Rirkrit Tiravanija

Is it still possible today to call for the fulfillment of the historical avant-gardist objective to integrate art and life? This paper, partly grounded in Peter Bürger's seminal Theory of the Avant-Garde, considers the question by turning to the work of two contemporary artists: Thai biennial stalwart Rirkrit Tiravanija and Spanish provocateur Santiago Sierra. Providing a new angle from which we can analyze Nicolas Bourriaud's Relational Aesthetics, I argue that an artist like Tiravanija, in keeping his work within the bounded space of high art arenas, gives back to art a certain form of autonomy. This is in direct contradistinction to Santiago Sierra who can indeed be said to integrate art and life in his work, if only to evince its essential futility. Ultimately, this paper concludes that art—when integrated with an exploitative, degrading, neoliberal life—will manage to be nothing more than exploitative, degrading, neoliberal art. 2

Encounters Beyond the Gallery challenges the hegemony of Western aesthetics in the global arena of contemporary art and argues for a pluralization of art languages. It draws attention to the contemporary art's disavowal of ethnic arts, and experimentally expands relational aesthetics into the realm of culture by staging transformative encounters between the work of Rirkrit Tiravanija, the art of Tamil women and the Shipibo-Conibo of Eastern Peru, that are mediated through the figure of the fictitious artist Rikki T. The book  draws on Deleuzean notions of perception, Deleuze-Guattarean aesthetics of affectivity and of the non-human as well as Guattarean ecosophy. It experiments with transversality as method and modes of writing, and is essential to those interested in contemporary art, aesthetics, anthropology and the global.

Öz
Nicolas Bourriaud tarafından ilk kez 1996'da kullanılan 'İlişkisel Estetik' adlandırması, 1998'de yine Bourriaud tarafından aynı adla kitaplaştırılarak, dünya sanat literatürüne kalıcı olarak dâhil olmuştur. İzleyiciyi pasif konumda bırakan geleneksel sanatçı-izleyici yordamına aykırı sanat performanslarının bir araya toplandığı bu kitapta; Bourriaud "İlişkisel Estetik" başlığı altında, karşılıklı eylem, biraradalık ve ilişkisellik üzerinden bir okuma önerir. Özünde izleyiciyi katılımcıya dönüştüren bu yaklaşımın, yıllar önce sanat dünyasında karşılaşılmış kavramsal sanat performanslarından ne kadar farklı olduğu tartışılabilir olsa da, Bourriaud'nun kitabında öne çıkardığı sanatçılardan Rirkrit Tiravanija bu "manifestonun" öncü ve sembol ismi olarak sanat tarihindeki yerini almıştır. Galeri ortamını boşaltarak seyyar ocaklar kuran ya da bazen galeri mekânını yeniden tasarlayarak bir tür mutfağa dönüştüren Tiravanija, bu mutfaklarda pişirdiği yemekleri izleyicilerle paylaşarak, onları sanat mekânının ve aynı zamanda kendi sanat performansının aktif birer parçası haline getirir. İzleyici artık sanat odaklı bir etkileşim ve paylaşım zincirinin halkasıdır. İzleyicinin yani katılımcının varlığı ortamdaki sanatı var eder ve diğer izleyicileri de bu oluşa katılmaya teşvik ederek performansın devamını sağlar. Bu metinde, İlişkisel Estetik kuramı, Nicolas Bourriaud'nun derlemesinin sembol isimlerinden olan Rirkrit Tiravanija'nın sanat etkinlikleri üzerinden örneklenecek ve irdelenecektir. Tiravanija'nın gün geçtikçe 1980'lerin kavramsal sanat performanslarına, hatta geleneksel sanat sunumlarına yakınlaşan sanat etkinliklerinin gösterilmesi yoluyla, İlişkisel Estetik söyleminin sonuna yaklaşılıp, yaklaşılmadığının tartışmaya açılması amaçlanmıştır.
Anahtar Sözcükler: İlişkisel Estetik, etkileşim, performans sanatı, kavramsal sanat, Rirkrit Tiravanija.

Abstract
The name "Relational Aesthetics" was first used by Nicolas Bourriaud in 1996 and the book under the same name was published in 1998 by Bourriaud, marked the concept's permanent entry in the literature of art world. In this book where Bourriaud gathered together the art performances that contradict the traditional artist-audience procedure which leaves the viewer in a passive position, Bourriaud offers a reading based on mutual action, coexistence and relationalism under the caption of Relational Aesthetics. Although in essence, it can be argued that, the approach which turns the audience into a participant is not very different from the conceptual art performances the art world encountered years ago, Rirkrit Tiravanija, one of Bourriaud's prominent artists, took its place in the history of art as the pioneer and symbol name of this "manifesto". Tiravanija, who empties the gallery space and brings in mobile stoves or sometimes totally redesigns the gallery space to turn to a kind of kitchen, shares the food he cooks in these kitchens with the audience for making them an active piece of the art space as well as his own art performance. The viewer becomes a ring of an art-oriented interaction and sharing chain. The presence of the viewer, ie the participant, creates the art in the environment and maintains the continuation of the performance by encouraging the latter audience to participate in this happening. In this text, Relational Aesthetics theory will be exemplified and examined through the art activities of Rirkrit Tiravanija, one of the symbol names of Nicolas Bourriaud's review. The aim is to open up a discussion about whether the Relational Aesthetics discourse is coming to an end or not, by showing Tiravanija's art activities, which are gradually converging to conceptual art performances of the 1980s and even traditional presentations of art.
Keywords: Relational Aesthetics, interaction, performance art, conceptual art, Rirkrit Tiravanija.

Viewers of contemporary art are often invited to involve themselves actively in artworks, by entering installations, touching objects, performing instructions or clicking on interactive websites. Why have artists sought to engage spectators in these new forms of participation? In what ways does active participation affect the viewer's experience and the status of the artwork? Spanning a range of practices including kinetic art, happenings, environments, performance, installations, relational and new media art from the 1950s to the present, this critical anthology sheds light on the history and specificity of artworks that only come to life when you - the viewer - are invited to 'do it yourself.' Rather than a specialist topic in the history of twentieth- and twenty-first century art, the 'do-it-yourself' artwork raises broader issues concerning the role of the viewer in art, the status of the artwork and the socio-political relations between art and its contexts.

in this PDF you will find:
- the list of contents
- the list of contributors
- the list of figures
- the editor's introduction

Over the past two decades, French artist Pierre Huyghe has produced an extraordinary body of work in constant dialogue with temporality. Investigating the possibility of a hypothetical mode of timekeeping - “parallel presents” - Huyghe has researched the architecture of the incomplete, directed a puppet opera, founded a temporary school, established a pirate television station, staged celebrations, scripted scenarios, and journeyed to Antarctica in search of a mythological penguin. In this first book-length art historical examination of Huyghe and his work, Amelia Barikin traces the artist’s continual negotiation with the time codes of contemporary society. Offering detailed analyses of Huyghe’s works and drawing on extensive interviews with Huyghe and his associates, Barikin finds in Huyghe’s projects an alternate way of thinking about history--a “topological historicity” that deprograms (or reprograms) temporal formats. Huyghe once said, “It is through the montage, the way we combine and relate images, that we can create a representation of an event that is perhaps more precise than the event itself.”

Barikin offers pioneering analyses of Huyghe’s lesser-known early works as well as sustained readings of later, critically acclaimed projects, including No Ghost Just a Shell (2000), L’Expédition scintillante (2002), and A Journey That Wasn’t (2005). She emphasizes Huyghe’s concepts of “freed time” and “the open present,” in which anything might happen.

Bringing together an eclectic array of subjects and characters - from moon walking to situationist practices, from Snow White to Gilles Deleuze - Parallel Presents offers a highly original account of the driving forces behind Huyghe’s work.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/parallel-presents

Mediengebrauch ist heute nicht mehr an einzelne Künste gebunden, sondern an Kunstaktivitäten. Dieser Entgrenzung versuchte man auf theoretischer wie kunstpraktischer Ebene entgegenzusteuern, indem einzelne Medien und Dispositive zu neuen „Künsten“ aufbereitet wurden. So wird heute von Videokunst gesprochen und die Aneignung des filmischen Dispositivs im Kunstkontext zu einer eigenen Gattung erklärt. Doch diese Zugangsweisen greifen zu kurz. Immer mehr Künstler arbeiten mit Film und Video ohne sich gleich Film und Videokünstler zu verstehen. Sophie Calle, Rirkrit Tiravanija und Pierre Huyghe verwenden Film und Video, um künstlerisch konstruierte Situationen aufzuzeichnen. Im Ausstellungskontext werden diese Filme und Videos dann zu künstlerischen medialen Displays.
Bei diesen Displays handelt es sich nicht um einfache ‚Anschauungsfelder‘, sie bringen sowohl das Gezeigte als auch die Art des Zeigens zur Anschauung – die ästhetische Funktion des Displays wird mit ausgestellt. Im Ausstellungskontext entsteht so eine weitere künstlerisch konstruierten Situation, die der üblichen ästhetischen Erfahrung eine zusätzliche Dimension hinzufügt – eine Reflexion über das sinnlich Wahrgenommene beziehungsweise das ästhetisch Erfahrene selbst

After the crisis of the utopian ideals that was linked to the postmodern discourse, it seemed that utopia had ceased to be a useful concept for the art world. This paper addresses the return of the word after the “Utopia Station” exhibition within 2003´s Venice Biennale. Through the study of artists, works and displays, we here analyze the nature of the relationship between art and utopia which was proposed in this exhibition, and which would mark much of the later discourses on this issue.

This chapter emerged from my curatorial research on contemporary video practices in Southeast Asia. I analyse some short, independently made film and video works, each of which deals with minor (and/or obsolete) languages, and marginal identities, which have been suppressed in monolithic constructions of modern, national history. I focus on the subtitle as the site of a subversive play that not only undermines the hegemony of official-national language, but might also destabilize the transnational circuits and structures of exhibition in which such moving images increasingly circulate. With reference to anthropologically informed theories of mediation and Jacques Derrida’s figure of the parergon, I
highlight how tactical translation and mistranslation operate at both formal and linguistic levels. Finally, in a detailed reading of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s short film 'The Anthem' (2006), I explore the still more
subversive possibilities when the cinematic parergon itself is subjected to such formal re-framing. This essay was later revised as ‘Unframing the Nation: Parergon and Radical Allegory’ in David Teh, “Thai Art: Currencies of the Contemporary” (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2017).

Mediengebrauch ist heute nicht mehr an einzelne Künste gebunden, sondern an Kunstaktivitäten. Dieser Entgrenzung versuchte man auf theoretischer wie kunstpraktischer Ebene entgegenzusteuern, indem einzelne Medien und Dispositive zu neuen „Künsten“ aufbereitet wurden. So wird heute von Videokunst gesprochen und die Aneignung des filmischen Dispositivs im Kunstkontext zu einer eigenen Gattung erklärt. Doch diese Zugangsweisen greifen zu kurz. Immer mehr Künstler arbeiten mit Film und Video ohne sich gleich Film und Videokünstler zu verstehen. Sophie Calle, Rirkrit Tiravanija und Pierre Huyghe verwenden Film und Video, um künstlerisch konstruierte Situationen aufzuzeichnen. Im Ausstellungskontext werden diese Filme und Videos dann zu künstlerischen medialen Displays.
Bei diesen Displays handelt es sich nicht um einfache ‚Anschauungsfelder‘, sie bringen sowohl das Gezeigte als auch die Art des Zeigens zur Anschauung – die ästhetische Funktion des Displays wird mit ausgestellt. Im Ausstellungskontext entsteht so eine weitere künstlerisch konstruierten Situation, die der üblichen ästhetischen Erfahrung eine zusätzliche Dimension hinzufügt – eine Reflexion über das sinnlich Wahrgenommene beziehungsweise das ästhetisch Erfahrene selbst.

In the New Testament the early Christians adopted the notion of absolute, creative and excessive love—agape—as a comprehensive fatherly love that God possesses for mankind, which as a consequence extends to a love of one’s fellow man. This paper is an investigation of agape and its relevance in
contemporary art. Like a work of art, agape has an immanent creative component in that it generates value in its object. Agapic art is largely activated in the space of community. I unpack my thesis examining several contemporary artworks beginning with a public installation in 2010 commissioned
after the murder of a student at the University of Virginia. I deploy my research through multiple lenses, including the thinking of Arendt, Freud, Heidegger, Lewis and Nancy. Art provides the Heideggerian clearing of light in a world that is witness to the darkness of terroristic threats, domestic violence and ethnic hatred. The list goes on, because now—as in all of history—the human instinct for aggression sees no end in sight. Works of art that express agape are gifts of optimism to the living.

This chapter emerged from my curatorial research on contemporary video practices in Southeast Asia. I analyse some short, independently made film and video works, each of which deals with minor (and/or obsolete) languages, and marginal identities, which have been suppressed in monolithic constructions of modern, national history. I focus on the subtitle as the site of a subversive play that not only undermines the hegemony of official-national language, but might also destabilize the transnational circuits and structures of exhibition in which such moving images increasingly circulate. With reference to anthropologically informed theories of mediation and Jacques Derrida’s figure of the parergon, I highlight how tactical translation and mistranslation operate at both formal and linguistic levels. Finally, in a detailed reading of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s short film 'The Anthem' (2006), I explore the still more subversive possibilities when the cinematic parergon itself is subjected to such formal re-framing. This essay was later revised as ‘Unframing the Nation: Parergon and Radical Allegory’ in David Teh, “Thai Art: Currencies of the Contemporary” (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2017).