Anything that cannot be marketed will inevitably vanish
on communication as a series of relations
by Limited Language
Monika Parrinder and Colin Davies
2006
"Anything that cannot be marketed will inevitably vanish." …this comment comes from Art critic and curator, Nicolas Bourriaud. In his 1998 collection of essays, Relational Aesthetics, he captures the mood of much visual communication today, which oscillates between the brand consultant's wet dream and the critic’s worst nightmare. For Bourriaud, it is spontaneous social relations that are vanishing in the information age as communication becomes restricted to particular areas of consumption; coffee shops, pubs, art galleries etc. As designers, we realise this is a world, more often than not, littered with the artefacts of graphic design.
The purpose of the book is to explore art that concerns itself with creating encounters or moments of sociability within these ‘communication zones’ for non-scripted social interaction. Bourriaud’s writing tends to champion the work of a series of key artists with whom he has worked. One of these is Thai-born Rirkit Tiravanija who, in the summer of 2005, re-enacted his New York apartment in London’s Serpentine gallery – a repeat of similar shows in Cologne and New York. In these, visitors are invited to make them selves at home – put on the kettle, cook a meal, take a shower. Here, the flat itself isn’t offered up for contemplation but the way people inhabit the space - a process made more noticeable in the London show, in the move from one house to its identical but uncannily mirrored twin. There, scribbles and post-it notes started accumulating spontaneously on the walls revealing people’s thoughts, and developing into as does graffiti on a toilet wall.
The term relational refers to art that not only situates itself within the ‘inter-human sphere’ but consists of “a formal arrangement [Tiravanija’s installation for instance] that generates relationships between people”. A key unifying principle of relational aesthetics is that they are open-ended -negotiating open relationships with their audience in a way that is not resolved before hand. It’s in this way, according to Bourriaud, that they “resist social formatting” – unlike the kind of scripted conversation that is designed to end in a sale. This is also in contrast to the more didactic dialogues of, say, a poster where the relationship with the audience communication is not open, but top-down.
The term relational, then, offers a more complex understanding than the simple oppositional binary of much art - and more importantly here, design - as either socially active or not. We want to attach some context to the expression by examining Bourriaud’s summation of relational art practice to see whether the same processes are active in current communication design. The UK’s Turner Prize graphics by A2, via Japanese signage back to M/M (Paris), we will argue, share a common theme of a relational approach in their work. For some of these works, this may be a conscious practise although more often than not, it’s simply ‘in the air’.
Over the last couple of years, a talking piece - quite literally - of the UK’s Turner Prize has been the exit - not the usual retail snare of postcards, souvenir espresso cups and umbrellas, but a space for reflection rather than branded mementos. An installation created by A2-GRAPHICS/SW/HK provides a room for you to linger in, debrief, pass comment, swap notes and leave your mark. The room is simply walled by wooden panels with rows of A6 loose-leaf writing paper, hole punched and hanging from what look like pieces of dowel. These turn out to be the pencils with which to write your thoughts about the exhibition.
For the Turner Prize, debate is its raison d’être. Over a decade on, the ‘controversial’ label attached to the Prize has become jaded marketing rhetoric. A2 have found a way to re-invigorate a genuine discussion about art at the level of the public but this time more quietly, more intimately, within the gallery rather than the tabloids – red crayon instead of red top! Crucially, discussion is directed by the visitor. People engaged in relational aesthetics, according to Bourriaud, “work on scaled down models of communicational situations.” Here A2 have combined the structure of ‘art debate’ with ‘the traditional comments box’, but they then become something else - for this is more than a simple method of feedback. It is about meeting and creating a live community and thus reconceived creates a space of encounter for the formation of micro-communities that are fundamental to Bourriaud’s idea of giving value back to the unmediated ‘consumer’ experience. It is, in a sense, a different exhibition – un-curated and inter-dependent of the show...for instance one note says “The comments are more interesting to read than half that bombastic [unreadable] that the we’ve all paid to marvel at.” This scenario, it has to be said, is as institutionally sanctioned as an instance when a comments card is presented alongside the bill at Pizzaland etc. but an important difference is the ‘open’ structure of the A2 platform - it encourages dialogue rather than simple comments/reaction alone. It is this subtle difference that is important to the relational methodology in communication design.
The fruits of interaction and encounter can be used to generate promotional material for more commercial needs. In an initiative by MendeDesign and Volume Design for the Southern Exposure gallery in San Fransisco (2004). a project was created to promote an art show ‘The way we work’ which featured a series of collectives that facilitated art in the community with their focus on the making, not the finite object. The promotion of the show consisted of two parts: almost blank posters were pasted up in strategic areas of the city whilst, at the same time, stencils were sent out to five thousand people on the gallery’s mailing list. Both posters and stencils were printed with the detail of the exhibition with information about where the posters had been put up included with the stencil mail out. Each group of posters had one trigger design - but that was it. By night, over a period of four weeks, the posters became stencilled.
The initiative is described as “a unique, interactive, grass-roots public art project”. This example sits outside of Bourriaud’s pure definition of a relational experience in art - which not only involves the audience but is made real or materialises in and with the audience and is not to be confused with work that is ‘interactive’. A work like the Southern Exposure project, which is participatory but with ‘rules’, is relational in a more generic sense. The public’s interaction at the promotional stage brought in more people to the show than the gallery had attracted before, but didn’t change the outcome of the show.
An event which was, perhaps, a more faithful example of relational aesthetics was ‘Cracked’ - a 24 hour show at La Vianda gallery by students of the London College of Communication. People were invited to come along and present everyday problems from their work environment to a team of 16 graphic designers who provided them with solutions to walk away with, free of charge. For instance, Ditched - an events magazine local to Shoreditch, the trendy hub of London’s creative community - dropped in with the problem of how to promote themselves on posters without getting arrested. The solution was to put their logo to a ‘Billposters will be prosecuted’ poster. The upstairs space provided a constantly updated display of these ‘problems + solutions’, printed out on cards and hung on the walls for perusal – a while-u-wait space, both portfolio and gallery at once. However, in terms of relational aesthetics, the crux of the event was downstairs where it was the client-designer relationship and the creative bustle of the working studio - always a process of dialogue both complex and fluid – that was offered up for contemplation. What makes this relational is that it’s the actual event that curates the work, not the other way around.
All these three examples provide moments or possibilities for social relationships that Bourriaud calls ‘social interstices’ – a term borrowed from Karl Marx. Although the critique of the scripting of human experience by marketing is pretty commonplace and long discussed, in contrast to a traditional leftist position Bourriaud insists – contentiously - that rather than simple ‘culture jamming’ which aims to disrupt capitalist activity, these interstices co-exist and live within the branded environment (restaurants, galleries, etc.).
The world of (mass) communications - which Bourriaud calls ‘looped information’ - is predominantly rhetorical, demanding no response other than that you follow it. In many contexts, a hospital for instance, this can be an alienating experience - compounded by a didactic signage system. A relational stance can work in this sphere too. Japanese designer Kenya Hara is well known for his sensitive and thoughtful investigation into graphic form. For his signage system for the Umeda Maternity Clinic in Osaka, Japan, Hara uses the traditional visual language of information design - pictograms, symbols, typography etc. - but the signs are printed onto white cotton cloth. It is detachable and washable, allowing the signage to become part of the fabric of the day-to-day running of the maternity clinic; washed and recycled along with the general laundry. Here, the conviviality of many of Bourriaud’s examples of relational aesthetics isn’t literal. It’s the cyclical nature of the signage, which inhabits what Bourriaud calls the “minute space of daily gestures”, that’s of interest. These are the gestures we make to try and humanise our corporate dominated world. It is in this light that, for us, the Umeda Maternity Clinic’s signage makes the impersonal world of a large hospital more human - allowing it to engage with the patients on a more personal level. Moreover, this is an open-ended process, in that the signage isn’t perceived to ‘deteriorate’ the more it is used and washed – a kind of patina of use - but to come to life. An additional benefit might be how the signage has not been a target for graffiti. It’s possible to imagine that this would even hold true if it was transferred to a more graffiti-prone culture - perhaps London or Chicago. Unlike official ‘modernist’ street signage which is prone to the taggers’ aerosol wit, to graffiti Hara’s signage would be like tagging the back of someone shirt as he sits in the emergency waiting room!
Not all of Bourriaud’s artists follow the more obvious model of relational aesthetics – creating actual moments of sociability as seen in the work of Rirkit Tiravanija. The British artist Liam Gillick, for instance, creates large, permanent signage installations for multi-national corporations. In this context, he’s particularly interesting because his work takes relational aesthetics out of the gallery into real working environments. The shift leaves traces in his work as the over-size, enigmatic wording and unusual positioning of his work pitches it half-way between sculpture and signage. Specifically, it’s the visual language of minimalist art - rendered so often benign in the lobbies of multi-national corporations – that is conflated with that of corporate signage. In ‘Interior Location Thing’, at the Olnick Corporation building in New York, a ring of words is suspended; ‘literally your place literally this place literally that place literally no place literally your place’. This reads, potentially, on and on like an endlessly repeated corporate mantra. The typography is perfectly pitched in the way it picks up on the ‘generic modernism’ of multi-national identity design – a bland sanserif typeface illuminated largely by its colour palette which fades from red through orange through yellow tones and back again as if animated by an over-zealous power-point presentation. Minimalist art, from the 1960’s onwards, aimed to provoke thought but, more than this, wished that the viewer ‘inhabit’ the space of the work …likewise it seems to us that the intention of Gillick’s signage is to ask those that use the building to pause for a moment and think about the way that corporate-speak and signage, under the guise of modernist neutrality, plays a part in directing the everyday movements and negotiations of people in the office. In doing so, we are asked to inhabit the corporate space in a different way.
Near by in New Jersey, nArchitects, have created ‘Vital Signs’ – a dramatic interactive installation which spirals down through the atrium at the Liberty Science Center. In a departure from the usual ‘closed’ information disseminated by analogue signage, the strip of LEDs and projections is designed as a conduit for breaking news about science. In addition, visitors can intervene in the information stream by uploading information from interactive points built into the mezzanine handrails.
Jason Bruges Studio uses beautifully designed lighting to create, like Gillick, moments of contemplation in the rush of everyday life and, like Hara, to personalise otherwise rather empty or alienating environments - from hotel lobbies through sub-urban flyways to urban back alleys. Elsewhere, these have been called the ‘non-places’ of super-modernity – transitory places - places between - in which we wait or we pass through and pass others in on our way through, but in which we make little contact. ‘Memory Wall’, a recent project for the Puerta America Hotel in Madrid, Spain, is an installation which goes some way to turning this relationship around. According to Bruges, it works like electronic blotting paper and soaks up the colours people are wearing leaving real-time colour silhouette traces on the wall as you pass. If you sit and read a while, your image burns in and leaves a trace for up to an hour. The wall provides an open-ended series of memories of different people - their actions and, perhaps, their narratives - in relation to a particular space and time. For instance, Bruges has observed that the wall can reflect changes in fashion. On a personal level, he adds that as you enter the lobby again and again, in contrast to that of the usual bland international hotel, your experience of the space will change.
'Digital Turnstile', A pending project in London’s Camden puts this to more social affect. An otherwise dark alleyway, a notorious area for drug users, is lit up as a person approaches setting off an animated wave of light along the pavement to lead them through. Here, Bruges’ interest was in the interaction between “...people’s physiological and psychological perceptions about a place and legislation about how well a space should be lit.” Well placed lighting, it is recognised, can reduce crime - as can a more populated street environment. This positive approach, instead of the usual paraphernalia – CCTV, anti-climb paint, signs that say No Loitering - that the council provides to ‘make the streets safer’ which instead, so often focus a breakdown in relations and create a stand-off between the user and the street.
Vital Signs, Memory Wall and Digital Turnstile are interactive, and although, for Bourriaud, the interactive is of secondary importance to the creation of convivial social relations, it seems to us that, in communication design, it’s still a potent force when placed in a more relational context. These installations draw the individual into a relationship with a space, the information it disseminates and the ways in which both are used.
A more faithfully relational interpretation of information design, which literally creates - and relies on - human relations, are the experiments in traffic signage devised in Holland and now seen in London, Washington and other communities around the world. In Holland, traffic engineer Hans Monderman has overseen the removal of all traffic lights, signage, speed-limit signs, speed bumps, bicycle lanes and pedestrian crossings. In his view it is when “drivers stop looking at signs and start looking at other people, that driving becomes safer.” He goes on to say that “all those signs are saying to cars ‘this is your space, and we have organised your behaviour so that as long as you behave this way, nothing can happen to you’...That is the wrong story.” The primacy of the ‘traffic world’ is interrupted by repositioning the relationship between cars, other motorists and pedestrians and making them aware of operating in a shared space. In the most radical scenarios, this space is literally shared as the kerb traditionally separating them has been removed. Drivers can no longer merely act on signage or a green light automatically, but have act and react – mingle - as part of a momentary micro-community of pedestrians and other drivers at each road junction.
Rather glibly it has been dubbed a Dutch ‘naked road’ experiment by the media, yet the ‘Shared Space’ initiative is currently being developed by at least five European countries. In Wiltshire, in the west of England, removing the white lines that separates drivers on one side of the road from the other has already reduced accidents by 35%. In Kensington High Street, west London, there has been a 69% reduction in accidents in 3 years through the removal of railings, pedestrian guard-rails and signs. Ben Hamilton-Baillie, a British architect and advisor for ‘Shared Space’ suggest this makes the street ‘legible’ - not through signage – but as an elegant, live urban environment. “Signage is, contrary to popular belief, a very poor way to influence behaviour. It may work in a car-only space like a motorway, but it is the least subtle and effective form of communication in the public realm. When we are talking about complex communication between two people – inter-human situations – everyone knows that the more indirect communication is, the more effective the message. Women know that. Musicians, artists and architects know that.” An image Hamilton-Baillie uses to punctuate the point is of a road accident where a car is wrapped around the cause; a street sign saying 'Thank you for driving slowly'.
Scenarios which foster spontaneous human relations, in the way that Bourriaud describes them, are what he would call ‘microtopias’. For him, this is the core political significance of Relational Aesthetics and it is his most contested claim for them. In contrast to a classic, utopian/Marxist stance which strives to change the world, Bourriaud argues that Relational Aesthetics create achievable micro-utopian moments, embedded within the everyday to make the now more pleasurable. Going back to Gillick, in his writing he claims that “The phrase "literally no place" can be understood as another way of saying Utopia.” Might pausing at one of his signage-sculptures provoke a micro-utopian moment in the mindless rush of everyday work life?
We don’t make political claims for the examples we have given, but would suggest that they go beyond a simple diagnosis of design as good or bad, socially responsible or not. They might not be socially active in the classic sense of a protest poster etc., but can still be seen to activate the social. Here, the designer is not the starting or end point of a finished product but, like the DJ and the Web surfer – to use Bourriaud’s analogy - they act as a ‘semionaut’ who connects new spaces, new narratives. For him, “The ‘semionaut’ imagines the links, the likely relations between disparate sites.”
In Postproduction, Bourriaud’s follow-up book to Relational Aesthetics, he “moves on from the convivial and interactive” to the matrix of relationships between cultural products in the Internet age. His interest is in “how to find one’s bearings in the cultural chaos and how to extract new modes of production from it.” It is here that the semionaut comes centre stage. Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustymiak of M/M (Paris) are graphic designers who have worked in on-going collaboration with many of Bourriaud’s key artists. They are practitioners who have invested time in trying to re-assess the models that structure graphic design – and have, in their work, negotiated the matrix of information – art, design, fashion and community. Arguably, they have tried to create political spaces where, acting as semionauts – “inventing trajectories between signs” - they try to provide a topography of where these communities interlace. In the summer of 2005, the Palais de Tokyo, in Paris, invited them to put on a display of major artworks from a prestigious European collection of contemporary art which will be “Plunged…into an unexpected multiform graphic context, essential works of art will go through multiple translations...”
It is clear that the relational model of enquiry is broadening in its remit – both for Bourriaud in his developing work, and for us as we take this approach out of the sphere of contemporary art. Out in the ‘real world’ (!), it’s clear that the relational – as we have come to use the term - is already being used to move on, flesh out, current thinking about communication. Labelling work that’s out there as ‘relational aesthetics’ or not is irrelevant - for us, what Bourriaud’s lexicon provides, is a self-conscious engagement with these ideas that we can use, not to over determine, but to illuminatethe nuances of the social effects of what is already going on in our sphere.
For others - visual communicators who, like M/M Paris have been working in more direct contact with the Bourriaud’s artist-practitioners - relational aesthetics deal with some of their own current concerns. Daniel Eatock, formerly of Foundation33, worked with Rirkit Tiravanija on the book for the London Serpentine gallery show. For Eatock the term relational does not intrinsically relate to his oeuvre as a whole, yet what’s interesting to him is the idea of ‘dematerialisation’. In relational aesthetics, this is found in the way it considers “interhuman exchange an aesthetic object in and of itself.” For Eatock, it is important as a new mode of thinking about visual communication. “’Graphic Design’ is misleading as a term as it is about surface. I’m interested in how graphic design can be dematerialised away from the aesthetic to a process – it seems that now people are interested in re-investigating graphic design that’s more than making surfaces.”
The core concepts, then, behind relational aesthetics can open up a broader way of thinking about communication and the effects of its dissemination in the world. Where visual communication might come into its own is that, arguably, it can develop these ideas beyond the aesthetics of the relational. As M/M (Paris) put it, they – and we suggest all visual communicators - “have in addition the means to answer these [questions] using real networks of communication.”
Further reference