Imagemaking: Relational Aesthetics [background]

"At the Geffen Contemporary in Little Tokyo, the Pacific Standard Time
show "Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974-1981," has an
audacious premise: Much of what we take for granted in the diverse
panoply of recent international art first emerged in California nearly
40 years ago.

Take so-called relational art, a ballyhooed 1990s phenomenon in New
York and Europe in which artists acted as social designers of communal
events, like a makeshift soup-kitchen for cooking lunch or an outdoor
cocktail lounge at a biennial. A full generation earlier, Allen
Ruppersberg opened a cafe near MacArthur Park and a hotel on Sunset
Boulevard, both as artworks, while San Francisco-based artist Tom
Marioni brought enough beer for 16 friends to socialize in a gallery
at the Oakland Museum, then left the furniture and empty bottles on
display as the exhibition. Intermittently, Marioni has been doing "The
Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art" ever
since 1970." - The Los Angeles Times

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"the institution may overshadow the work that it otherwise highlights:
it becomes the spectacle, it collects the cultural capital, and the
director-curator becomes the star." - Hal Foster

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"Similar to the feminist and alter-globalization movements, these
groups want to avoid replicating the authoritarian structures of
the institutions they are opposing."
-The Washington Post on Occupy Wall Street

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Beech explains further that “(t)he participant here is generally powerless to question or critique the art or the art-concept, nor are they, in any real sense, a meaningful or true collaborator within the work. I question the motivations around art that acts as an alleviator in this way, for what purpose do we need to coexist and be interconnected and for whom?” You can read the article here.

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AS PRACTICE:

@ 5min: http://www.ubu.com/film/relational.html

Rirkrit Tiravanija: http://newarttv.com/Rirkrit+Tiravanija

Consider:

1. regurgitating old ideas in a different time (effectiveness, responsibility)

2. how does this relate to the internet

3. why now?

4. good incarnations v bad in the implementation of relational art

5. power structures, spectacle, easy money, hard sells

YOU MUST READ:

Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics by Claire Bishop