shu and joe

Re: Relational Design

Administrator — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:58:54 +0000

Andrew Blauvelt recently posted a very thoughtful essay on the subject of relational design (some visual references and a more concise statement of his position are available at the Walker Art Center blog). Blauvelt frames his argument thusly:

Some of the most interesting work today is not reducible to the same polemic of form and counter-form, action and reaction, which has become the predictable basis for most on-going debates for decades. Instead, we are in the midst of a much larger paradigm shift across all design disciplines, one that is uneven in its development, but is potentially more transformative than previous isms, or micro-historic trends, would indicate. More specifically, I believe we are in the third major phase of modern design history: an era of relationally-based, contextually-specific design.

This claim along with the titular component of the piece call to mind Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics, a text which appears to present a similar thesis with respect to contemporary art since the mid 1990s. Actually, the two are quite different. Bourriaud suggests that what’s novel about some recent art is the way that a “work” has come to encompass less a specific object than a duration of experience, a being-there among others. The exemplar of his position is Rirkrit Tiravanija, who is known for cooking and giving away Thai food, water or even pudding at his openings. The “work” includes not simply the performance of the cooking, but the relationships developed among those who attend these performances.

Rirkrit Tiravanija, Untitled, 1992/2007

Blauvelt’s use of the term “relational” seems less specific to me. Judging by his examples, he’s not talking strictly about inter-human relationships, but also about what might be called reactive technologies. Things like a typeface that alters in appearance depending on changes in the air temperature at a given site, or Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s Blur Building, which incorporates programmed jets that shroud the building in mist. These sorts of programmed reactions to variable conditions are certainly interesting, but I’m not sure that they constitute the sort of radical break with the past that Blauvelt’s “third phase” would suggest. It seems to me that these are decidedly familiar gestures that employ a strict set of conditions/constraints to execute a program, much in the way that Sol LeWitt established his working practice (some call this anti-formalist, but I would argue that LeWitt’s move from Minimalism to Conceptualism marks the apogee of the Hegelian desire for the resolution of art into philosophy, a formal purity if ever there were one).

Diller, Scofidio + Renfro’s Blur Building, 2002

I think Blauvelt is definitely on to something in regard to his acknowledgment of a tendency in recent years to see design as a facilitator of social relationships, but I’m a bit skeptical of the sort of periodizing logic that he’s couched his statements in. Design encompasses formal features and symbolic meanings and pragmatic solutions. These aren’t discreet objectives, but overlapping concerns. Form, meaning and use are all keystones of the design process and will continue to be across any foreseeable trajectory of relational design.

Art | Here is Always Somewhere Else

Administrator — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:40:57 +0000

I’ve been waiting for this for a while – Rene Daalder’s documentary concerning the disappearance at sea of Bas Jan Ader, one of the most poignant, incisive performance artists of the 1970s. His career was short and his output minimal, but his influence on recent art practice has been huge. The documentary, Here is Always Somewhere Else, includes a bonus DVD featuring all of Ader’s film works. Limited director-signed DVD is out today. Film trailer below.

The City | Northeast by Northwest

Administrator — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 18:10:40 +0000

The Northwest’s premiere budget boutique hotel - The Ace - will soon have new digs on the east coast. In line with Ace properties in Seattle and Portland, many of the NY rooms will feature shared hallway bathrooms – but at least you’ll have you’re very own in-room turntable. Not kidding.

Along for the ride are west coast delights Rudy’s Barber Shop and Stumptown Coffee (the latter is worth getting excited about). It’s also been rumored that Chinatown boutique Project No.8 will join the party uptown.

The joint will occupy the landmark, yet down on its heels, Hotel Breslin at Broadway and 29th. But many long-time low-income tenants aren’t too keen on the impending gentrification and their possible eviction.

(more images at Curbed)

Art | KK Projects

Administrator — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 06:58:22 +0000

The Prospect 1 New Orleans art biennial has been in the media a bunch recently, with most agreeing that its non-institutional deployment is both appropriate and refreshing, saving the event from becoming yet another formally-indistinguishable global art event.

Participating gallery KK Projects, which is housed in a dilapidated house located in the Katrina-ravaged quarters of the city, has also seen substantial media coverage in the run up to the biennial. Here’s some video shot inside KK Projects earlier this year by the Times Picayune:

Urban Studies | Time out of place

Administrator — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 06:29:58 +0000

Insightful review of Michael Winterbottom’s 2003 film Code 46 at bldgblog. Seems that the film develops its urban backdrop via visual bricolage, amalgamating the landmarks of developing megacities into an uncannily familiar no-place. Regarding this technique, Geoff Manaugh asks, “But what does it mean that Asian cities – cinematically depicted as a kind of monolithic urban Other – are, for the time being, so visually unfamiliar to Western audiences that they can be edited into a seamless Global Metropolis, a vast agglomeration of spatial alterity that we can cut-and-paste together on film?” What, indeed. Manaugh will sit down with Winterbottom next week at the Barbican to get to tease out some answers.

Black Panthers?

Administrator — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 07:52:56 +0000

Aoyama cemetery, Tokyo.

Art | Osage HK

Administrator — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 07:45:28 +0000

Kwun Tong is an industrial neighborhood on the Kowloon side of Victoria Harbor — a long way from the galleries clustered near Hong Kong’s Hollywood Road. I have a feeling that this choice of location was intended to put both physical and symbolic distance between Osage Gallery and the oft-underwhelming work on display across the water. The space can be a bit difficult to locate, but if you stand around near the loading dock on the ground floor looking uncertain, you’ll be pointed to the freight elevator and taken up to the fifth floor. Currently on display is the photographic work of Jiang Zhi and a group show titled Site:Seeing.

View from the street.

Jiang Zhi

Art | Xu Weixin’s Workers

Administrator — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:01:41 +0000

Coal Miner, oil on canvas, 250 x 200 cm / 98.42 x 78.74 in

Migrant Worker, oil on canvas, 250 x 200 cm / 98.42 x 78.74 in

Chinese painter Xu Weixin paints moving portraits of Chinese workers. Showing now at China Squaren.

Photo | Burtynsky’s China

Administrator — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:29:43 +0000

To coincide with our travels in Southern China, thought I’d post some Edward Burtynsky photos. He also has a show at the Paris-Beijing Photo Gallery currently.

Bao Steel - 02, 2005, Shanghai

Manufacturing - 04, 2005, Factory Worker Dormitory, Dongguan, Guangdong Province

Manufacturing - 17, 2005, Deda Chicken Processing Plant, Dehui City, Jilin Province

China Recycling - 02, 2004, Cutter, Fengjiang, Zhejiang Province

Helmut Lang Archive

Administrator — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:11:27 +0000

032c will present the “first-ever exhibition of Helmut Lang’s digitized fashion archive. Of the 10,000 items of Lang’s design that have been photographed and archived over the past four years, 3,000 were selected to be included in a video documenting his work in fashion, spanning a period of nearly two decades – and, simultaneously, embodying his creative role at the crossroads of fashion and art.”

Interesting fact: Helmut Lang currently lives in Long Island.