise in namedropping and
nepotism that demonstrates how familiar types of social practice based on networks of
influence and exclusivity can surface anywhere. But as Bishop points out, this actually
tells us little, because if we were to base our judgement on individual testimony then
every participant in the work would have to be taken into account (suggesting a wildly
democratic if untenable form of art criticism). However Bishop's paper does not wager its
argument on personal experience but instead responds to Relational aesthetics from an
"art historic and theoretical perspective." In this process Bishop produces (using a sort of
theoretical shorthand along with examples of current practice) an equation in which the
different elements become units that, "for the sake of economy and clarity" compete with
one another within her text. And looking to the democratic potential of an engaged art
practice, Bishop draws upon the ideas of Chantal Mouffe. In her development of the
democratic idea, Mouffe argues against a deliberative or third-way politics, in which
citizens arrive through rational discourse and 'deliberation' at a consensus, where conflict
is overcome and the private exists largely outside of the political arena. In its place she
proposes an 'agonistic' model which refuses to iron out conflict but that also goes beyond
the old antagonisms between embedded enemies such as the traditional left/right, or the
moral majority versus the rights of sexual minorities. Instead Mouffe presents a dynamic
of rivalry between adversaries, who compete across the social field in order to construct
aggregate structures and precarious solutions within which society's tensions can become
productive. The trick for Mouffe is to include as many social actors in the equation as
possible. So, for example, she welcomes the anti-globalization movement into the fold,
on the grounds that it participates to a certain extent within the current order of existing

institutions and so becomes a part of these institutions' renewal. In this Mouffe is an

outspoken critic of Antonio Negri, whom she characterises as unrealistic and even
dangerous going the way of earlier revolutionaries who risk the emergence of
nondemocratic forms in the wake of the existing order, which they seek to overthrow. In
her paper, Bishop (who draws on Mouffe's use of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory)
explains that the agonistic model is based on an understanding of the individual as
fractured and contradictory. And so agonistic democracy becomes not a dialogue between
wholly rational partners, or the frontal encounter of two complete entities at total war
with one another, but instead a multifarious negotiation of partial and often unstable
subject positions.
Bishop uses Mouffe's argument as a point of entry into the work of Santiago Sierra and
Thomas Hirschhorn, citing in particular Hirschhorn's Bataille Monument, which formed a
part of Documenta 11, in 2002. While the practice of applying a singular theory to an
artwork is liable to produce distortions, there is some mileage in reading Hirschhorn's
gargantuan and rambling public art project through an investigation of radical democracy.
Yes, this was a strangely disruptive work on many registers and yes, the "zoo effect" she
describes, in which differences and social tensions were made visible, was present.
Personally I spent my time analysing the other people, both the Documenta visitors
(hawk-eyed to see if I could detect partially concealed signs of class snobbery) and the
inhabitants of the estate who performed the role of paid workers.
Moving on from Hirschhorn, Bishop turns her attention to the work of Tiravanija, who
for her comes to stand in for the whole Relational Aesthetics project. And placing the
practice of these two artists side by side, she finds one to be easy, uncritical, producing of
uniformity and theoretically and politically nave, while the other is revealing of tensions,
agonistic, consciousnessraising and productive of multiple responses. The reason for the
success of one and the failure of the other goes back (I would guess) to the difference
between the deliberative and the agonistic model - back to the different types of
individual subject that the two artists wish to address. In a somewhat reductive passage
she states that while "Relational Aesthetics seeks a unified subject as a prerequisite for
communityastogetherness, Hirschhorn and Sierra provide a mode of artistic encounter
more adequate to the split, divided and incomplete subject of today." It is as if Bourriaud
has failed to cotton on the " divided and incomplete subject of today" and has thus
overlooked the developments taking place in the intellectual culture that surrounds him.
But rereading Relational aesthetic, and in particular the chapter dealing with the work of
Felix Guattari, a different picture emerges. Using a tortuous snip-up effect of quotations
and by paraphrasing the original, Bourriaud makes something of a mentor of Guattari and
in this question of subjectivity is given centre stage. Guattari was a student of Lacan but
critical of psycho-analysis, which he saw as seeking to regulate desire into certain
configurations. For Guattari, the individual is fragmented into ;ultiple relationships with a
changing environment (technological, biological, cultural and so on), forming alliances

and couplings, which are motored by the energy of a desire that refuses to be curtailed. In
this way subjectivity is described not as unified and inevitable but instead (to use
Guattari's colourful terminology) it is seen as the mobile constellation of points, moving
along lines of flight that traverse the human and the nonhuman world. In other words, this
is a fragmentation of individual identity, a subjectivity that is in permanent mutation, that
is constantly being produced and taking on new forms in different historical periods.
Importantly for him, these ideas are not simply abstractions but have immediate political
effects namely the need for a production of subjectivity which is not in thrall to (or
defined by) oppressive regimes such as capitalism and finally, to return to art, he
describes the aesthetic paradigm as one in which this subjectivity can be performed and
tested.
These ideas may sound like so much utopian, fuzzy and pretentious jargon. It may be
difficult to relate themdirectly to the artworks in question or even to think about them in a
practical way in terms of current political debates. Mouffe would certainly say so,
judging by the manner in which she attacked the ideas of Deleuze and Guattari, as they
appear in Empire, at a recent conference. But if we are to assess Relational Aesthetics in
the round, then it seems only fair to take Guattari's ideas on the individual subject and its
relation to the political into account, particularly as Bourriaud cites them as important for
his practice. Perhaps this is a minor point but rather this than to produce a straw man.
Bishop's problem is that, like the YBA movement before it, Relational Aesthetic is
suffering the fate of all things that are passing out of fashion. They produce a discussion,
which is too late to seem current and too early to bring with it the benefits of hindsight or
the pleasure of rediscovery.
Grant Watson is the Curator of Visual Arts at Project in Dublin.
Reprinted from Circa 114, Winter 2005, pp.p37 - 39