Debord was a marxist, thus a communist. He saw situationism as a rejection of the spectacle; that situational art would be integrated into everyday life the way that labor is integrated into the everyday life of a communist. The situationist takes aesthetic pleasure in the day-to-day, thus relieving oneself from the need (to pay) for fetishized and commoditized art, in turn weakening the institution of capitalism. Further, everyone becomes an artist in his/her making aesthetic experience of the everyday by way of recognizing aesthetics in the everyday. Debord sought to lower the value of the spectacle and raise the value of common experience as a political critique against capitalism.
There is an inherent contradiction in calling public art or performance Situationist, in that by Debord’s definition, it is a private art, (as well as a private revolution) devoid of spectacle. He does realize that this is a tall order, and states:
“The critique and perpetual re-creation of the totality of everyday life, before being carried out naturally by all people, must be undertaken in the present conditions of oppression, in order to destroy these conditions.”
In many ways, this is currently being played out through the aestheticization of everyday life already happens online. The experience of aesthetics in everyday life will not happen by everyone until it first begins inside of capitalisms current structure. Facebook, Twitter, mylifeisaverage.com, etc., are arenas in which this critique and re-creation of everyday life happens, yet under the (seemingly only mildly oppressive) capitalism of the Internet. We share with everyone what we just ate, how we are feeling, or what our cats are doing as if these things are spectacles to be considered. The only catch is that by and large, we, as online situationists fail in that we also seem to be playing into the hands of capitalism as we fall prey to the illusion of freedom supposedly found in leisure.
Situationism should be kept separate from Relational Aesthetics, as it is much more radical.
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| Bourriaud on a boat. Sorry for the lame image, I promise I will replace it with a better one soon... |
Bourriaud is a post-marxist, which means that he accepts the incongruities and inconsistencies that are inevitable when one makes a go at Marx's ideas within capitalistic society.
Everything that Bourriaud calls relational aesthetics is NOT situationism because, regardless of its subtlety, it is still turned into a spectacle by entering into the fine art gallery context. Further, Bourriaud makes claims of Relational Aesthetics being a type of Modernism, and definitely an avant-garde art practice. Conversely, in so many ways Debord sought to eliminate art as such. To quote Debord, "The revolutionary transformation of everyday life... will mark the end of all unilateral artistic expression stocked in the form of commodities..." Although many Relational artists synthesize works that try to distance themselves from capitalism, their relationship to commercial galleries nullifies any such critique. [If you haven't heard of Hennessy Youngman yet, see his famous critique of Relational Aesthetics here.]
Non sequitur : As much as one can call a work aiming to be Relational a 'micro-utopia,' if that work is in the public sphere, one must recognize that it is also simultaneously an artistic act of micro-colonialism.
As with all things, when public space is examined more closely, aporias arise that point out the inherent contradictions of the idea. Thus any Utopian vision of public interaction is brought into question (and even "micro-utopian", an idea many readers of Bourriaud like to cling to.)
Public space is simultaneously a site of freedom and oppression. If people are allowed individual freedom in an arena, then theoretically each person may do what he/she pleases. But at the exact moment that one person chooses what he will do, he eliminates at least that one possibility for another. For example, when in a public house (which of course are actually always private businesses) if a person lights up a cigarette, anyone who wishes to not breath in second-hand tobacco smoke is denied. The inverse is true for the smoker when smoking is prohibited to secure the rights of the non-smoker. Quickly and undeniably we can see how the giving of rights to one is (or more correctly, can be) the taking of rights from another.
When one person, or a small group of people decide what the whole population should see (and call art), that is a form of oppression. It is only through the lens of democratic society that this can be rationalized through the belief that the majority rules.
