Graduate Art Seminar
Week 4

Bourriaud asks, in writing about Liam Gillick, "at what point in the development of the industrial process did mechanization destroy the last traces of human intervention"? Gillick's work has a stageset like quality that invites viewers to participate in creating a narrative that proposes alternative possibilities to those put forth by commonly accepted notions of historical succession. This creation of new scenarios is evolving and built on layers of association of various objects and structures.Gillick's piece "Assessment Think Tank"1997, seems to reference minimalism in its form and color, but is propelled along another narritive path by its use of parody in its nameing.

What is the gap between production and consumption? Production and consumption are the flip sides of the same coin. Bourriaud uses the analogy of the DJ, who uses dubbing to make "linkages through which the works flow into each other, presenting at once a product, a tool, and a medium." Marx, according to Bourriaud, wrote "consumption is simultaneously also production." A product is defined by its use. We are all agents of cultural re-appropriation just by the act of listening, reading, watching and participating in the multi-faceted culture of today.

How is the use of subversion aiding in the transformation of critical attitudes? Subversion implies trying to change or use the existing structure from within.Raising questions about our perception of current or past events makes one aware of the impossibility of objective analysis and leads to the belief that there are only interpreatations.Simulationism,appropriating,and dubbing,reject the modernist myth of originality in favor of celebrating the use of ordinary objects in works of art,thereby proclaiming that intention and context form the basis of meaning in art.

How did the Duchamp's use of the "readymade" change the way we use art? Bourriaud quotes Duchamp as saying "it is the viewer that makes the painting". This implies that the interaction or process of regarding is the core experience in art. In essence, it's not what you see but how you are seeing it.This again implies that intention is the basis for determining if something is to be regarded as art.Eleanor Hearlney suggests that rather than elevating common objects to the level of art,Duchamp was knocking art off its pedestal and into everyday life where it is more useful. What is the role of the artist today? Among other things,Bourriaud sees the artist as a mediator between various divergent points of view.By creating scenarios that require more activity and accountability from viewers/consumers,art is evolving toward a more socially respon sible,interactive tool that we can employ to reinvent,or reflect upon, our society.