The Raving Artist Wife of the Ranting Economist: March 2009

My first memorable physical encounter with Relational Aesthetics happened in the 2003 Venice Biennial when I came upon “the Utopia Station”. One of its components was a piece by Yoko Ono consisting of big maps of the world pasted on walls, under which a small platform held various stamps of the word "peace" [1] together with a bunch of dried out stamp pads. It was painfully obvious that “the viewer” was supposed to participate in the art work (or space) by using the visually uninteresting stamps, all of the same size and font, to stamp the word all over the map and “imagine peace”.

Being allergic to any form of manipulation, I proceeded to “relate to this space” by using the “peace” stamps to form, in as big a way as I could with the dried out stamp pads, the word WAR. I remember being frustrated about the pads being so dry, being boo-ed by a bystander, feeling proud about that, and thinking "I'm getting too old for art".

Last November, I went to New York to get an art fix at the same time that the Guggenheim was putting on a whole show of this “stuff”. This time I opted out and stayed as far away from the Gug as possible. I don’t need art to, so transparently, manipulate me into action. Unfortunately, my allergic reaction to this stupendously boring form of art (for details, read the review of the show by John Kelsey in the March 2009 issue of Art Forum) prevented me from reading the fine print in the show listings and finding out that the Guggenheim was also showing a Catherine Opie retrospective; something I do wish I had seen.

An excellent commentary by Helen Molesworth on both offerings and how they interacted with each other (not by design) can also be read in the 2009 March issue of Art Forum, on page 102 under SLANT: Social Problem. And it seems that the Opie show is the unintended clear winner in producing the results that “theanypacewhatever” (the relational aesthetics show) was after; something to do with people interacting with each other within the space set by the artist. In viewing Opie’s photographs, people did just that without being manipulated into doing it. Yeah, good art can often bring people together without even trying.

I had read about "theanyspacewhatever" [2] when Jerry Saltz reviewed it in the New York Magazine after spending the night at the Guggenheim in Revolving Hotel Room by Carsten Höller, “a bed fitted with black silk sheets and presented in a hotel room-like installation...available by reservation only for paying guests” [3]. Saltz seems to have gotten something out of his experience; but my reading of his epiphany has done nothing to improve my disposition towards relational aesthetics at any level, intellectual or aesthetic. Works of this nature have always felt like nothing more than forced social gatherings that interest me not at all; and, in fact, totally turn me off because of their manipulative nature.

I finally turned to Molesworth’s article to see if there was anything else about this kind of work that I might be missing. I found nothing but a good definition of the practice, which Molesworth does a great job in presenting even though she does not seem to think the show was successful in carrying out its intentions. She provides quotes from foundational essays by Nicolas Bourriaud’s that, most definitely, confirm my feelings of being too old for this stuff [4]: ‘Relational aesthetics sees art as a way of learning to inhabit the world in a better way... It is not about utopian realities but about ways of living and models of action within the existing real, whatever the scale chosen by the artist... The exhibition is a special place where such momentary grouping may occur... and give rise to a ‘specific arena of exchange’’ [5]. And she elaborates that ‘The “theanyspacewhatever” crowd [6] eschewed concerns of identity-as-community (which is Opie’s practice) in favor of a lively and convivial model of the social... they offered provisional gatherings, ad hoc groups temporarily forming around similar interests... they offered food and movies and the potential of the space one found oneself in at any given moment’ [7].

Well, this hammers the nail on the coffin for me. Apparently I have always felt relational aesthetics to be nothing more than forced social gatherings among strangers (at best) or parties among insiders (at worst) because, hey, that's exactly what they are! Mystery solved.

[1] although the word 'various' connotes 'variety', and there was none of that here.
[2] a heavy handed attempt at a "cute" translation of Deleuse's term 'espace quelconque'... you know, some shit just does not translate from French to English: stop trying people!
[3] AF p.237
[4] Or maybe it is that I am too young, for one might have to have been born a decade before me to actually buy this.
[5] AF p. 102
[6] god, that’s a mouthful!
[7] AF p. 101

One night, while visiting my mom in Switzerland, and while The Ranting Economist slept, I browsed what seemed to be an infinite number of TV channels only to snuggle up to a program about working dogs on the tried and true European version of The Animal Channel. One of the dogs featured was a Bouvier des Flandres named Canaan shown working in a farm, coincidentally enough, in Simpsonville, SC, just forty miles from where we live. I fell hopelessly in love with this gentle giant. "Le lendemain", wanting to show the Bouvier to Curtis in order to add it to the long list of dogs I will adopt in my imaginary future, I logged on to search for more information on the breed.

In my research I found out from Wikipedia that the Bouvier des Flandres “possess sophisticated traits, such as complex control, intelligence, and accountability” and that “they are rational, gentle, loyal, and protective in nature”. I also discovered that Ronald Reagan had one named Lucky. Given that dogs seem to embody their owner’s personalities, Curtis found it telling that President Reagan would have chosen this particular breed; while I marveled at the fact that President Obama is still vacillating about what dog to get. One can only hope that he is better at keeping the promises he has made to the American people than he is at keeping the one he made to his daughters.