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Gillick and Claire Bishop Reviewed Work(S): Source: October, Vol Letters and Responses Author(s): Liam Gillick and Claire Bishop Reviewed work(s): Source: October, Vol. 115 (Winter, 2006), pp. 95-107 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40368419 . Accessed: 17/02/2012 14:04 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to October. http://www.jstor.org LETTERS AND RESPONSES ContingentFactors: A Responseto Claire Bishop's "Antagonismand Relational Aesthetics" This tensionbetween democracy and liberalismshould not be conceivedas one existingbetween two principles entirely external to each otherand establishing betweenthemselves simple relationsof negotiation.Were the tensionconceived thisway, a verysimplistic dualism would have beeninstituted. - Chantal Mouffe,The Democratic Paradox (2001) TraceyEmin has such a visceral and directway of using language that any reviewsounds hopelesslylame bycomparison. But behinda wretchedself-image, girlishromanticism reveals a sweeterTracey. - ClaireBishop, "The SweeterSide ofTracey/' EveningStandard (May 2, 2001) The uncriticalreinforcement ofleading market figures and theanalytical pecu- liaritiesthat remain from Claire Bishop's days as a journalistcannot be disguisedin herrecent essay "Antagonism and RelationalAesthetics" {October 110 [Fall2004], pp. 51-79).There are lucidmoments, due particularlyto herdetermination to seeka routeaway from the problems created by the increasing evacuation of criticalrela- tionshipsto societyin a cultureof politicalconsensus. However, a texthas been producedthat undermines the usuallyhigh standards of Octoberin relationto its checkingof sources, reference points, and theapplication of critical methods to con- temporarycultural discourse. These standardshave been replaced by sallow techniquesmore familiar in a right-wingtabloid newspaper.1 Up to a pointthis is understandable,since there has been a greatdeal of ratherrushed rear-guard action in Britishand Americanquarters in reactionto 1. The EveningStandard is partof Associated Newspapers Limited, where alongside the Daily Mail it hasbeen a staunchbastion against the processes of critique and progress.It is unthinkablethat anyone educatedin Englandwould consider contributing toa newspapergroup with such an appallingrecord of pro-Apartheid,pro-Thatcher, and anti-Unionpositioning, on top of a recordof Anti-Semitismin the 1930s,which has been followedup bya consistentand well-documentedxenophobia ever since, includingcurrent campaigns against so-called "asylum seekers." Other examples of Bishop's writing for theEvening Standard may be foundat www.thisislondon.co.ukand include these thoughts on thework ofRachel Whiteread: "Despite this, major aesthetic swoons are virtually guaranteed elsewhere Each workhas chokedand smotheredanother object in orderto be made,and thisdeathly process adds a psychologicalfrisson to your sensuous rush. Whiteread is rightlyacclaimed as one ofour best sculptors, and thisshow is chillyperfection for hot daysahead" (ClaireBishop, "Cool Stepsto StarStatus," EveningStandard, June 26, 2001). OCTOBER 115, Winter2006, pp. 95-107. ©2006 OctoberMagazine, Ltd. and MassachusettsInstitute of Technology. 96 OCTOBER the popularityand influenceof NicolasBourriaud's book RelationalAesthetics. Dealing primarilywith work produced more thanten yearsago, the book has come to renewedattention in lightof the increasingcommodification and mar- ketingof criticalart discourse. The problemwith Bourriaud's text, however, is thatwhile it has promptedboth a seriousdebate in some quarters,elsewhere it has been uncriticallyaccepted. Unfortunately, Bishop's essay does not riseto the levelof serious critique nor even-handed debate; rather than offer a detailedcon- siderationof Bourriaud'swork, it looksinstead for other targets and generatesa muddledanalysis of four established male artists in lieuof a morefocused critique ofthe ideas and implicationsoí RelationalAesthetics. The factof the matteris thatBourriaud's book has been at the centerof both carefuland criticalelucidation since the momentof its publication- the textitself was a directproduct of a specificand ongoing debate. Relational Aestheticswas the result of informal argument and disagreementamong Bourriaud and some of the artistsreferred to in his text.2Its contenthas been knownto themfor nearly a decade,and mostof thoseinvolved, including Bourriaud, have developednew reactions to the textand revisedtheir thinking since its publica- tion. The book does contain major contradictionsand serious problemsof incompatibilitywith regard to the artistsrepeatedly listed together as exemplars ofcertain tendencies. Yet the crucial fact is thatRelational Aesthetics was written as a responseto the artistswhose work it discusses.It waspart of a processof critical distancingby the authorin orderto separatehimself from the implicated,early role he had playedas curatorof manyof the groupexhibitions in whichthese artistsmay have been involved,although notable absentees from these early pro- jects includedboth Rirkrit Tiravanija and me,both of whom are discussedin the book.The textsthat form the book came to fruitionduring and afterBourriaud's experiencewith the exhibition Traffic at the CAPC Bordeaux in 1996 (not 1993as incorrectlystated in Bishop'stext).3 The pressoffice of the Bordeauxart center, havingmisread the work,mistakenly communicated to the publicthe idea that the structuresin the exhibitionwere primarilya formof whatcan best be 2. Atthe time of Traffic,I wrote the following: "Now the question is, does theprocess of misunder- standingbegin and end withthe artistsor the institution?At thispoint, historically, it appears to residewith the idea and actionsof the curator. Not that you are wrong to bringtogether some people whoseem to sharesome similar structural approaches and interests.The problemis thatthe whole questionof the curatorial model is notbeing examined in thesame way that artists have been encour- agedto look at theclassical ideas of the author and theego overthe last thirty years. It is clearthat you are willingto engagewith different values of productionthat go beyondthe substitutionof auratic documentationor structuresin placeof thetraditional auratic object, but cannot operate effectively withthese ideas when you keep coming up againstorganizational models that encourage the curator toact like an ultra-artist,even if he or shedoesn't want to" (LiamGillick, private correspondence with NicolasBourriaud, November 1996). 3. The firsttexts were published in Documentssur Vari in 1995and werenot brought together into thebook Relational Aesthetics until 1998. The exhibitionTraffic occurred in themiddle of thisprocess and wasthe moment that forced Bourriaud into a positionwhere he couldno longeroperate without defininghis position in relationto theartists with whom he wasworking. Lettersand Responses 97 describedas "interactive-baroque-conceptualism."4This left Bourriaud under attackfrom some artists who felt that their positions were more complex than that and fromthe visitors who had been thwartedin theirattempts to literally"inter- act"with almost everything in the show (duringthe openingof the exhibition manyworks were destroyed by well-meaning but overeager visitors who had been encouragedto directlyinteract with the work by the directorand the education departmentof the art center). Bourriaud found himself in a complicatedsituation in whichhe wasobliged to gathertogether and developrecent essays in orderto articulatehis position in relationto theartists, something that had seemedunnec- essaryin the formativeyears of the earlynineties when a peculiarcoalition of interestshad developedto fightthe conservative rump of the eighties art world. Bourriaudpredicted in theforeword to RelationalAesthetics: "Too oftenpeople are happydrawing up an inventoryof yesterday'sconcerns, the betterto lament thefact of not getting any answers."5 A clear-minded attack on thecomplexity and contradictionof Bourriaud'sbook has not been attemptedin Bishop's text. Instead,a setof artists has been shoehornedinto a battleabout intellectual terri- torythat merely compounds the problemsinherent in RelationalAesthetics. The resultis an unfortunate,tag-team face-off between the rathermelancholic avant- gardismof ThomasHirschhorn and the somewhatexploitative reflections of the dominantculture that are reinforcedby Spaniard Santiago Sierra, pitched against myown convoluted, occasionally opaque and implodedpractice and Tiravanija's productionof sites for the examination of exchange and control(and eatingand drinkingand playingtable-football). On topof this strained confrontation itis not possibleto maskthe fact that Bishop's text is repletewith willful errors of fact and 4. The termis myown: "It is interestingto see whathappens when this kind of artistcomes up againstan institutionwhose values are rootedin a professionalizationofthe apparent openness of the late sixtiesand seventies.For a fewyears the CAPC has put on a consistentlyimpressive program gearedtowards artists like Mario Merz and
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