open17 bourriaud response ranciere.pdf

8/12/2019 OPEN17 Bourriaud response Ranciere.pdf

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20 Open 2009/No. 17/ A Precarious Existence

Nicolas Bourriaud

PrecariousPrecarious

ConstructionsConstructions

nswer to Jacques Answer to JacquesRancire on rtRancire on Art

and Politicsand PoliticsIn the follow-ing essay, NicolasBourriaud reacts toJacques Ranciresclaim that hisesthtique rela-tionelle is littlemore than a moralrevival in thearts. Accordingto Bourriaud, the

signicance of

the political pro-gramme of con-temporary art is its

recognition of theprecarious condi-tion of the world.He elaborates

this theme in hisrecently publishedbook The Radicant .1

1. Nicolas Bourriaud,TheRadicant (New York/Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2009).


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Precarious Constructions 21

In a recent book, Jacques Rancirequestioned the pedagogical modelfor the effectiveness of art, seeing intodays most socially engaged worksof art the validation of a model forrelations between art and the political

that has been outdated for 200 years. We agree with him that the politicaleffectiveness of art does not residein transmitting messages, but in therst place consists of dispositions ofbodies, the partitioning of singularspaces and times that dene ways ofbeing together or apart, in front or atthe centre of, within or without, nearbyor far away. 2 However, it is in fact theapproach to thisformal problemthat is shared bythe artists who are discussed in myessay Relational Aesthetics, whichRancire misunderstands, seeing it asarrangements of art [that] immediately

present themselves as social relations.3

We are appar-ently confronted here with an opticaldeformation that is quite commonamong contemporary philosophers, who do not recognize the conceptsthat art reveals through its visual realitybecause they make the wrong connec-tion between the library from whichthey observe the world and the artistsstudios. So lets put things straight:these repartitionings of time-space notonly constitute the link between forexample Pierre Huyghe and RirkritTiravanija, which is after all clearlyexplained in the book, but in fact alsodelineate the actual locus where the

relations between art and politicsare redistributed. On the condition,

however, in accordance with Rancire,that their areas of application are notconfused with each other. At no timeare the artistic positions analysed inRelational Aesthetics described associal relations that are not mediatised

by forms, nor do any of them answer tothis description, although social rela-tions can constitute the living materialfor some of the practices in question.

It seems that the debates that havebeen raised by the relational in artsince the publication of the bookessentially revolve around the respec-tive positions of ethics, the politicaland aesthetics in the artistic practicesthat are described. These practiceshave been suspected of putting moralsabove form, generating a purely socialor even Christian or compassionateart; they have been accused of propos-ing an angelic ethical model, maskingthe existing conicts in society. This

misunderstanding was all the moreperplexing because the book discussesthe emergence of a new state of theform (or new formations, if we insiston the dynamic character of the ele-ments in question, which actuallyinclude precisely the disposition ofbodies within their eld of denition)and hardly ventures into the domain ofethics, which is considered as a kalei-doscopic backdrop reserved for theinterpersonal dimension that connectsthe viewer to the work he encounters.In short, it isnt the ethical dimension ofthe work of Rirkrit Tiravanija or LiamGillick that is put forward in RelationalAesthetics, but their capacity to invent

innovative ways of exhibiting on aninterpersonal level. Besides, the works

2. Jacques Rancire,Lespectateur mancip (Paris:La Fabrique, 2008), 61.

3. Ibid., 77.


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of the artists who are discussed in myessay display very heterogenic relations with the spheres of politics and ethicsand do not lead to a global theory. Which ethics do Vanessa Beecroft andChristine Hill have in common? What

is their shared relation to politics?The problem primarily resides inthe web of relations between words andimages. Rancires description of the work of Tiravanija overlooks its formaldimension from the start: its arrange-ment, he writes, presents the visitorsof an exhibition with a camping-gasstove, a water cooker and packets ofdried soup, intended to involve themin action, dialogue and collective dis-cussion . . .4 This does not really takeinto account theconcrete reality ofthe work: what about the colours, thedisposition of elements in space, thedialogue with the exhibition space, the

formal structure of the installation, theprotocol for its use? In fact, Tiravanijasexhibitions have never limited them-selves to such a summary arrange-ment as that which is described byRancire, who here seems to sketch ageneral, vague outline of a work ratherthan giving an exact idea of what it isactually like. You might just as well saythat Vermeer is a painter who depictsdomestic interiors in which womenperform trivial activities, or reduceJoseph Beuys to a shamanic gure whospeaks with animals. Here the stale-mate nds its origin in formal modelsthat underlie artistic arrangements, inthe importance of architectural struc-

tures, in philosophical references, andmostly in the issue of the use of forms

which lies at the heart of Tiravanijaspractice. Yet, by inducing the idea thatthose structures are meant for action,dialogue, or collective discussion, Ran-cire implicitly gives the work of theartist a political dimension. Tiravanija

does not construct meeting rooms,and for him the function of usabilityrepresents a backdrop that is moreformalized and abstract than Ranciremight think.

Thus, the question is asked todayin its full amplitude: Can we derivean ethics from contemporary art?Considering the heterogeneous char-acter of artistic production and thelarge variety of theoretical sourceson which the artists can draw, thisdemand may seem totally absurd.Furthermore, you would be right toask what would be the holder of thatethical philosophy in art today: The work of art itself? The modalities of its

reception? The materials it uses? Itsproduction process? However, certaindominant traits in the contemporaryformal landscape, certain invariablesin the exploitation and managementof signs by artists enable us to outlinean answer to this complex question. Afragmentary answer, of course, and justas precarious as the objects to whichit is attached: moreover, precarious-ness constitutes the dominant trait andthe reality of these ethics. By placingthis word between quotation marks, Iam referring to the Lacanian real, thatfocal point around which all the ele-ments of the visible are organized, thathollow form that can only be appre-

hended through its anamorphoses orits shadows. On that basis: rst, every

4. Ibid., 78.


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ethical reection on contemporary artis inextricably bound with its deni-tion of reality. Second, let us postulatethat the real of contemporary art issituated in precariousness, whose dif-ferent gures interconnect the works

of Maurizio Cattelan and Thomas Hir-schhorn, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Domin-ique Gonzalez-Foerster, Kelley Walker, Wolfgang Tillmans and Thomas Ruff.

A Precarious WorldA Precarious World

Zygmunt Bauman denes our periodas one of liquid modernity, a societyof generalized disposability, driven bythe horror of expiry, where nothing ismore decried than the steadfastness,stickiness, viscosity of things inanimateand animate alike.5 The constellationof the precarious,notably from thepoint of view of the

renewable, is the invisible motor of con-sumer ideology. Placing himself on thelevel of the collective psyche, MichelMaffesoli describes individual iden-tity as eclectic and diffuse: A fragileidentity, an identity which is no longer,as was the case during modernity, theonly solid foundation of individualand social life.6 Here, the observationsof the sociolo-gist appear to bein keeping withcertain philosophical intuitions aboutprecariousness. In order to produce thephilosophy that Marx never had thetime to write, Louis Althusser placeshimself in the line of Democritus, who

said that the world is made up of a rainof atoms whose deviations produces

encounters that are the principle ofall reality: in short, capitalism was justa chance encounter between agentsthat otherwise may have never foundthemselves in the same space. As forFoucault, he dened the enunciations

that make human thought function asevents that appear and insert them-selves in a given historical eld beforedisappearing just as rapidly as theyhave arrived, ltered out by a new con-guration of knowledge.

Endurance, whether it concernsobjects or relations, has become arare thing. When we look at artisticproduction today, we see that in theheart of the global economic machinethat favours unbridled consumer-ism and undermines everything thatis durable, a culture is developingfrom the bankruptcy of endurancethat is based on that which threatensit most, namely precariousness. My

hypothesis is that art not only seemsto have found the means to resist thisnew, instable environment, but hasalso derived specic means from it.A precarious regime of aesthetics isdeveloping, based on speed, intermit-tence, blurring and fragility. Today, weneed to reconsider culture (and ethics)on the basis of a positive idea of thetransitory, instead of holding on to theopposition between the ephemeraland the durable and seeing the latteras the touchstone of true art and theformer as a sign of barbarism. HannahArendt: An object is cultural to theextent that it can endure; its durabilityis the very opposite of functionality,

which is the quality which makes itdisappear again from the phenomenal

5. Zygmunt Bauman,Liquid Life (Oxford/Cam-bridge: Polity, 2005), 3.

6. Michel Maffesoli,DuNomadisme (Paris: Livrede Poche, 1997), 109.


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Kelley Walker, Black Star Press , triptych, 2006. Silkscreen print using

brown and white chocolate, digital print on linen. Courtesy Saatchi

Gallery, London. Kelley Walker, 2006


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Cerith Wyn Evans, chandelier in the A.A.Hijmans van den Bergh Building in

Utrecht, commissioned by the University of Utrecht in collaboration with

SKOR. Photo Jannes Linders


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Philippe Parreno, Atlas of Clouds , 2005. Philippe Parreno and Pilar

Corrias Gallery


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Thomas Ruff, jpeg bb01 (Bagdad Bombing ), 2004. (c/o Pictoright, Amsterdam

2009)


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Philippe Parreno, The Boy from Mars , 2003-2006. Tate 2006


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world by beingused and usedup.7 In this newconguration, thephysical durationof the artwork is dissociated from its

duration as information and its con-ceptual and/or material precarious-ness is associated with new ethical andaesthetic values that establish a newapproach to culture and art.

This precarious state, on which inmy view truly innovative relationalpractices are based, is largely confused with the immaterial or ephemeralcharacter of the artwork. However,the former is a philosophical notion, while the latter are merely formal oreven demonstrative properties thatonly refer to their outward appear-ance. The precarious represents a fun-damental instability, not a longer orshorter material duration: it inscribes

itself into the structure of the workitself and reects a general state ofaesthetics.

Precarious ArtPrecarious Art

Etymologically, the term precarious means: that which only exists thanksto a reversible authorization. The precaria was the eld cultivated fora set period of time, independentlyof the laws that govern property. Anobject is said to be precarious if ithas no denitive status and an uncer-tain future or nal destiny: it is heldin abeyance, waiting, surrounded byirresolution. It occupies a transitory

territory. Generally speaking, we couldsay that contemporary artworks have

no absolute rights as to their concep-tual status. In the end, the questionamounts to an interrogation: whatgives you the right to set foot onartistic soil? Do you have the correctpapers, the deeds that give you the

right to occupy the land? From theperspective of a precarious aesthetic,the question runs differently: whatmatters is to know whether the objectgenerates activity, communication,thought, what its degree of productiv-ity is within the aesthetic sphere. Hereagrarian thought (the durable bond with the land) is replaced by conceptsof trade (the cross-border encounterbetween an object and its users). Thecontemporary artwork does not right- fully occupy a position in a eld, butpresents itself as an object of negotia-tion, caught up in a cross-border trade which confronts different disciplines,traditions or concepts. It is this onto-

logical precariousness that is the foun-dation of contemporary aesthetics.Thus, contemporary art assumes

this double status of crossing bordersand precariousness, by the undiffer-entiated use of different mediums something that Rosalind Krauss,from a very critical perspective, callsthe postmedia condition of contem-porary art, following in the footstepsof Marcel Broodthaerss ctionalmuseum. We can only acknowledgethat the great works of art todaypresent themselves in the form oftrajectories or synopses: the works ofPierre Huyghe, for example, each con-stitute a building site with at its centre

tools for production and diffusionthat spread their effects in subsequent

7. Hannah Arendt, TheCrisis in Culture: ItsSocial and Its PoliticalSignicance, in: HannahArendt, Between Pastand Future (New York:Penguin, 1993), 209.


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projects through collaboration with various interlocutors. The functionalmodel for these projects is precarious:like in the lm by Jacques Tati, Jour de fte (1949), a tent is put in place, dis-poses its effects, and then withdraws.

Thus, precariousness cannot bereduced to the use of fragile materialsor short durations, because it impreg-nates the whole of artistic production,constituting a substratum of reectionand playing the role of an ideologicalsupport for passing forms. In short,precariousness now impregnates the whole of contemporary aesthetics,in its negative as well as its positive versions. This includes managing theduration of the exhibition; the hugeinstallations of Thomas Hirschhorndedicated to Deleuze and Bataille onlylast the limited time of an exhibition,and sometimes only 24 hours, as wasthe case with his homage to Michel

Foucault. The work of Tris Vonna-Mitchell is emblematic for this newtype of relation with the precarious:based on oral performances of theartist talking about his travels withthe support of a complex slideshow,his exhibitions accumulate disparatematerials, referring to other, simul-taneous or past exhibitions, none of which constitute a real conclusion.The slide and video projectors, photo-graphs and rare objects that constitutethem only weave an endlessly icker-ing circuit of signs in space.

Besides the mode of productionitself, we can distinguish three mainpatterns in precarious aesthetics,

namely transcoding, ickering andblurring:

a. Permanent Transcoding: FormalNomadism

In the works of Kelley Walker, WadeGuyton and Seth Price, forms are dis-played in the shape of copies, forever ina transitory state; the images are insta-

ble, waiting between two translations,perpetually transcoded. The practiceof these three artists dissuades us fromgiving their works a precise place in theproduction and processing chain of theimage, because the same patterns arerepeated with greater or lesser variantsin distinct works.

Kelley Walker operates by linking visual objects: he depicts an uprootedreality in works that are only freezeframes of an enunciation in a continu-ous state of development, constantlyincorporating earlier stages of his work.As for Wade Guyton, he leaves it tomechanical reproduction techniques togenerate form variables that he intro-

duces in his work.Taken from magazines, televisionor Google search, they seem readyto return there, instable, spectral.Every original form is negated, orrather, abolished. Navigating througha network made up of photocopies,prints, screens or photographic repro-ductions, forms surface as just so manytransitory incarnations. The visibleappears here as a nomad by denition,a collection of iconographic ghosts; the work of art presents itself in the formof a USB-stick that can be plugged intoevery support.

b. Flickering: Intermittences

The phosphorescent drawings ofPhilippe Parreno fade every minute


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and only become clearly visible againonce they have been reloaded by aspotlight; the candelabras of Cerith Wyn Evans deliver messages in Morsecode; Maurizio Cattelan develops astrategy of the ash, his works are

governed by the surprise effect. Theseare all modes of ickering , the specicregime of the visible that is marked byintermittence, the programmed fadingof what is presented to our eyes orto our perception. Something mani-fests itself and then disappears fromsight: here the precarious is suggested,inscribed in time as the condition ofthe work. A work by Philippe Parreno,Fraught Times: For Eleven Months of theYear Its an Artwork and in December ItsChristmas (October) (2008), consistingof a decorated aluminium Christmastree that has the status of an artwork foreleven months of the year, but changesinto a real Christmas tree at the begin-

ning of December, is thus structuredby the concept of intermittence. InCarsten Hllers case, the ickeringlight that is present in a large numberof his works makes us question ourperception of reality: it functions as amajor signal in the grammar of doubt

This art of ickering (as a function-ing mode of the artwork) is associated with a vision of a reality that also ick-ers: the present lags behind itself, asis pointed out by Marcel Duchamp(the Bride Stripped Bare described asa delay in glass) and later by JacquesDerrida ( Difference as the gap betweenbeing and meaning). As it is delayed, we only perceive its shards, like those

supernovas of which our eyes onlyrecord the explosion that has taken

place millions of years ago and thatis exactly how art functions, as a delaythrough which we can see the world.

This new distribution between thedirect, the deferred and the archive isa seedbed for certain contemporary

practices that insist on the unique,singular character of the artwork, onits status as a non-reproducible event.Tino Sehgals minimalist scenarios, which he has staged with actors, orTrish Donnellys performances do notgenerate any visible traces a posteriori.This insistence on the here-and-nowquality of the artistic event and therefusal to record it other than as anindirect archival work, represent both achallenge to the art world (whose insti-tutional nature from now is confused with a mighty archival apparatus) andthe affi rmation of a positive precarious-ness that consists of an unburdening in keeping with the famous statement

made by Douglas Huebler that the world is already full of objects and thathe doesnt wish to add any more.

c. Blurring: The IndiscernibleIn a number of photo series, notably

in the jpegs, Thomas Ruff outlines atypology of blurring: jpeg bb01 (BagdadBombing) (2004) shows an aerial viewof an arid zone dotted with buildingsconnected by roads. The title indicatesthat we are dealing with the war in Iraq,and that the irregularities in the terrainare bomb craters. The dimensionsof the photo (188 x 311 cm) reveal thepixels that make up the image takenfrom the Internet, as the title suggests:

everything is enunciated, but every-thing is blurred. In the Substrat series,


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Ruff blows up the original documentto the point of abstraction, while on theother hand, in a collection of photosof pornographic scenes, the originalimage is only slightly veiled. The aes-thetic of the permanent zoom: reality is

mediatised by the Internet, then medi-atised again by the blow-up. Like withKelley Walker, the image is presentedin an instable, precarious state: it is nolonger a matter of framing, but a ques-tion of the distance that is taken withregard to the object. The work of Wolf-gang Tillmans is also inuenced bythe issue of focus: Freischwimmer #82 (2005) is an abstract photo (we will callit that for conveniences sake, becauseof our doubt about its identity), whichat his exhibitions hangs side by side with life-size pictures or close-ups ofstill lives. What is striking about thesefew examples is not the nature of theimages, but the total equivalence that

these artists establish between the dif-ferent modalities of making visible.The world that they depict is indiscern-ible and already pixellated from theoutset.

In the works of Mike Kelley, blurringis an indication of a displacement ofsigns: the mise-en-scne of the form-less is blurred in works such as Framedand Frame . . . (1999): the colours areapplied on the sculpture (with paintfrom a spray can) so that they do notcoincide with the form that they cover.There is an underlying project: asKelley explains: The meaning is con-fused spatiality, framed. The meaningis blurred because it results from a

displacement.

Ethics of Non Finitude:Ethics of Non-Finitude:The Precarious Politics of ArThe Precarious Politics of Art

The social body as it appears in con-temporary art production does notconstitute an organic whole that needs

to be changed from the bottom up,as was the case with the framework ofmodernist dramaturgy, but a dispa-rate collection of structures, institu-tions and social practices that can bedetached from one another and thatdiffer from one society to the next. Forlate twentieth-century artists, the socialbody is divided into lobbies, quotas orcommunities: it is a catalogue of narra-tive frameworks surmounted by toolsfor home production (home technol-ogy) or professional production. Inshort, what we traditionally call realityis in fact a simple montage. On thebasis of that conclusion, the aestheticchallenge of contemporary art resides

in recomposing that montage: art isan editing computer that enables usto realize alternative, temporary ver-sions of reality with the same material(everyday life). Thus, contemporary artpresents itself as an editing console thatmanipulates social forms, reorganizesthem and incorporates them in originalscenarios, deconstructing the scripton which their illusory legitimacy wasgrounded. The artist de-programmesin order to re-programme, suggestingthat there are other possible usagesfor techniques, tools and spaces atour disposition. The cultural or socialstructures in which we live are nothingmore for art than items of clothing that

we should slip into, objects that mustexamined and put to the test. It is a


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question of postproducing social realityor, in other words, of conrming, in anegative form, itsontologically pre-carious nature.8

That, to my mind, is the essential

content (beyond the anecdotal) ofthe political programme of contem-porary art: maintaining the world ina precarious state or, in other words,permanently affi rming the transitory,circumstantial nature of the institutionsthat partition the state and of the rulesthat govern individual or collectivebehaviour. The main function of theinstruments of communication of capi-talism is to repeat a message: we live ina nite, immovable and denitive polit-ical framework, only the decor mustchange at high speed. The relationalscale models of Pierre Huyghe or LiamGillick, the videos of Doug Aitken andthe sign linkages of Kelley Walker each

in their own way present the reversepostulate: the world in which we liveis a pure construct, a mise-en-scne, amontage, a composition, a story and itis the function of art to analyse and re-narrate it, and adapt it in images or byany other means. Rancire arrives at asimilar conclusion when he writes thatthe relation between art and politics[is not] a passage from ction to reality,but a relationbetween two waysof making ction.9

Thus, the political substratum ofcontemporary art is not a denunciationof the political circumstances that areimmanent to actuality, but the persist-

ence of a gesture: spread the precariousalmost everywhere, keep the idea of

artice alive and productive, under-mine all the material and immaterialedices that constitute our decor. It isbecause our social reality has provento be articial that we can envisageto change it; and contemporary art,

as a producer of representations andcounter models that subvert this realityby exposing its intrinsic fragility, alsoencompasses a political programmethat is much more effective (in thesense that it generates real effects)and ambitious (insofar as it refers toevery aspect of political reality) thanall the messages and slogans it uses tocomment on daily events.

Opening those channels of speechthat are blocked by the media, invent-ing alternative modes of sociability,creating or recreating connectionsbetween distant signs, representingthe abstractions of global capitalismthrough concrete singularities: just as

many precarious constructions withincendiary effects that today openavenues to a truly political art.

8. See Nicolas Bourriaud,Postproduction (New York:Sternberg Press, 2002).

9. Rancire,Le spectateurmancip , op. cit. (note 2), 84.


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Kelley Walker, Schema; Aquafresh plus Crest with Whitening Expressions (Trina) ,

2006. The Saatchi Gallery

open17 bourriaud response ranciere.pdf

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