Some excellent clone-hunting going on at VVork: stacks of audio loudspeakers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) and stacks of books (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) by artists. A while back it was "neon week."
"I feel that my stack of loudspeakers is more profound than yours because..."
I just emailed them a link to another set of engineered bookworks by Tom Bendtsen, done between 1995 and 2005. I really like when they do the clusters of similar work. Not all of it fails, and it's interesting to see what does work and why.
Well, you know where I'm coming from.
Carl Andre stacked bricks, became a canonical artist, then Jackie Winsor did some stacks, then starting in the '80s and '90s everything that could be stacked was and was billed as deconstructed Andre. Now whole graduating classes are making ironic stacks.
I find it a sadistic hoot to see all this supposedly original, supposedly transgressive work in one place.
Carl Andre deconstruction, book and speaker divisions.
(Of course some good work will emerge--I like Carol Bove and she has one of the better stacks.)
Ya, but the Rosler piece is more relational than visual. Her library project was developed as a direct response to the Donald Judd library (in Marfa TX?) that is off-limits to the hands of patrons, as explained by eflux's Anton Vidokle. There have been a number of reading groups and other art-spectator organized events around the project; the library has traveled extensively; a catalog is being published; and so on. All this, to my mind, distinguishes it in a significant way from the other "book work" currently on display at vvork. But do you feel that these thematic series on the blog are critical? Maybe it's vvork's ambiguity in general, but I just don't feel that critical edge here...
You will note my 1-4 does not include the Rosler (and on further reflection I de-linked the Bendtsen because of the architecture).
When I first posted this (before adding the links) the series was very tight--almost all stacks. When I came back a few hours later they'd added all these damn libraries.
I know libraries have "stacks" but yes, the artist libraries are relational or social sculptures and no, I don't think Vvork's clone series are very critical.
I appreciate the research, though.
I guess I should have clicked through all your links before commenting; was reading vvork right before coming over to your blog.
Quoting Nicolas Bourriaud quoting Liam Gillick: "in the eighties, a large part of artistic production seemed to mean that artists went shopping in the right shops. Now, it seems as though new artists have gone shopping, too, but in unsuitable shops, in all sorts of shops."
In '87 Bob Nickas did an interview with Haim Steinbach called "Shopping" where they went to four different Manhattan stores, upscale and down, and talked about the merchandise. It's a good read.
Does the Bourriaud quote mean that shopping in unsuitable shops is good, or bad?
My 1-4 books is now back to 1-5. Some Future Shocks just came in.
He uses the quote to enter into a discussion of a certain type of 90s art that, in his mind, is based on a model of the flea market, or the bazaar: a largely unregulated system distributed widely over players of varying degrees of influence; the free and unregulated exchange of signs and the artifacts of previous periods of production (ie already existing cultural forms); and the embodiment of a quickly abstracting and disembodied economy (ie the opposite of online commerce).
This is all in "POSTPRODUCTION"
I haven't read Relational Aesthetics or Postproduction, only synopses, so maybe you can help me with this.
I'm still looking for what Bourriaud values in this:
The 80s was about shopping in the right stores (the white cube frame of reference and connections to past art)--bad, restrictive
The 90s was about taking art outside the gallery or opening the gallery to social influences--good (although I don't entirely believe it because most of the artists he describes--Rirkrit, Beecroft, Huyghe, etc--are sanctioned at the highest levels of the gallery system and have markets).
By online commerce are you referring to amazon/eBay, or to the theoretical Internet potlatch or gift economy? The latter is very much about postproduction concepts. Just trying to get on the same page.
By the way, in case you missed the late-added link, thoughts related to yours on the screen burn piece were expressed here.
The problems you raise with Bourriaud's idealization of 90s relational art are exactly on point--it's kind of a marxist critique and has been echoed by many. The vocabulary Bourriaud provides us with, however, might be even more valuable than the individual bodies of work of those artists he discusses.
On your second note; no, I don't think Bourriaud here is talking about internet "gift" culture (I put that term in quotes because the internet sign economy, while, as one very commercially successful video artist put it "Teaches me how to Share Things and Be Natural," is nonetheless governed by class access and privilege, although to a lesser extent than IRL, er, the material world). Bourriaud here is instead talking about the transformation (beginning around the 17th century? Amsterdam? Needs to be looked up) of the term "market"--from a localized, geographic site of exchange, to a more abstracted concept dispersed over time and space. To bring this down to earth we can examine the many banal ways this transformation is manifesting itself: one interacts with an ATM rather than a bank clerk, one rents movies from the internet and receives tips based on algorithms rather than a relationship with a video store clerk, one's sense of community is abstracted to relationships mediated by electronic correspondence rather than a shared material reality. I don't think Bourriaud "gets" the internet in such a way than to go beyond this sort of analysis (not, yet, anyway)...
And thanks for the link to the burn-in discussion.
>>"Teaches me how to Share Things and Be Natural,"
LOL. Sounds like you might have some scars from too-close art world contact. I say that with the highest respect since you are able to joke about it.
It's interesting if Bourriaud sees the Internet as a metaphor for all things impersonal and alienating. Point about class access taken, but I've been thoroughly enjoying my democratic wallow after years in the gallery system. The key to keeping it un-alienating in the Bourriaud sense is to have regular meetings with your online buds and "try to have a life."
I think I am probably more comfortable with the idea of relational concepts in Internet practice than having social interaction defined as art. I went to Rirkrit's "apartment" at Gavin Brown but would rather have just gone to his apartment (if I was invited).
It just struck me: maybe these relational works are gestures of high market artists taking the material social sphere and making it a place exclusively for the rich, and the initiated art spectator. Case in point: while working in Chelsea 2 or 3 months ago I would frequently visit the Rirkrit install at David Zwirner and enjoy a free curry lunch. Who would I run into there? Friends, colleagues: all artists or art professionals who work there, too. No Chelsea bums, no locals from the many housing projects in the neighborhood. I can only speak with certainty of my own experience there, but that was it.
Maybe if this work was executed in the 80s, the artist would have turned it into a social initiative, instead of a conceptual talking point. Not that it was a bad talking point (or lunch); and not that social work as art is good or great or anything...
That was my objection to the original Rirkrit piece that that recreated.
It's such a small loop that understands and participates in these events but the rhetoric was about breaking down the gallery walls--that's why it's a canonical art work. The Food coop in the 70s that this echoed seemed more honest--it was about artists eating, in a then-crappy neighborhood (or maybe I'm romanticizing it).
I feel like the true relational art somehow has to happen outside the system--a paradox, since how will it ever be recognized?
How *will* it be recognized is an important question, but so is *who* will recognize it? We have been working through this issue for years...Kaprow hinted at a workable solution with his "unartist." It is difficult to engage in an art/life practice and be legible *as a practice* outside of art institutions. As mentioned above, most "relational" artists merely use relationality as a working method, or as a subject matter rather than a life practice, which is the sort of thing Kaprow (among many others outside an art context) was getting at. How do you create a public trace, or to use a chic term, "platform" for engagement while refusing to be inscribed into the profession of art? It's funny how easily co-opted such activities are. The photo of our Future Shock collection is an easy example - it was never intended to be a "piece," but merely documentation of the activity of spending time in various thrift stores and flea markets. They were stacked and photographed as a secondary form of documentation - to provide context for our participation on a panel discussion around collecting. Yet, when paired in the context of "real" art (on VVORK), they blend seamlessly which further illustrates the difficulty of the paradox of being "authentic" as you mention...
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Some excellent clone-hunting going on at VVork: stacks of audio loudspeakers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) and stacks of books (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) by artists. A while back it was "neon week."
"I feel that my stack of loudspeakers is more profound than yours because..."
- tom moody 6-08-2007 11:17 pm
I just emailed them a link to another set of engineered bookworks by Tom Bendtsen, done between 1995 and 2005. I really like when they do the clusters of similar work. Not all of it fails, and it's interesting to see what does work and why.
- L.M. 6-08-2007 11:38 pm
Well, you know where I'm coming from.
Carl Andre stacked bricks, became a canonical artist, then Jackie Winsor did some stacks, then starting in the '80s and '90s everything that could be stacked was and was billed as deconstructed Andre. Now whole graduating classes are making ironic stacks.
I find it a sadistic hoot to see all this supposedly original, supposedly transgressive work in one place.
Carl Andre deconstruction, book and speaker divisions.
(Of course some good work will emerge--I like Carol Bove and she has one of the better stacks.)
- tom moody 6-09-2007 4:16 am
Ya, but the Rosler piece is more relational than visual. Her library project was developed as a direct response to the Donald Judd library (in Marfa TX?) that is off-limits to the hands of patrons, as explained by eflux's Anton Vidokle. There have been a number of reading groups and other art-spectator organized events around the project; the library has traveled extensively; a catalog is being published; and so on. All this, to my mind, distinguishes it in a significant way from the other "book work" currently on display at vvork. But do you feel that these thematic series on the blog are critical? Maybe it's vvork's ambiguity in general, but I just don't feel that critical edge here...
- bxk (guest) 6-09-2007 9:24 am
You will note my 1-4 does not include the Rosler (and on further reflection I de-linked the Bendtsen because of the architecture).
When I first posted this (before adding the links) the series was very tight--almost all stacks. When I came back a few hours later they'd added all these damn libraries.
I know libraries have "stacks" but yes, the artist libraries are relational or social sculptures and no, I don't think Vvork's clone series are very critical.
I appreciate the research, though.
- tom moody 6-09-2007 10:03 am
I guess I should have clicked through all your links before commenting; was reading vvork right before coming over to your blog.
- bxk (guest) 6-09-2007 10:07 am
Quoting Nicolas Bourriaud quoting Liam Gillick: "in the eighties, a large part of artistic production seemed to mean that artists went shopping in the right shops. Now, it seems as though new artists have gone shopping, too, but in unsuitable shops, in all sorts of shops."
- bxk (guest) 6-09-2007 10:11 am
In '87 Bob Nickas did an interview with Haim Steinbach called "Shopping" where they went to four different Manhattan stores, upscale and down, and talked about the merchandise. It's a good read.
Does the Bourriaud quote mean that shopping in unsuitable shops is good, or bad?
- tom moody 6-09-2007 10:32 am
My 1-4 books is now back to 1-5. Some Future Shocks just came in.
- tom moody 6-09-2007 10:55 am
He uses the quote to enter into a discussion of a certain type of 90s art that, in his mind, is based on a model of the flea market, or the bazaar: a largely unregulated system distributed widely over players of varying degrees of influence; the free and unregulated exchange of signs and the artifacts of previous periods of production (ie already existing cultural forms); and the embodiment of a quickly abstracting and disembodied economy (ie the opposite of online commerce).
- bxk (guest) 6-09-2007 6:06 pm
This is all in "POSTPRODUCTION"
- bxk (guest) 6-09-2007 6:40 pm
I haven't read Relational Aesthetics or Postproduction, only synopses, so maybe you can help me with this.
I'm still looking for what Bourriaud values in this:
The 80s was about shopping in the right stores (the white cube frame of reference and connections to past art)--bad, restrictive
The 90s was about taking art outside the gallery or opening the gallery to social influences--good (although I don't entirely believe it because most of the artists he describes--Rirkrit, Beecroft, Huyghe, etc--are sanctioned at the highest levels of the gallery system and have markets).
By online commerce are you referring to amazon/eBay, or to the theoretical Internet potlatch or gift economy? The latter is very much about postproduction concepts. Just trying to get on the same page.
By the way, in case you missed the late-added link, thoughts related to yours on the screen burn piece were expressed here.
- tom moody 6-09-2007 7:10 pm
The problems you raise with Bourriaud's idealization of 90s relational art are exactly on point--it's kind of a marxist critique and has been echoed by many. The vocabulary Bourriaud provides us with, however, might be even more valuable than the individual bodies of work of those artists he discusses.
On your second note; no, I don't think Bourriaud here is talking about internet "gift" culture (I put that term in quotes because the internet sign economy, while, as one very commercially successful video artist put it "Teaches me how to Share Things and Be Natural," is nonetheless governed by class access and privilege, although to a lesser extent than IRL, er, the material world). Bourriaud here is instead talking about the transformation (beginning around the 17th century? Amsterdam? Needs to be looked up) of the term "market"--from a localized, geographic site of exchange, to a more abstracted concept dispersed over time and space. To bring this down to earth we can examine the many banal ways this transformation is manifesting itself: one interacts with an ATM rather than a bank clerk, one rents movies from the internet and receives tips based on algorithms rather than a relationship with a video store clerk, one's sense of community is abstracted to relationships mediated by electronic correspondence rather than a shared material reality. I don't think Bourriaud "gets" the internet in such a way than to go beyond this sort of analysis (not, yet, anyway)...
- bxk (guest) 6-09-2007 7:44 pm
And thanks for the link to the burn-in discussion.
- bxk (guest) 6-09-2007 7:50 pm
>>"Teaches me how to Share Things and Be Natural,"
LOL. Sounds like you might have some scars from too-close art world contact. I say that with the highest respect since you are able to joke about it.
It's interesting if Bourriaud sees the Internet as a metaphor for all things impersonal and alienating. Point about class access taken, but I've been thoroughly enjoying my democratic wallow after years in the gallery system. The key to keeping it un-alienating in the Bourriaud sense is to have regular meetings with your online buds and "try to have a life."
I think I am probably more comfortable with the idea of relational concepts in Internet practice than having social interaction defined as art. I went to Rirkrit's "apartment" at Gavin Brown but would rather have just gone to his apartment (if I was invited).
- tom moody 6-09-2007 8:23 pm
It just struck me: maybe these relational works are gestures of high market artists taking the material social sphere and making it a place exclusively for the rich, and the initiated art spectator. Case in point: while working in Chelsea 2 or 3 months ago I would frequently visit the Rirkrit install at David Zwirner and enjoy a free curry lunch. Who would I run into there? Friends, colleagues: all artists or art professionals who work there, too. No Chelsea bums, no locals from the many housing projects in the neighborhood. I can only speak with certainty of my own experience there, but that was it.
Maybe if this work was executed in the 80s, the artist would have turned it into a social initiative, instead of a conceptual talking point. Not that it was a bad talking point (or lunch); and not that social work as art is good or great or anything...
- bxk (guest) 6-09-2007 8:41 pm
That was my objection to the original Rirkrit piece that that recreated.
It's such a small loop that understands and participates in these events but the rhetoric was about breaking down the gallery walls--that's why it's a canonical art work. The Food coop in the 70s that this echoed seemed more honest--it was about artists eating, in a then-crappy neighborhood (or maybe I'm romanticizing it).
I feel like the true relational art somehow has to happen outside the system--a paradox, since how will it ever be recognized?
- tom moody 6-09-2007 9:18 pm
How *will* it be recognized is an important question, but so is *who* will recognize it? We have been working through this issue for years...Kaprow hinted at a workable solution with his "unartist." It is difficult to engage in an art/life practice and be legible *as a practice* outside of art institutions. As mentioned above, most "relational" artists merely use relationality as a working method, or as a subject matter rather than a life practice, which is the sort of thing Kaprow (among many others outside an art context) was getting at. How do you create a public trace, or to use a chic term, "platform" for engagement while refusing to be inscribed into the profession of art? It's funny how easily co-opted such activities are. The photo of our Future Shock collection is an easy example - it was never intended to be a "piece," but merely documentation of the activity of spending time in various thrift stores and flea markets. They were stacked and photographed as a secondary form of documentation - to provide context for our participation on a panel discussion around collecting. Yet, when paired in the context of "real" art (on VVORK), they blend seamlessly which further illustrates the difficulty of the paradox of being "authentic" as you mention...
- LeisureArts (guest) 6-14-2007 12:50 am