Bourriaud, Nicolas. (1998/2002). Relational form. Ch. in Relational Aesthetics, pp. 11-24. Paris: Les presses du réel.
 
Themes and quotes

Page last updated 9/11/04

A. About art: Art; redefining art as social interstice

Statement of purpose for making art

• "Each particular artwork is a proposal to live in a shared world, and the work of every artist is a bundle of relations with the world, giving rise to other relations, and so on and so forth, ad infinitum." (p. 22)
• "Art is a state of encounter." (pg. 17)

Contemporary art work responds to the real world and to a highly urbanized setting for most people & art

• "The role of artworks is no longer to form imaginary and utopian realities, but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real, whatever the scale chosen by the artists. . . The artist dwells in the circumstances the present offers him, so as to turn the setting of his life into a lasting world." (pg. 13-14)
• Formerly artists were "condemned to create a series of minor modifications in a space whose modernity it inherits, and abandon an overall reconstruction of the space inhabited by human kind;" the new model is "learning to inhabit the world in a better way." (pg. 13)
• Bourriaud's refers to "crampedness of  dwelling spaces in this urban world" ... "scaling -down of furniture and objects, now emphasizing a
  greater maneuverability"(pp. 14, 15).
  

Consider the total social context!
Understanding the future, considering history
The foundation of contemporary art is understanding the situation of the artists [i.e. the social conditions].

• "How are we to understand the types of artistic behavior shown in exhibitions held in the 1990s, and the lines of thinking behind them, if we do not start out from the same situation as the artists?" (pg. 11)
• "In order to invent more effective tools and more valid viewpoints, it behoves us to understand the changes nowadays occurring in the social arena, and grasp what has already changed and what is still changing." (pg. 11)
  

The art is created through the artist's intent and the viewer's conception.
There is a commerce- Exchange of ideas between artwork (artist) and viewer
Art is a form that brings together artist and audience.

• "An artform where the substrate is formed by intersubjectivity, and which takes being-together as a central theme, the 'encounter' between beholder and picture, and the collective elaboration of meaning."(pg. 15)
  
• "Present day art shows that form only exists in the encounter and in the dynamic relationship enjoyed by an artistic proposition with other formations, artistic or otherwise." (pg. 21)
  
• "Producing a form is to invent possible encounters; receiving a form is to create conditions for an exchanger." (pg. 23)
• "This is the precise nature of the contemporary art exhibition in the arena of representational commerce: it creates free areas, and time spans whose rhythm contrasts with those structuring everyday life, and it encourages an inter-human commerce that differs from the 'communication zones' that are imposed upon us." (pg. 16)
• "Form can only come about from a meeting between two levels of reality." (pg. 24)
• "Art is a state of encounter." (p. 18)
• "The contemporary artwork's form is spreading out from its material form; it is a linking element, a principle of dynamic agglutination. An artwork is a dot on a line." (p. 21)
  

History is a constantly moving force with reocurring themes.
Change is an important theme.
Formerly, art has often been a luxury item for the wealthy, something for consumption

• "There is no such thing as any possible "end of history" or "end of art," because the game is being forever re-enacted, in relation to its function, in other words, in relation to the players and the system which they construct and criticize." pg. 18
  
• "He produces in that split second a microcommunity. . . formed in relation to the work and in it." (p. 17)
• "The art work has come across as a luxury, lordly item in this urban setting (the dimensions of the work, as well as those of the apartment,
  helping to distinguish between their owner and the crowd)... and "What is collapsing before our very eyes is nothing other than this
  falsely aristocratic conception of the arrangement of works of art, associated with the feeling of territorial acquisition" (p. 14).  
  

B. Form and formation

The form an artwork takes is important because it presents the stage for an encounter

• "If, as Serge Daney writes, 'all form is a face looking at us,' what does a form become when it is plunged into the dimension of dialogue? What is a form that is essentially relational?" (pg. 21) "In Daney's thinking, 'all form is a face looking at me,' because it is summoning me to dialogue with it. Form is a dynamic that is . . .in time and space." (pg. 24)
• "The form of an artwork issues from a negotiation with the intelligible, which is bequeathed to us. Through it, the artist embarks upon a dialogue." (pg. 22)
• [Daney] "maintains that form, in an image, is nothing other than the representation of desire. Producing a form is to invent possible encounters; receiving a form is to create the conditions for an exchange, the way you return a service in a game of tennis." (pg. 23)

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