Monday, October 15, 2012

Reading Bourriaud

"This is a society where human relations are no longer 'directly experienced', but start to become blurred in their 'spectacular' representation."

What is the function of a public private representation?
Visualisation? Images that allows us to masturbate to a perfect illusion of ourselves as part of a social reality?
What kind of reality is that?

Are we living in an infrastructure described in Bourriaud's text "Relational Aesthetics", one following a modernist strategy to achieve a rationalistic visions of an idealistic future?
The infrastructure which allows us to "travel faster and more efficiently, yet it has the drawback of turning its users to consumers of miles and their bi-products".

B. explains the difference between art exhibitions and other forms of artistic presentations, such as TV, theater, litterature..



If we mainly communicate within digitally designed forums or meet in pre-defined spaces such as theatres, this would propose a significant threat to our mobility and means to create open dialogue with each other.

My art exhibition should, according to B., instead enable inter-human commerce. You should be able to participate in a social interstice. You are present in the conversation by the fact that you have something to offer. You are not visiting. You are not existing in an art space after having bought or received permission to do so. You are an asset. Maybe the art work will be able to take form first after you have left?

The opposite would perhaps be the visitor that
views the art space not as a platform of discussions about that what we might think we see, but as a stage or construction site for her ideology and identity. Something that is constructed for her subjective project of understanding herself and the context she belongs to.
The conversations in the foyer after a play are happening between such visitors. They are merely exchanging subjective interpretations of what they just witnessed? The art work is old even before it's exhibited.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Investigating intersections in Private/Public

Is a transport from private to public possible, without the private being exploited?
To what extent do we need to understand this, and at which point must we do something about it?


I will present a hypothetical product that seeks to improve the life of the single individual by collecting all kinds of very specific and personal data, draw calculations on it, and come out with a bunch of recommendations for change that would make the individual a happier person.

The product is designed with non-hostile intentions. Meaning well, the imaginary inventors are confident that the product is truly going to change peoples lives for the better. Automatically included in these optimistic dreams, is the belief that the monetary transactions following the launch of the product, and the commercial relations that will appear, will make out the necessary infrastructure for the change to be completed.

A person at Twitter whom I follow:
"I dream of being able to buy the beautiful things my gifted, hard-working friends create."

Solidarity is about sharing your assets. Fund the things you're fond about. Support only that business which makes you happy.

In a society made out of happy-rethorics around liberal capitalism, your happiness is defined by your place within this commercial system. To find your place, your private must be on display. Defined, categorized, named, calculated.. What we do with our personal details, our private data and intimate information that tells us a possibly very interesting story.

A story about how art intersects with commerce and builds design that creates lifestyles that makes identity that comes with responsibility and rights and needs that is met by consumptive behaviours and so on..

I want to put politics into a product that, much like Google, intends to do "no evil" in the liberal system and open up creativity and freedom to the users/consumers.
I want to display the need for our private to be used as merchandise to any "bigger product". I'd like to do that by interpreting that love story in the form of a pornographic video.