The work of contemporary artist Francis Al\u00ffs can be analyzed within an increasingly popular artistic model. The possibility of an interactive, participation-based practice\u2009\u2014\u2009or what French curator and art critic Nicolas Bourriaud refers to as a relational art practice\u2009\u2014\u2009has been explored by a number of contemporary artists and critics. For Bourriaud, relational artworks are those that take interhuman relationships and their social contexts as their theoretical basis.3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Nicolas Bourriaud, \u201cRelational Aesthetics,\u201d in Participation: Documents of Contemporary Art<\/em>, trans. David Macey (London: Cambridge: Whitechapel: The MIT Press, 2006), 160.<\/span> Al\u00ffs\u2019 work When Faith Moves Mountains<\/em> is an intriguing example of a relational artwork as defended by Bourriaud; however, in light of an examination of this work in relation to Bourriaud\u2019s theory of relational aesthetics, there emerge a number of ethical questions that Bourriaud\u2019s model fails to address. I am compelled to question how Al\u00ffs\u2019 audience benefits\u2009\u2014\u2009if at all\u2009\u2014\u2009from its participation in his artwork. In the exchange between artist and audience, what is gained on the part of the collaborators? Given the imperceptible, intangible, and contingent success of the project, the ethical problematics of this exchange must be considered. An analysis of Al\u00ffs\u2019 work by means of Bourriaud\u2019s methodology, in contrast with those of Claire Bishop and Grant Kester, reveals the ethical blind spots of Bourriaud\u2019s vision of relational art, and the potential ethical difficulties that reside within collaborative exchange, brought into perspective by relational artworks like Al\u00ffs\u2019 When Faith Moves Mountains<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For Bourriaud, \u201cContemporary art resembles a period of time that has to be experienced, or the opening of a dialogue that never ends.\u201d4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Bourriaud, \u201cRelational Aesthetics,\u201d 160.<\/span> Applying Bourriaud\u2019s criteria, relational artworks must include aspects of duration, experience, and exchange. Artist Al\u00ffs has created a \u201cspace-time,\u201d in Bourriaud\u2019s terms, where the volunteers share in a common experience for a period of time and receive in turn what the artist refers to as a \u201csocial allegory.\u201d5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - Bourriaud, \u201cRelational Aesthetics,\u201d 161; Al\u00ffs, \u201cA thousand words,\u201d 147. <\/span> Critic Grant Kester, interested in dialogical relational art, argues that these types of artworks facilitate dialogue and exchange in order to \u201c[link] new forms of intersubjective experience with social or political activism.\u201d6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - Grant Kester, \u201cIntroduction\u201d in Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art<\/em> (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 8\u201310.<\/span> Though Al\u00ffs\u2019 work is not properly dialogical by Kester\u2019s definition\u2009\u2014\u2009it is not based upon an immediate dialogical exchange between participants\u2009\u2014\u2009When Faith Moves Mountains <\/em>implies or incites a dialogue through its product, according to the artist. Kester\u2019s perspective compels us to ask how the dialogical aspect of Al\u00ffs\u2019 work contributes to values of exchange and whether the participants benefit from the opening of this dialogue. This implied dialogue, the main aspect of exchange in Al\u00ffs\u2019 artwork, is of great importance, for it is here that the ethical questions raised by the work rest. For Kester, it would be the narrative ignited by this event that sparks consideration of the social and political issues that inspired the work. Thus, from the perspective of Kester\u2019s model, what Al\u00ffs\u2019 participants gain from their contribution is the potential to effect social change, or ways of thinking about that change, through the creation and perpetuation of the work\u2019s narrative. It is, however, important to note that this gain, on the part of the participants, is only potential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Al\u00ffs says of his work, \u201cIf the script meets the expectations and addresses the anxieties of that society at this time and place, it may become a story that survives the event itself.\u201d7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - Al\u00ffs, \u201cA thousand words,\u201d 147.<\/span> The ethical issue lies in that the dialogue facilitated by the artist, though it possesses the potential to link intersubjective experience with social and political activism, exists only within the realm of possibility. It is the potentiality of the work that throws the ethics of the project into question. Its success, as the artist would see it, is left in the hands (or the mouths) of its collaborators. While Bourriaud asserts that \u201cthe production of gestures is more important than the production of material things,\u201d we cannot neglect to consider whether these gestures produce an effect\u2009\u2014\u2009if they affect.8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - Bourriaud, \u201cRelational Aesthetics,\u201d 170.<\/span> <\/sup><\/strong>Bishop argues that it is the artist\u2019s responsibility to provide a dissenting voice, to disagree with a situation as opposed to simply facilitating communication. In the case of When Faith Moves Mountains<\/em>, Al\u00ffs comments upon a political situation by facilitating a dialogue, as he would see it, though I am not sure his responsibility as an artist, in Bishop\u2019s terms, has been met.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In her article \u201cThe Social Turn: Collaboration and Its Discontents,\u201d Bishop challenges Bourriaud\u2019s position in Relational Aesthetics<\/em>, arguing that \u201cthis emphasis on process over product… is justified as oppositional to capitalism\u2019s predilection for the contrary.\u201d In Bishop\u2019s view, this approach almost completely disregards the aesthetic value of such works because \u201caesthetic judgements have been overtaken by ethical criteria.\u201d9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 9 <\/a> - Claire Bishop, \u201cThe Social Turn: Collaboration and its Discontents,\u201d Artforum<\/em>, (February 2006): 180.<\/span> Bishop also takes issue with how the markers of success often have less to do with aesthetic considerations than the ethical righteousness of process: \u201cArtists are increasingly judged by their working process\u2009\u2014\u2009the degree to which they supply good or bad models of collaboration\u2009\u2014\u2009and criticized for any hint of potential exploitation that fails to \u2018fully\u2019 represent their subjects.\u201d10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 10 <\/a> - Bishop, \u201cThe Social Turn,\u201d 179.<\/span> As with Bishop\u2019s objections and Kester\u2019s position, my concerns with the ethics of Al\u00ffs\u2019 project lie not with the working process but with the product and the effect of the work\u2009\u2014\u2009the exchange between artist and audience. In emphasizing the ethics of process and intent, the ethics of the product itself may not necessarily be secured and, as a result, the exchange overlooked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While Bourriaud argues that \u201cbeing a human activity that is based upon commerce, art is both the object and the subject of an ethic: all the more so in that unlike other human activities, its only function is to be exposed to that commerce,\u201d he views relational works as isolated microcosms. He is interested more in the political significance of the momentary interstice within the contemporary social system than in the potential effects of that exchange: \u201c[Intersubjectivity and interaction] are at once a starting point and a point of arrival.\u201d11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 11 <\/a> - Bourriaud, \u201cRelational Aesthetics,\u201d 162, 166.<\/span> Claire Bishop is critical of the \u201cDIY, microtopian ethos [as] the core political significance of relational aesthetics,\u201d and elaborates on this issue, criticizing the means-over-ends\u2009\u2014\u2009or perhaps, means-as<\/em>-ends\u2009\u2014\u2009approach taken by Bourriaud.12<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 12 <\/a> - Claire Bishop, \u201cAntagonism and Relational Aesthetics,\u201d October<\/em> 110 (Fall 2004): 54.<\/span> Kester\u2019s model as well breaks from the process-oriented nature of Bourriaud\u2019s and emphasizes the product, the after-effect, as the main site for exchange within (dialogical) relational artworks. It is this post-production exchange wherein the ethical difficulties of Al\u00ffs\u2019 work rest, an aspect that Bourriaud\u2019s theory fails to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Curator and art critic Maria Lind distinguishes between collaboration, that is, \u201cthe diverse working methods that require more than one participant,\u201d and cooperation, or, \u201cworking together and mutually benefiting from it.\u201d13<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 13 <\/a> - Maria Lind, \u201cThe Collaborative Turn,\u201d in Taking the Matter into Common Hands<\/em>, ed. Johanna Billing, Maria Lind, and Lars Nilsson (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007), 17.<\/span> In light of Bourriaud\u2019s criteria it is clear that Al\u00ffs\u2019 work is collaborative. Yet, in consideration of Bishop\u2019s and Kester\u2019s respective positions, it is not necessarily cooperative as well. That is, in their emphasis upon \u00adconsidering both the products of relational works and their working methods, the contingency and potentiality of the success of Al\u00ffs\u2019 work\u2009\u2014\u2009whether the participants will in fact mutually benefit from working together\u2009\u2014\u2009is problematized. It is thus crucial when evaluating relational artworks to consider not only process but also product (a significant oversight of Bourriaud\u2019s model), for, as in When Faith Moves Mountains, <\/em>the latter can function as the site of exchange. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The potentiality of the work\u2019s success prompts me to question, with the exchange within politically-motivated relational art, is it enough to simply teach a hungry man to fish, so to speak, instead of giving him a fish? Is it enough for Al\u00ffs to provide his audience with the inspiration to create a dialogical legacy? Does this legacy then have the power to become myth, to inspire and effect social change? Given the manpower and resources the project required\u2009\u2014\u2009not only from the labouring, shovel-wielding engineering students, but also from the impoverished and destitute villagers who guarded the site from interference throughout the process and those who donated food, drink, transportation, and tools\u2009\u2014\u2009and the imperceptible product and its intended effect, I see ethical difficulties within the exchange aspect of this relational work. Who is benefiting more from this project\u2009\u2014\u2009artist or audience? It is a critical question that merits thorough consideration with respect to this work and to relational art generally. In this case, the response will come belatedly, the effect will remain to be seen\u2009\u2014\u2009though therein lies the issue. I am not calling for the immediacy of exchange, nor for solely tangible forms of exchange, but for critical intervention into sites wherein lie the potential ethical difficulties inherent in relational art.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/73_DO04_Burstein_Alys_Faith-moves-mountains-4-scaled.jpg\")
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photos : permission de | \u00adcourtesy of David Zwirner, New York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/73_DO04_Burstein_Alys_Faith-moves-mountains-5-scaled.jpg\")
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