Ben Lewis - Art Safari

Relational Art: Is it an ism?
(Broadcast on BBC4 on Thursday 8 July 2004 midnight-12.30am)

Award-winning writer and director Ben Lewis, a self-confessed “art geek”, takes an off-beat tour around the fringes of contemporary art.

While all eyes in Nineties Britain focussed on our own Young British Artists, a different global art movement was evolving. The leading French critic Nicolas Bourriaud, described it as 'Relational Art'. Armed with Bourriaud's book Relational Aesthetics, Ben goes in search of what he hopes might be a new 'ism'.




(From Ubu Web Film)

Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset - 'Phone Home'

Providing a platform, on which the drama of social exchange will be improvised and performed by the audience, the installation explores an artwork's reach and potential for communication. First, by simple means the work extends beyond the physical limits of the gallery's architectural conditions, reaching through space and vast distance. The visitor will function as the mediator of the show in a direct way by describing it to the person on the other end of the phone line, thereby establishing a concrete link between the activity within the gallery and the outside. Moreover, the work allows for visitors to engage in an activity that places their own private behavior on public display ñ specifically turning everyday 'normal' behavior and gestures into performative acts. When entering the work, external perspective is shifted as the visitor becomes an actor.

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