Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Experience it for Yourself


Relational Aesthetics in the context of relational art is a very different concept from what a non-art student perceives as art.  When first given this project, I’ll be the first to admit I thought the concept was very non conventional and I didn’t really understand the point.  I think that is exactly the point.  As a non-art student, I didn’t really realize there was such a thing as relational art, or art where the audience participates, and a lot of that is taking away the stigma of “you can look, but you can’t touch”, of Mom putting my art up on the refrigerator to display, the creation of art that can’t be interacted with.  It took actually doing preformative photography as Iversen describes it in "Auto-maticity: Ruscha and Performative Photography" in order for me to finally get it.  Once out on assignment, I gained a much better understanding of Nicholas Bourriaud’s definition of relational aesthetics in his book Relational Aesthetics (1998). 
Relational art as Bourriaud defines it, is “A set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space.” (p113)  and relational aesthetics “Aesthetic theory consisting in judging artworks on the basis of the inter-human relations which they represent, produce or prompt.” (p112).  I would never have understood the pressures of the food desert if it weren’t for this assignment and I don’t think I ever really will unless I’m fully put into that situation, but for now I have gained a much better understanding of it.  That is the whole point of relational art, is that you have to experience it, which is why this whole process of documenting it seems a little odd to me.  I have created a video, which you can see in my previous post, but also a page layout for InDesign, as well as adding some of my photographs to my Flickr.  These will only serve as a phenomenal documentation for me of my journey out into the food desert, which in my opinion was an eye-opening journey.  It started with the chore of walking somewhere, anywhere (within the food desert of course), next came the looking and being aware of your surroundings for anything that might help you out, the despair of not really finding anything, and then it ended with having to walk back.  I wanted to document the journey, because it’s where I did most of my thinking.  The journey influenced the way I saw the food desert, which was mostly a lot of closed fast food places, office buildings, and places for rent, literally a desert in terms of resources available.  I was thinking of how obnoxious it was to be out in the cold, and how my head hurt and how I just wanted to go home and sleep, and worrying about price, and panicking when my first total came to $13 and some odd sense, and having to explain it to the cashier. 
You can’t get the point of this assignment, or what I was thinking, or my idea  of the food desert by looking at my pictures, or anyone’s pictures for that matter.  The only way you can do it is if you go out into the food desert (here’s the USDA’s map) with $10 and the objective of finding nutritious food, as much of it as you can find, then doing something with it so it doesn’t go to waste.  Accoring to Bourriard’s definitions, you probably won’t be able to fully understand the concept until you do. 
So all I ask, before you look at my pictures, or my video, if you haven’t already seen it, is that you take the $10 you were going to spend on food anyways, and go into the food desert, on foot.  Go experience the performance I tried and failed to completely capture (because it's a preformance that only happens once) for yourself, then look at my pictures.  Maybe then it will become clearer.  Comments and Discussion (even if it’s not with me) are highly encouraged.

Page 1 of my Indesign Layout in PDF form



2 comments:

  1. I disagree that you can't get the point of this assignment without going to the food desert yourself! I think everyone's photos do a great job at capturing this obscure tract of land where junk food flows more freely than healthy food, and I think your photos in particular show a very succinct journey, full of the thoughts you were thinking at the time.

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  2. It's not all about making stuff any more. Is it because there is too much stuff already? We were struck by the corporate/slick packaging and imagery related to food. It wasn't always like that and may not be able to be for much longer!

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