Roberta Schultz Santos
Design, Art and SociEnvironmental Concerns
VISD 6B06 Contemporary Issues in Design History Professor Marie-Jose Therrien March 13, 2013
Relational Aesthetics
Claire Bishop
Jale Erzen
Social
Troels Johansson
Victor Margolin
Environmental
Art vs. Design
Relational Aesthetics
Nicolas Bourriauds 1998 book about Relational Art
Relational Aesthetics: Aesthetic theory consisting in judging artworks on the basis of the inter-human relations which they represent, produce or prompt. (p.112) Relational Art : A set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space. (p.113)
Claire Bishop
Professor Art History at CUNY PhD at Essex University (2002) Books: Participation (2006) and Installation Art: A Critical History (2005) Essay: Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics (2004)
The Social Turn:
Collaboration and its discontents
Socially engaged art Empowering belief of collective actions and shared ideas Criteria for accessing relational art Artworks are judged based on their process rather than on the final result
Oda Projesi
Turkish art collective created in 1997 by zge Akkol, Gne Sava and Seil Yersel
Phil Collins they shoot horses (2004)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b88FwjYcnQc
Artur mijewskis The Singing Lessons (2001)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bBQOYWxUa4
Jeremy Dellers The Battle of Orgreave (2001)
Carsten Hllers The Baudouin Experiment: A Deliberate, NonFatalistic, Large-Scale Group Experiment in Deviation (2001)
Conclusion
Bishops accuses the criteria of socially engaged art to be based on an anti-capitalist and Christian ideology where self-sacrifice is considered to be noble For her, the best relational art address the contradictory pull between autonomy and social intervention
Troels Degn Johansson
Associate Professor and Head of Research at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts PhD at University of Copenhagen (2000)
Art in the context of design, design in the context of art
Relational Art vs. Relational Design Criteria for distinguishing the practices The avant-garde vs. present The Particular Micro-ethics and Micro-politics
Superflex
A Danish artists group founded in 1993 by Jakob Fenger, Rasmus Nielsen and Bjrnstjerne Christiansen.
RACA
Copenhagen based group created by graphic designer Pulsk Ravn and architect Johan Carlsson.
Design and the Relational Avant-Garde
Nicolas Bourriauds Relational Aesthetics Joseph Beuys PARTICULAR: people, place, living conditions Micro-politics and Micro-ethics Relational Art modeling possible futures Context
Victor Margolin
Professor Emeritus of Design History at the University of Illinois PhD at the Union Institute in Cincinnati (1981) Editor of Design Issues Books: Design Discourse, Discovering Design, The Idea of Design, The Designed World, and The Politics of the Artificial.
Reflections on Art and Sustainability
Sustainability: the strategy for sustainable development aims to promote harmony among human beings and between humanity and nature. (p.21) Hildegard Kurt: how does one begin to think about arts relation to sustainability such that a new understanding of artistic practice might result? (p.22)
Categories of Sustainable Art
Art that engages with the land and the landscape Art that incorporates sustainable practices such as recycling Art that responds to social issues through the production of objects or discourse
Art and Sustainability
Kurt: form as knowledge How to distinguish art from architecture, design, socially engaged practices that deal with sustainability? How do we think about art that moves from discourse to action, art whose intent is to produce a useful result? Widening of artistic practice: Participation and Action
Joseph Beuys
German artist member of Fluxus Precedents of socially engaged practice Artwork : 7000 Oaks (1979)
Art vs. Design
Division between art and design in the present moment Dan Petermans work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago Necessity of overcoming categories and hierarchies
Jale Erzen
Professor at the Middle East Technical University PhD at Technical University of Istanbul (1982) Secretary general of the International Association of Aesthetics
Ecology, Art, Ecological Aesthetics
Aesthetics Perception Interdependence between aesthetics and ecology Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenology Binary nature/culture Relational Art
Conclusions
Emic: description of behavior from within a culture Etic: description of behavior from an outsider Aesthetics must follow an Emic approach Art reveals human intentionality Contemporary Art generates new ways to activate imagination and incite participation Relational Aesthetics Ecological Aesthetics
Cest fini!
Questions
When talking about the boundaries between relational art and design, how can one interpret the lack of examples of relational design practice in these texts? Can we consider contemporary relational art avant-garde if it mimics the strategies from former avant-garde practice?
