Relational Aesthetics and Postsocialist Critique: Testing the Horizon of the Aesthetics of Democratisation

Can we complacently argue for a ‘behavioural economy’ of ‘democracy’ emerging from a relational art paradigm? Numerous Western European critics and curators, including Nicolas Bourriaud, Mika Hannula and Paul Ardenne, have argued for the democratising potential of intersubjective, intra-audience encounters as catalysed by and within works of art. Yet parallel rhetorics of democracy and democratisation have been concurrently invoked to justify and celebrate various political and economic actions, from the largely eastward spread of capitalism through Europe to recent interventions in Iraq. What responses to, and redefinitions of, these parallel and increasingly hegemonic ideologies of ‘liberation’ and ‘democratisation’ can we understand within contemporary European art and politics?

This paper analyses the work of Slaven Tolj, whose use of audience participation and intersubjective engagement parallels their similar invocation by Bourriaud, but with an eye towards critical disruption and intervention rather than cosy relational gatherings. In so doing, Tolj provides a critique of ‘democratisation’ both within art and broader political praxes, while refusing to sublate the socialist avant-garde into the contemporary hegemony of Empire.

Anthony Gardner, PhD candidate, The University of New South Wales