In the last issue of Frieze, Ronald Jones goes out to build a bridge between conceptual art movements and their ontological/epistemological programs, and how contemporary designers are taking this critic energy within the Fine Arts to design “the experiences of knowledge production, reception and comprehension across disciplines - often furthest from their own - affording them an expanding sphere of influence.”
One of the many important points in this article: “The customization of epistemological Conceptualism” [as opposed to ontological Conceptualism] “represents the most significant paradigm shift in living memory, as design professions migrate from myopic design assignments – design me a toaster – towards conceiving the intangible commodities that feed the experience economy – design me a system.”
And ahead: “(…) designers should be critical thinkers and strategists first, capable of addressing cross-disciplinary problems by designing the social, political, economic and educational ‘systems’ that give them greater reach, responsibility, influence and relevance.”
I recommend you just read the full article yourself…
(Are you experienced? - How designers are adopting the strategies of Conceptual art, Frieze 120, January 2009, by Ronald Jones).
“Are you experienced ?” - This was as well the title of an itinerant exhibition curated in 2007 by Nicolas Bourriaud and Paolo Falcone (in Italy, Bucharest and Budapest). Bourriaud is best know for having clarified a frame of discourse around the rising movement of artists working with intangible artistic objects, back in the 90’s. He extensively wrote about a group of artists that would become a reference whenever Relational Art is a topic, and he defended a new aesthetic of the interpersonal, the human spontaneous encounter, and of being analytical and resisting social formatting. He first referred to Relational Art in his seminal book, Relational Aesthetics (1) as “a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space.”
In Relational Art, the artist presents an open-ended work by releasing a question, creating a situation, or drawing attention to an everyday moment. And then, one has to wait. The artistic object is built from everything that happens throughout this waiting, in an organic embrace of randomness. Experience and interpersonal relations are prioritized against shapes, objects, and individual sensory stimulus.
This triad conceptual-relational-experiential appears to be where Western design is clearly shifting to, with manufacturing headed towards increasingly industrialized nations as China or India. In this (triple, and somewhat single) line of research, one should definitely check Andrew Blauvelt’s articles on Relational Design.
Towards Relational Design, at Walker Art Center’s Blog section.
Towards Relational Design, at Design Observer.
(Same title, different articles)
While Jone’s article refers mainly to the realm of artistic practices, Blauvelt focuses on design. He shortly draws a history of design seen from the light of form, moving to content, and arriving in context. In other words, from syntax, to semantics, to pragmatics. The “injection of context into the form-content equation” in design happens in the 90’s, alongside the artistic proposals cited above. Designers too started enhancing performative and participatory elements of their design processes - “designs for making designs“.
Jones’ article refers also the book by Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore, titled “The Experience Economy”. In it its described the mutation from an agrarian economy, to an industrial economy and then to the most recent service economy, being the experience economy the upcoming transcendence of all that. On the book’s cover one can read (the book’s subtitle):
“Work is theatre &
every business a stage“
That given, will designers try to embody the role of the stage director, or are we all to play actors in a joint improvisation?
by Joana Bértholo.
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