In this paper, I will question the relation between art and space
through my works. The question that I have an urge to answer or
justify why I ask it in the first place: “How can boundaries
between an artwork and space disappear?”. I will analyze the works
that I have produced and will produce that touches the boundaries.
With consideration of public space as a multilayered notion I will
try to explore these layers that can be sensed everyday. I will try
to move my works, which I make with the motivation that Nicolas
Bourriaud called “relational aesthetics”, out of my studio. I
will design everyday encounters and will discuss how and why those
works relating with space, how medium affecting this relation and
what is the result of that kind of relation.
Derya Yıldız
17 Kasım 2014 Pazartesi
2 Kasım 2014 Pazar
Aesthetics of Relations
Keywords:
aesthetics, relations, politics, public, contemporary art, Bourriaud, Bishop
Another article that I find resemblance with my
questions is Relational Aesthetics by Nicolas Bourriaud and at the beginning of
his article Bourriaud asks these questions as well: “What are the real challenges
of contemporary art? What are its links with society, history and culture?” [1]
I think to stay in the context or more importantly to have a context in the
first place, these are very important starting points.
Bourriaud define the artistic activity as a
game, whose forms, patterns and functions develop and evolve according to
periods and social contexts; it is not an immutable essence. This is what creates relational form and
relational form consists a possibility of relational art (an art taking as its
theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context,
rather than the assertion of an independent art and private symbolic space),
points to a radical upheaval of the aesthetic, cultural and political goals
introduced by modern art. According to him it is no longer possible to regard
the contemporary work as a space to be walk through, instead it is presented as
a period of time to be lived through, like an opening to unlimited discussion. It
is similar to John Dewey’s definition of “live creature” linked to its
environment in order to has experiences continuously.
He consider artwork as social interstice like
Joseph Beuys considered it as a social sculpture and defended that contemporary
art is developing a political project when it endeavors to move into relational
realm by turning it into an issue. However Claire Bishop, in her article
Antagonism and Relational Art challenged that approach. She asks in what type, for
whom and why human relations should be produced through relational art? She
find the “unlimited discussion” functionless and considers it as a celebration
of what is already there. She promote that if a work of art is not disruptive
it will never become a place where transformative change happens. [2]
I think the theory of Bourriaud has problematic
sides, because he, as a curator, believes that social relations can be constructed
through art institutions, but then the question Bishop asked become more
meaningful. Since art institutions are not part of everyday life, relational
art will not be relational enough to become poetic and public at the same time.
[1]
Bourriaud, N. (1998), Relational Aesthetics
[2] Bishop,
C. (2004), Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics
Aesthetics of Experience
Keywords: aesthetic
experience, politics, public, contemporary art, Ranciere, Dewey, Leddy
The adjectives we keep using during the
discussions about perception and experience of contemporary art are in a wide
range. They reflect both positive and negative senses we get. Didactic,
disturbing, cheap, shallow, repulsive or poetic, transformative, magical,
impressive, subtle, ingenious, strong, or as a more common reaction: beautiful.
Even though it is perfectly natural, something that someone find “beautiful”
will be not beautiful for someone else, since appreciating art is deeply
subjective, I got curios about the reason that makes public like or not like a
contemporary artwork in public space.
Space and medium is closely relevant to the
experience. As Jacques Ranciere pointed out, it’s not simply an instrument of
art. It is the specific materiality that defines art’s essence.[1] When it is
literature or music it is possible to make art without politicize it while
offering a unique experience like Pessoa did with his poetry. However in visual
arts, space as a part of the artwork, reflects its spatial character to work.
That is why it is still possible to put a completely meaningless sculpture to
an art gallery which is designed to have no character yet it would
automatically be an artwork since gallery is a space to collect “art”.[2] But
is it possible for same sculpture to stay meaningless in a public square where
people can physically interact with it and receive it as a part of their
everyday experience? Is it possible for something meaningless to keep being an
artwork? Can meaninglessness and transformative experience survive together in
a public space? Is it possible aesthetisize the political art in public space?
Is it possible to write a poem through visual arts in public space?
Baumgarten defined aesthetic; a theory of
aistheta, of things perceived, and of sensate thinking. In her book Çoğul
Estetik, Jale Nejdet Erzen explaining the factors that effect our perception of
art starting from the 19th century. Even though some of the explanations are
still valid since then like cultural, psychological or biological, new approaches
and perspectives emerge everyday.[3] What I want to focus is contemporary
“everyday” aesthetics.
According to John Dewey, the quality of
aesthetic experience is unity. It must pursue the fulfillment or completition
of an object, or event so that the experience is presented in an integral way .[4] However Tom Leddy adds something else to that perspective: “the ordinary
qua ordinary is uninteresting or boring and only becomes aesthetic when
transformed” and affects that transformation through the notion of “aura”. To
him, aura is not an aesthetic property but an experience of an object as
“having the quality heightened significance in which it seems to extend beyond
itself”. He defends we need to experience an object –or event in Deweyian
sense- as (i) being somehow greater than itself, (ii) as having a surrounding
“glow”, and as seeming more real and alive.[5]
Rancier on the other hand took the notion of
aesthetic a step further by thinking it within the scope of contemporary art
and come up with a new notion “politics of aesthetics”. He use the phrase
“community of sense” in his article and defined it “as a frame of visibility
and intelligibility that puts things or practices together under the same
meaning which shapes thereby a certain sense of community. A community of sense
is a certain cutting out of space and time that binds together practices, forms
of visibility, and pattern of intelligibility. I call this cutting out and this
linkage a partition of sensible.” Ranciere doesn’t specifically cover the
public art and interaction yet he refers it when saying “Art and politics, in
fact, are contingent configurations of the common that may or may not exist.
Just as there is not always art (though there is always music, sculpture, dance
and so on), there is not always politics (though there are always forms of
power and consent). Politics exists in specific communities of sense. It exists
as a dissensual supplement to the other forms of human gathering, as a
polemical redistribution of objects and subjects, places and identities, spaces
and times, visibilities and meanings.” [6] I think that is what makes the “mere
experience” “an experience” as Dewey said and maybe when contradictions come
together poems can emerge in public space.
[1]
Ranciere, J. (2008) What Medium Can Mean?
[2] O’Doherty,
B. (2010) Beyaz Küpün İçinde
[3] Erzen,
J.N. (2011) Çoğul Estetik
[4] Dewey,
J (1934) Art as Experience
[5] Leddy,
T. (2012) The Extraordinary in the Ordinary: The Aesthetics of Everyday Life
[6]
Ranciere, J. (2009) Contemporary Art and the Politics of Aesthetics
18 Ekim 2014 Cumartesi
Art - Space - Public II
According to Alan Gilbert, there is a certain relation between politics and
imagination that determine artworks effect on public realm. The gesture of
artist makes an artwork shallow, didactic, arrogant or poetic, subtle, sublime,
magical. Discussions about transformative experiences and political statement
of artworks, during the previous class made me wander the similarities and
diversities between the experience of politically and socially engaged artworks
and the experience for experience’s sake oriented ones.
The experience of artwork has different
dimensions. For public art, The artist experiences it in real time by producing
it within his/her own perspective, the audience in the public space experiences
it individually or collaboratively by participating, the audience of the
documentation of the work, experiences it later on by observing the “actual”
participants within a timeless and spaceless context. It can be claimed it is
easier to be convinced the transformative or the magical power of experience
-if there is one- for someone who directly interacted with it. The interaction
itself powerful enough to make someone feel special and important, to feel as a
part of something extraordinary in an ordinary life, yet for the one who
perceives it through a photograph, video or installation it is harder to do and
requires something deeper and sophisticated to relate in that timeless and
spaceless moment.
Joseph Beuys, Ausfegen (Sweeping Up), May 1st, 1972 |
Nicolas Bourriaud defines the concept of Relational Aesthethics as " 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." The common issues that provoke and stimulate an individual in a very primitive way and used by many artists after 1960's such as gender, minority, migration, identity, ethics, labor can be considered as a part of that set. Animal rights, human rights and "right to the city" can be added to them as
well. The issues that become medium in the mediumless-ness of contemporary
art. They are not the titles of political messages that flow from artist to
audience through the artwork, nor life lessons to be taught. They are the
motivation behind the artwork that occurs to the artist, the experience and
concerns of the artist about something greater than some inner struggles or
existentialistic breakdowns. It is not necessarily pessimistic and dark
attitude to look over the human kind, but it is a critical eye. It is not
something that has been done to change the world and make it a better place but
something that people who perceives it can understand and figure out the
reasons their ungratefulness’ or gratefulness’ in order to be transformed.
11 Ekim 2014 Cumartesi
Art - Space - Public
Public space is political. It is political
because it is where confrontation, common action and reconciliation happen. It
is where we configure the relation our body with it. It is the playground of individuality
and collectivity. Hence, as the boundaries between private and public space gets
blurred, same happens to art production.
According to Groys; since Duchamp, the labor of
division has collapsed in art context and art making is equal to displaying
art. Subjects become objects. That attitude which emerged from Dadaism opened a
new perspective for artists and eventually for the viewers.
The act of
displaying art and using non-artistic materials made the space part of the
work, which cannot be ignored while experiencing the work. As Kurt Schwitters
showed with his work “Merzbau”, there was not a point where artwork ends and
space begins anymore. As Fluxus artists showed there was no linear relation between
disciplines of art and life anymore. Artwork become something to get in, to sit
on, to touch and change or even complete. Instead of something beautiful to
look at, it become the practice of everyday life that needs to co-exist with
public.
Change of production and comprehension of the
artworks changed the issues as well. Since public space is political the issues
and motivations of artworks get political to. Participation, community,
collectivity, intersubjectivity, migration, gender, identity and minority are
some of the key concepts that public art nourished from. Taking those
concepts back to where they come from, to the public space, is an opportunity to
get closer “gesamtkunstwork” and experience what has not experienced yet.
10 Ekim 2014 Cuma
Art Spaces II
Considering
space as a major reference and criteria reveals specialized sub-concepts in art
production. Space becomes a medium in the manner of land art, site-specific
art, and public installations while boundaries between disciplines collapse
within those scopes. Using the nature both as an exhibition space and a material
source in land art, reading a built environment with its flaws and unique
qualities in site specific art, reclaiming the public space all over again
through public installations open up new field of possibilities. The temporality
of such approaches, the fleeting texture of attitudes and the coincidental
encounters in public realm bring a depth to artworks with a different kind of
experiment and most of the time; free the artwork from identical white cubes.
Art Spaces I
Every act
of art has an undeniable and unbreakable relation with space even if it is
intentional or not. However, hanging a painting on a wall or putting a
sculpture to a public space comprise a different kind of comprehension of the
space than hanging a specific painting on a specific wall or putting a site-specific
sculpture to a public space. Space has potential to get more layers when it is
defined by an artwork as artwork has potential to get more layers when its
roots are strictly connected to the space that it is surrounded. I have an urge
to find answers to those questions in order to generate new ones: How can the boundaries
between an artwork and space can disappear? How can space be manipulated in
order to evolve a natural exhibition space? What would be the evolution of the
term “exhibition” when boundaries disappear? What are different ways of
relating art to a space in different mediums? What is the role of architecture
in that context?
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