Relational Aesthetics - Harmony versus Antagonism

Bourriaud, Nicholas, ‘Art of the 1990’s’, from Relational Aesthetics, Paris: Les presses de reel, 2002, pp.25-40.

Nicholas Bourriaud a French writer, art critic, curator and co-founder of Palais de Tokyo attempted to characterize artistic practice in the 1990’s in Relational Aesthetics. He argued that art at this time took on “the realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an independent and private symbolic space”.(1) In other words, relational aesthetics seeks to generate inter-human relations with an emphasis on participation. This collaborative function relies on transmission or ‘relational reading’.(2) Bourriaud does not simply regard relational aesthetics to be simply interactive art. He considers it to be a means of locating contemporary practice within the culture at large. It can be seen as a direct response to the shift from goods to a service based economy.(3) It allows for a system of difference in aesthetic consumption of art relations. The art relations, is the art. The experimental open-endedness over aesthetic resolution is argued to be in perpetual flux.(4) It is dependent on the engagement of the audience to explore the social bond of where they sit in relation to the world and to others. In Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics the work offers togetherness, a positive feel good experience. Relational artist Eve Armstrong sets up trading tables that operate in the production of goods and services to explore the social bonds that Bourriaud discusses. However Claire Bishop, questions whether this feel good art as in Armstrong’s trading table, is art that does not defend itself and can collapse into compensatory or self-congratulatory entertainment. A criticism of relational aesthetics may be that it is unstable as it is beholden to the audience and environment and requires a unified subject. If the audience or social entity does not wish to participate then it potentially renders an artwork as futile.

In contrast, contemporary artist Thomas Hirschhorn (b.1957) uses relational aesthetics to disrupt Bourriaud’s claims for togetherness or harmony. Bishop calls this relational antagonism whereby Hirschhorn’s works expose what is repressed in sustaining the appearance of order and harmony.(5) He rejects the feel good approach and adopts a more argumentative approach culminating in friction and discomfort in political debate. Rather than seeking unity from the audience by fulfilling the artist’s interactive requirements as in Armstrong’s trading table, Hirschhorn poses antagonistic questions that encourage independent thought that is an essential prerequisite for political action. If contemporary art practice dealing in relational aesthetics seeks to be politically motivated it may need to be antagonistic rather than feel good to mobilize a response in the wider culture.

(1) Bourriaud, Nicholas, ‘Art of the 1990’s’, from Relational Aesthetics, Paris: Les presses de reel, 2002, p.14.
(2) Bourriaud, Nicholas, ‘Art of the 1990’s’, from Relational Aesthetics, Paris: Les presses de reel, 2002, p.29.
(3) Bishop, Claire, ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics', October Magazine. Vol 110, Fall 2004. p.54.
(4) Bishop, Claire, ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics', October Magazine. Vol 110, Fall 2004. p.52.
(5) Bishop, Claire, ‘Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics', October Magazine. Vol 110, Fall 2004. p.79.