Relational art, incorporation and the cinema

The emergence of "relational art" roughly concurrently with the emergence of video (and video installation) art is not a coincidence; both represent a radical departure from earlier artistic traditions. Taking cues from Pop Art, media theory and DIY/counterculture movements, these newer forms of art emphasized audience interaction, deconstructed popular forms and further de-mystified the vaunted qualities of the traditional "art object" (Benjamin's "aura"). These forms of art are, as Oppenheimer suggests, essentially fluid - "fluidity" is their essential defining aspect. Both video art and relational forms suggest systems of incorporation - as videos make use of older aesthetic traditions or are placed within larger artistic contexts (dance, theater, installation, etc.), while relational forms draw in (sometimes unwitting or even unwilling) persons into the social environments they create.


Douglas Gordon, 24 Hour Psycho

What implications does this have for us - studying the production of experimental/alternative media and art within the context of a program grounded in documentary and fiction filmmaking ("the cinema") - and for media arts in general? The natural progression of the ideas of "incorporation" and "relational art" leads to dialogue. While Bourriaud's conception of "relational" work stresses the involvement of a social context, media artworks embracing this same concept often form dialogues with the mainstream cinema. Past generations of media artists (in particular, the artists of the 1960s and earlier that Bourriaud's work attempts to break with) avoided the subject entirely, placing themselves in radical opposition to the mainstream; artists of the "relational" generation (such as Douglas Gordon, above) are much more willing to interact with, borrow from or make use of Hollywood and the like. How can we, as emerging media-makers, make use of this same concept in our works? Do we still exist in a period of "relational" art-making - or are we moving on to a next step?