In “Relational Aesthetics”, Nicolas Bourriaud characterizes a set of art works that construct exchanges as opposed to construct things. Relational works do not produce¹ some materiality, but instead a situationality–they do not simple enable, but depend on human intercourse. For example, one work of Rirkrit Tiravanija (pictured above) is a creation of a traditional Thai dinner, accompanied by a sparse shelter and minimal kitchen typical of many homes in Thailand. And, while Rirkrit clearly produces things, the artwork is not about rarefying these common accoutrement into art. Instead, the work is the dinner itself (more properly the dinner as defined as such only when people are dining). People exist within this milieu–they, the participants, are rarefied in some fashion, though it is uncertain who is the audience–and the material things are lost in the ongoing, thereby remaining commonplace, unimpressive, and mediatory.

In the execution of a work like that of Rirkrit, Bourriaud identifies a characteristic called operational realism. The dinners are not real; instead they are realistic–they operate at the level of Reality rather than reality. As much as Rirkrit’s Thai dinners are, in fact, dinners, and people engage in conversation, and the food is prepared in a particularly authentic way, there is also a raised level of awareness and reflection that contextualizes the work as art (ultimately, these pieces reside within galleries). As people are actual dinner guests, they are also playing the role of dinner guests consciously. That is to say, the dinners are both acted and enacted. In this, Bourriaud claims that relational works function as commentary² through embodied and situated experience. Where paintings communicate at a distance through explanation, relational works collapse the artist’s and the audience’s experience by communicating through re-action.

One of the major opponents to Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics is Grant Kester. Kester’s primary argument is that while Bourriaud positions relational aesthetics within an avant garde, in turn relying part-in-parcel on Greenberg’s autonomy of modern art, relational works embrace interdependancy. Hence, the criteria Bourriaud uses, according to Kester, to position relational works as avant garde is precisely the criteria that excuses relational works as being avant garde. Partially this argument relies on two different concepts of avant garde–Bourriaud’s definition largely relies on the notion of challenge; Kester’s on the notion of disregard of audience and autonomy. More fundamentally, the split between dialogic (Kester) and relational (Bourriaud) is precisely operational realism.

For Kester, dialogic works–such as WochenKlauser’s boat talks–need to not operate in a real fashion (Reality), but actually be real. Rirkrit’s work through Kester’s analysis places the awareness and reflection underneath the actual assumption of roles. To clarify, as the dinner is play acted at the surface, the dinner more fundamentally is enacts dining–what begins as a constructed community, becomes a community unto itself.

1. Material components are obviously produced by the artists in many relational works. The core difference is that the material thing is not created for objectification as a final product, but rather utilization as an mediator (in Latour’s sense). The material forms tend to function like tools–they enable the work to be completed by indicating the exchange as much as enable the exchange by acting out the various constituted dynamics. [↩]
2. though he actually calls this function irony, Bourriaud intends the word commentary since the pieces do not function ironically at all; the works highlight particulars and peculiarities of exchange, rather than subverting the authentic with unexpected ends [↩]