The Labours of Relational Art

Do relational practices fall within the scope of a market logic whose purpose is to criticize the presupposition that art is a place of community encounter?

If we are to make a portrait of a generation based on the theory put forth by Nicolas Bourriaud — who fifteen years ago brought together a set of diverse practices under the term “relational” — we can already affirm that his discourse found an environment favourable to its diffusion at the heart of Quebec’s network of artist-run centres.1 1  - Since the beginning, through its network of exhibition, production, and documentation centres and publishing houses, the artist-run centres have provided fertile ground for the expression of counter-culture. These same spaces are now cited as models of artistic autonomy and self-management in the context of globalization. Relational aesthetics possessed everything to seduce this initiated public: by favouring more user-friendly forms of exhibition, it reasserted the value of a facet of artistic creation centred on improvisation and the everyday, while questioning the authority of the white cube in the process of validating works. In temporarily dissociating itself from official exhibition spaces, this aesthetic also assessed the subversive potential of a living art and its implication in public space, without necessarily becoming the standard bearer for social causes or struggles (with which early performance art had been associated in North America). 

One must, however, bear in mind the context of production and diffusion into which these new practices were introduced in Quebec, a context vastly different from the one scrutinized by the French curator and art critic. This distinction is essential in understanding the significance of the artistic gestures and actions that ensued here as a result of artists, including several enthusiasts from across the Atlantic, adopting the concept of conviviality at the basis of this aesthetic. First, particularly in Quebec, one must underline that the art market and State are interdependent: culture, in general, is subsidized in order to counterbalance the weakness of the market. Considering the position it occupies in the territory and the level of support it receives from the State, art is doing relatively well.