Model, Materialism, and Immanent Utopia in Relational Aesthetics

 

This paper seeks to contribute to the development of socio-aesthetics by analysing the notion of model established in the discourse of relational art--that is of course with special reference to French art critic Nicolas Bourriad's theoretical writings. His seminal book, Relational Aesthetics (RA), is crucial for the understanding of contemporary, socially and politically oriented fine art of the mid-1990 and onwards and its challenge of established aesthetic conceptions within art as well as theory. The concept of model is a reoccurring figure in RA and connects to a widespread "lab" (laboratory) metaphor where social reality is staged and facilitated in order to document and present its development. At the same time however, the notion of model is difficult to dissociate from Bourriaud's materialism which draws on such different figures as the late Althusser, Lucretius, and Deleuze and which is tied up with a principle of immanence which is crucial for the understanding of Bourriaud's and many of his related artists' sense of utopia and avant-garde. Setting off from an analysis of the concept of model in RA, I would like to demonstrate the relationship between relational form, model, and utopia, and how this surprisingly lead to an ideal yet immanent conception of art. To contextualise and exemplify my analysis, I shall draw on my collaboration-based study of art collective Superflex as well as Bourriaud's later writings on post-production and alter-modernism.