Christine D’Epiro

Rirkrit Tiravanija

Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics responds to artists working during the 1990’s. The author presents the artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, as an example for his concepts about social interaction as subject matter. Bourriaud maintains that interactivity in contemporary art is a response to the way consumerism and technological advances in communication have negatively influenced the current dynamic of human relationships. No longer considered the loner genius, artists are creating interesting situations or contexts that primarily encourage social contact, transforming the traditional viewer into a participant. These works act as an alternative mode of public activity, with the artist behaving as a catalyst in order to “postulate dialogue as the actual origin of the image-making process” (Bourriaud 26). Characteristically, the projects discussed by Bourriaud are temporal, communal, and democratic. Tiravanija, who considers his primary medium to be ‘lots of people’, presents work that complicate Bourriaud’s concepts.

Illustrating the cover of Relational Aesthetics is a photograph of Tiravanija’s work completed at Le Consortium, Dijon in 1996. Untitled, 1996 (One Revolution per Minute) is partially a recreation of previous pieces each characterized by individual refreshments. The installation included available beer, mineral water, crêpes, soups, Turkish coffee, and tea. Along with the set-up for snacks, Tiravanija hung works from the Consortium’s collection. Other rooms were built within Tiravanija’s exhibition space. One functioned as a sound studio with available guitars and amplifiers, another as a quiet space for relaxation outfitted with pillows (Troncy 31). One Revolution per Minute is not about the actual objects as much as the interaction developed between participants as a result of the space created by Tiravanija.

The context of the work presents ironies about how accurately Bourriaud describes the outcomes of social interactivity as art. First of all, Tiravanija’s role as an artist is not necessarily that distanced from a loner genius. Perhaps artists’ have not previously considered spicy Thai cooking as a relevant device for dialogue. Tiravanija’s installations have mirrored his actual personal living space, or he has directly interacted with participants during a period of the installation as a democratic gesture. However, the work also exists as an engineered situation authored by a single person. The context of a museum for the purpose of eating a meal lends the activity a greater reason for engagement and discussion. But in trusting the museum’s authority as a reason to participate, the artist remains glorified as a host. The idea of artist as host, similar to Warhol’s status at the Factory, undermines Bourriaud’s concepts about interactive work as a novel kind of art or completely democratic social interaction.

Tiravanija’s work conflicts with Bourriaud’s specific views about capitalism as well. Bourriaud states, “The enemy we have to fight first and foremost is embodied in a social form: it is the spread of the supplier/client relations to every level of human life, from work to dwelling-place by way of all the tacit contracts which define our private life” (Bourriaud 83). Tiravanija considers serving the public a valid and shared goal of the museum and a place of commerce. With The Social Capitol project, he included everyday items for sale within his installation. By creating a market in the Migros Museum, Zürich, any hierarchy between the activities of buying goods and viewing art became blurred. Tiravanija’s project problemitizes Bourriaud’s view of art rivaling consumer spaces.

While the goals of Tiravanija’s work and disagree with Bourriaud’s theories, the description of a relational aesthetic is helpful to understand this contemporary artist. The function or affect of the ‘beauty’ of art with social interactivity as subject is similar to a personal joke. Although the occurrence of a personal joke is egalitarian, the joke itself is not. The potency of its humor is the specificity of the shared experience. Likewise, the temporal nature of work created by interactivity complicates some of the communal or democratic goals put forth by the work itself. For example, at the Columbus Museum of Art, I was able to experience a piece of Tiravanija’s work similar to Untitled, 1996 (One Revolution per Minute). Within an intimate orange- sheeted room, located in one of the museum galleries was a set-up to make tea. Considering I was visiting the museum alone with relatively few other visitors, my reflections of Tiravanija’s work rest closer to being on the ‘out’ of the ‘joke’. Ironically, the encouragement of community left a melancholy residue, as if something did or could happen but wasn’t at the moment. Nonetheless, the emphasis on social interactivity as direct subject matter is potent and refreshing. Both Rirkrit Tiravanija and Nicolas Bourriaud would assert that beauty was in the connection, or the synthesis of relational with aesthetic experience. Therefore a contemporary artist’s task to create a context with this potential is paramount.

Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. Les presses du réel. 1998.

Troncy, Eric. Supermarket. Migros Museum Für Gegenwartskunst Zürich. 1998.