People Matter: Relational Aesthetics, Choreography and Service Design by Daniel Kok
People Matter: Relational Aesthetics, Choreography and Service Design by Daniel Kok
People Matter: Relational Aesthetics, Choreography and Service Design by Daniel Kok
PEOPLE MATTER: RELATIONAL AESTHETICS, CHOREOGRAPHY AND SERVICE DESIGN By Daniel Kok
In
this
essay,
attempt
to
bring
together
notions
pertaining to interactivity and audience that have gained currency within discourses of the visual arts, dance and design in recent years. In highlighting similarities and points of connection, what were hitherto disparate
disciplines begin to overlap and appear to share mutually informative concerns that might generally have been taken for granted.
wish
to
choreographic of
consciously
methodologies
service design, a young branch of design studies that emerged in the 1990s, and propose a seemingly pragmatic dance practice premised on systems able to qualitatively, even quantitatively facilitate rich experiences for the audience.
---
Daniel Kok
INTRODUCTION Relational aesthetics as espoused by Nicholas Bourriaud since 1998 has evolved into an ism of art history over the last decade. Still the hot topic du jour, a quick search of the term on the Internet today, will show up an exhaustive list of articles that debate and ponder over its efficacy. been However, usage of the nomenclature into has
already
extensively
adapted
creative
disciplines beyond that of the visual arts; such as in architecture, aesthetics design, its theatre and dance. notions Relational of inter-
and
accompanying
subjectivity, inter-textuality, interactivity, community and democracy, to name just a few, have resonated with creators championing a more equitable as well as more politically engaged experience for the end-user in the information age.
The
shift
of
emphasis
from
authorship
to
audience
is
relevant to the production and consumption of not just art but goods and and services in general. In a bid to
realign
improve in their
relationships respective
among
different other
stakeholders
communities,
Daniel Kok
begun to explore relational aesthetics as a practicable philosophy. Bourriaud himself has considered relational aesthetics as a response to the wider cultural context of the service-based economy.
The
ostensible
intertwining
of
contemporary
artistic
production with the service industries requires closer consideration. exigency ideas, for new If innovative today breakthroughs and the search and art are for is of new an
businesses tactics
through
design
expectedly profitable next-step, the same does not go the other way around. However obvious its affiliation with economics has become, the art world remains more or less resistant to capitalistic thinking, preferring to see
itself as an alternative voice of society and to maintain a critical distance from general polity. The two milieus art and economics - remain uncomfortable bedfellows, at least from the perspective of the art world. ---
1 THE INFINISHED PROJECT OF RELATIONAL ART To begin with, relational art has been described as an anti-capitalist response to dominant forces in the wider
Daniel Kok
economy. Rirkrit Tiravanijas cooking in the art gallery for example, serves as a framework for interactive exchange is
encounters
whereby
egalitarian
social
conceived as a collectively performed action that then creates a temporary microtopia. This presumably
constitutes an interstice to commodity culture in the sense that the democratic consumption of art serves as an end in itself. Beyond the social interaction that
Yet, critics of relational aesthetics have suggested that beyond a perfunctory nod at socialism, relational
aesthetics can be read as simply an aestheticized, novel form Claire of capitalist Bishop, exploitation. others, Stewart have Martin and the
among
questioned
The art theorist, Stewart Martin is especially sceptical about social relational exchange aesthetics as a means conviction to subvert in initiating to
subjection
capital. On the contrary, he has argued that relational aesthetics helplessly reverses into an aestheticisation of capitalist exchange by exploiting social interaction
Daniel Kok
as an artistic medium in and of itself. Citing Marxs account of commodification, Martin discerns a dialectic of inversion in which persons appear as things and things as persons the commodity form subjects labour to the self-valorisation of capital (Martin, 2007) With the fetishisation of human relations as art, Martin contends that Relational since art it is does neither not democratic in an nor anti-
capitalist
engage
obligatory
Claire Bishop echoes Martin in her essay Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics by questioning if the literal
participation of the viewer demonstrates a substantial political assumes action. that the According to Bishop, of relational conditions art for
construction
interactivity adequately and automatically leads to the production of positive human relationships. This leads to a further assumption that relational art is therefore
But what exactly is the viewer meant to experience? How do we speak about the experience provided by a work of relational art in qualitative terms? If Relational Art
Daniel Kok
hinges
on
providing
structural
frame
within
which
socio-political experiences unfolds, how and who decides what the structure comprises of; and for whom is this structure useful or meaningful?
In
functioning
as
triggers
for
open-ended
and
active
participation of the audience, relational art attempts to extend post-structuralist thinking in the tradition of Ecos notion of the Open Work (1962), Beuys Social
Sculpture (1960s) and Barthes the Death of the Author (1968). However, even as it addresses artistic
intentionality to deconstruct authorship, reception stays on the level of potentiality where relational art is
concerned. In relinquishing the didactic voice of the author, audience it remains unqualified itself, how how the agency of the -
manifests
human
relationships
The art reviewer, Joe Scanlan puts it humorously for his article in ArtForum,
Time and again I have found myself in a room full of people with no obligation other than to appreciate
Daniel Kok
the
moment,
yet
the
group
has
always
ended
up
exchanging pleasantries or planning dinner (if none had been served) instead into of giving or away their the
possessions,
breaking
song,
trashing
place. Indeed, firsthand experience has convinced me that relational aesthetics has more to do with peer pressure than collective action or egalitarianism, which would suggest that one of the best ways to control human behavior is to practice relational
The peer pressure that Scanlan speaks of refers to his observation that within a social space, collective action is regulated via an in-built mechanism for self-control amongst its by constituents a shared and aberrant behaviour of is the
suppressed
mediocrity.
Instead
visionary ethical space that relational aesthetics claims to proffer, what results for Scanlan is more often than not, a prosaic environment characterised by ennui and inaction.
The democratic politics of relational aesthetics is found wanting. In the final analysis, this art for better
Daniel Kok
living shows up as alleviatory or compensational for the politics that it opposes, akin to a soft Marxism at best; or worse, an unwitting accomplice of the very capitalism that it claims to resist. Some kind of struggle with power structures immanent to the experience of different people working together appears to be required even if only to problematise the very idea of relationality.
Referring to Laclau and Mouffes notion of antagonism (1985), Claire Bishop has argued that
a fully functioning democratic society is not one in which all antagonisms have disappeared, but one in which new political frontiers are constantly being drawn and brought into debate in other words, a democratic conflict society are is one in not which relations of
sustained,
erased.
Without
antagonism, there is only the imposed consensus of authoritarian order a total suppression of debate and discussion, which is inimical to democracy.
(Bishop, 2004)
If relational art insists on viewers use as opposed to their contemplation, then it is incumbent on the artist
Daniel Kok
to shift production from the level of intentionality to that of receptivity. This demands deeper insights on the politics of community and a better choreographic
relational aesthetics, a rethinking of spectatorship has also become a salient concern in the performing arts in which various modalities of reception have been brought into research and experimentation. This involves the
conception of the audience (and members of a creative team) as fellow control group collaborators of an interacting or such the without objective the of a
absolute achieving
author In
consensus.
circumstances,
democratic community is one that neither forfeits the interests collective of singular subjects The nor permits of a stable
identity.
sustaining
differences
becomes a shared responsibility and which in turn, also repudiates the absolutistic power of organisation.
Daniel Kok
The
choreographic and
practice for
of
the
German deals
Deufert
Plischke1
instance,
political ramifications that unfold through investigating different modes of collaboration and shared authorship. They design and employ specific techniques processes that they call formulation and reformulation that are grounded in developments from an expanding field of
sociological discourse; notably domains of inquiry such as systems thinking, complexity science and emergence
theory.
For Deufert and Plischke, the use of score-driven, timebased procedures serves not only to configure formal
means of connection within a working group but also to unveil the complexities of collaborative negotiation.
Their community of strangers is regulated only by a systemic logic proposed by the artists-as-facilitators2 and yet does not rely on consensual agreement. In this bottom-up approach, participants capitalize on their
1MyreferencestoDeufertandPlischkeherearebasedonarecentpersonalconversationwith
10
Daniel Kok
cancelling out ideas generated by each other, so that the end product emerges, evolves or morphs into an
eventuality.
In
this
way,
is
less by
characterised pragmatic
by
cooperative
mutual
exploitation. The philosopher and net activist, Florian Schneider cites as example the revolutionary peer to peer distribution model that appeared on the Internet in the 1990s and which finds anonymous members of a network exchange immaterial resources and content. Schneider has put it succinctly,
[Collaboration]
does
not
happen
for
sentimental
reasons, charity nor for the sake of efficiency, but for pure self-interest Instead of exerting an
alleged generosity of a group, where individuals are supposed to pursue solidarity, it may [also] be the reverse: a brusque, in principle, ungenerous mode, where individuals are relying on each other the more they go after through their own interests, their own mutually agendas.
dependent
following
(Schneider, 2006)
11
Daniel Kok
This corresponds with what Deufert and Plischke aptly call an arachnid practice. The metaphor of spider
cannibalism and the spider web as a tool for entrapment poetically describes pragmatic collaboration. The woven network serves as a common ground only insofar as it is a collectively generated conceptual landscape but does
not coalesce into a homogenous entity. Like a map, it maintains different routes and nodes and remains
navigable for its users according to their respective needs. Such an user not approach to choreography places at the its
does
altruistic
notions.
Following on, if choreographic practices have begun to tackle questions (and pertaining in so to doing, reception extended and our
communicability
understanding of relational aesthetics), it remains to be adequately dealt with what such practices of negotiation yields. theory, Stimulated Deufert by the development have of emergence posed
and
Plischke
likewise
themselves further questions: Why do things appear? What is contingency? How does that which emerges constitute a rich experience?
12
Daniel Kok
The pioneer psychologist Lewes, differentiates the terms emergent and resultant.
Every resultant is either a sum or a difference of the co-operant forces; their sum, when their
directions are the same -- their difference, when their directions are contrary. Further, every
resultant is clearly traceable in its components, because these are homogeneous and commensurable. It is otherwise with emergents, when, instead of adding measurable motion to measurable motion, or things of one kind to other individuals of their kind, there is a co-operation of things of unlike kinds. The emergent is unlike its components insofar as these are incommensurable, and it cannot be reduced to their sum or their difference." (Lewes 1875,
p. 412)(Blitz 1992)
The
idea
that
what
emerges
is
not
straightforwardly
measureable poses an exciting contemporary challenge for choreography. However, this is not an end in itself but
13
Daniel Kok
actually apparent
another that
point
of
departure. as an stay
It
has of
become social In
experience no
outcome
negotiations
can
longer
laissez
faire.
creative production, the task at hand is to pin down specific methodologies that allow us to understand not just how we operate as community but how much we get out of the interaction. ---
3 - SERVICE DESIGN AS CHOREOGRAPHIC PRACTICE Increased competition in the global economy since the 1970s has necessitated sweeping changes in economic
production within saturated markets. Businesses in postfordist economies have been forced to ceaselessly
innovate in order to meet the differentiated demands of mature consumers. The growing demand for knowledge-based, innovative workers also meant that resources like time and labour has to be remobilised in order to aid
employees fulfil their creative potentials; if only for the sake of the organisation ultimately. In the aftermath of the recent global economic recession, a sense of
crisis has further intensified the need for businesses to rethink their core values and operational strategies. As
14
Daniel Kok
a result, in order to improve their competitive edge and to bolster brand loyalty, businesses today would have to redesign their approach to customer and employee
relations; even if this orientation of businesses to pay attention to peoples needs might seem somewhat ironic on the outset.
The desire to rethink service provisions has led private corporations to look to service designers for out-of-thebox problem-solving methods.
Service Design, a relatively new discipline within the field of design, extends design practice beyond the
physical product or even its marketing to focus on the ways in which people interact with a goods or service. Yet unlike advertising and marketing, service design does not stop at calibrating patterns In fact, sales or Service potentials, surveying consumers an growing
consumption psychology.
researching Design as
autonomous discipline does not only operate within the context of the private sector but has also been engaged by the public sector to tackle a broad variety of social and community concerns, such as in healthcare and
15
Daniel Kok
transport. It does so by systematic plotting the needs and desires of members of a targeted community and
Service design addresses the functionality and form of services from the perspective of clients. It aims to ensure that service interfaces are useful, usable, and desirable from the clients point of view and effective, suppliers visualize, efficient, point of and distinctive Service from the
view. and
designers to
formulate,
choreograph
solutions
problems that do not necessarily exist today; they observe patterns and and interpret transform requirements them into and behavioral future
possible
This seismic shift in design thinking - from tangible products to user engagement is analogous to the
Like
many
choreographers, spaces,
service and
designers
create for
interactions,
processes
conditions
16
Daniel Kok
of causal relationships. And even as service design is still in the process of developing its own formal
language, aspects of its practice has begun to collide with those of choreography. The use of vocabulary like scenario even planning, events is design, collaboration, telling. Service
dramaturgy,
particularly
designers also adopt metaphors of theatre and performance such as the front and back stage, storyboarding as a tool for visualizing narratives as helpful models for creativity.
The performing arts are one field being explored by current service design research projects to tap into their potential for and for concept transfer of and provide
innovative
forms
Perceptions arts
derived
performing
proved useful when embarking on the service design process. (Mager, 2005)
However, design remains a pragmatic practice. Its focus on user experience arose from an economical imperative and is therefore result-oriented. Yet its preoccupation
17
Daniel Kok
with functionality does not preclude the emotional and intangible aspects of human experience. By positioning its practices at the interface between economic
production and socio-cultural needs, service design is potentially well-placed to deal with the emergent or contingent. It can do so by means of a precise and disciplined approach to devising experience not
stopping at the performance of interaction but insisting on further evaluation of the experience in qualitative and quantitative terms. ---
businesses and services have not only asserted tangible influence mutually but might even have become phases of one continuum of cultural/economic production. The lines between capitalist and socialist thinking (if we define the former as pragmatic and and the latter as as utopian), well It as is
between between
cultural have
production, become
design
blurred.
simplistic to continue to view business-like thinking as merely exploitative just as it is nave to believe that
18
Daniel Kok
artistic
production
falls
outside
of
the
economic
context. With this centrist ethical code, artists and designers may approach the community by means of service provision in which user-centred practices need not be utopian or altruistic.
Given this scenario, there are further questions worth asking: What emerges when we combine different paradigms of creative production? For instance, do once-conflicting ideological intense ways positions of begin to produce does such new a and more
relating?
How
democratic
And what remains of authorship? How should the artist identify with being absorbed, partially at least, into the chain of economic production? Should the artist
In
this
essay,
have
mapped
out
the
convergence
of
different multidisciplinary practices, themselves being already results of interconnection with other strands of theoretical and creative perspectives.
19
Daniel Kok
Beyond the scope of this essay, what interests me next involves delving deeper into the specific tools employed by service designers, to exploring a ways to adapt program like them for to
tangibly
and
outline
practicable I would
choreographic
compositions.
even
contemplate the notion of choreography and service design as synonymous practices, to connect these two practices as one.
(3365 words)
20
Bibliography
Relational Aesthetics 1) Bourriaud, Nicholas (2002) Relational Aesthetics, Les Presse Du Reel, France 2) Taylor, Steven S. & Karanian, Babara A. (2008) Working Connection: The Relational Art of Leadership in Aesthesis: International Journal of Art and Aesthetics in Management and Organizational Life, published by The Aesthesis Project, London 3) Martin, Stewart (2007) Critique of Relational
Aesthetics, Third Text, 21:4, 369-386, Routledge, London 4) Bishop, Claire (2004) Antagonism and Relational
Aesthetics, OCTOBER 110, Fall 2004, pp. 5179, October Magazine and Massachusetts Institute of Technology 5) Scanlan, Social Joe Space (2005) and Traffic Relational Control: Joe Scanlan on
Aesthetics,
Artforum
International, Summer 2005, vol 43, issue 10, pp 123(1), Thomas Gale, New York
Collaboration 6) Schneider, Florian (2006) Collaboration: The Dark Side of the Multitude, http://www.sarai.net/publications/readers/06turbulence/01_florian.pdf (accessed on 10/01/2011)
21
Dramaturgy 7) Peeters, Jeroen (2010) Heterogeneous Dramaturgies, first published in Maska, Sept 2010, http://www.sarma.be/text.asp?id=1691 (accessed on 10/01/2011) 8) Peeters, Jeroen (2007) Living Together On Stage, first published in herbst. Theorie zur Praxis, 10/01/11) Sept 2007, http://www.sarma.be/text.asp?id=1409 (accessed on
Service Design 10) Mager, Birgit Definition Service Design from Design Dictionary, Birkhuser, Basel, http://www.service-design-network.org/content/definitionservice-design (accessed on 08/01/2011) 11) http://www.guardian.co.uk/service-design (accessed on 10/01/2011) 12) Kimbell, Lucy & Seidel, Victor P. (ed.) (2008)Designing for Services in Multidisciplinary and Technology-based Perspectives: Enterprises, Proceedings from the Exploratory Project on Designing for Services Science Sad Business School, University of Oxford
22