Nicolas Bourriaud

Where does our current obsession for interactivity stem from? After the consumer society and the communication era, does art still contribute to the emergence of a rational society? Nicolas Bourriaud attempts to renew our approach toward contemporary art by getting as close as possible to the artists' works, and by revealing the principles that structure their thoughts: an aesthetic of the inter-human, of the encounter; of proximity, of resisting social formatting. The aim of his essay is to produce the tools to enable us to understand the evolution of today's art. We meet Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Louis Althusser, Rirkrit Tiravanija or Félix Guattari, along with most of today's practising creative artists.

Relational Aesthetics

Caroline Schneider

The French writer Nicolas Bourriaud discusses how, since the early nineties, an ever increasing number of artworks have been created on the basis of preexisting works; more and more artists interpret, reproduce, re-exhibit, or use works made by others or available cultural products. This art of postproduction seems to respond to the proliferating chaos of global culture in the information age, which is characterized by an increase in the supply of works and the art worlds annexation of forms ignored or disdained until now. First published in 2002, this 2nd edition contains a new foreword where the author reflects on how the art of postproduction developed over the last couple of years.Nicolas Bourriaud is the co-director of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. His previous books include Lère tertiaire (Flammarion), Ésthétique relationnelle (Presses du réel), and Formes de vie (Denoël).

Culture as Screenplay : how Art Reprograms the World

Postproduction

Esthétique du capitalocène

Inclusions

Author of the influential Relational Aesthetics examines the dynamics of ideology Leading theorist and art curator Nicolas Bourriaud tackles the excluded, the disposable and the nature of waste by looking to the future of art—the exform. He argues that the great theoretical battles to come will be fought in the realms of ideology, psychoanalysis and art. A “realist” theory and practice must begin by uncovering the mechanisms that create the distinctions between the productive and unproductive, product and waste, and the included and excluded. To do this we must go back to the towering theorist of ideology Louis Althusser and examine how ideology conditions political discourse in ways that normalize cultural, racial and economic practices of exclusion.

The Exform

In his most recent essay, Nicolas Bourriaud claims that the time is ripe to reconstruct the modern for the specific context in which we are living. If modernism was a return to the origin of art or of society, to their purification with the aim of rediscovering their essence, then our own century’s modernity will be invented, precisely, in opposition to all radicalism, dismissing both the bad solution of re-enrooting in identities as well as the standardization of imaginations decreed by economic globalization.

The Radicant

Roberto Pinto

Lucy Orta

Maia Damianovic

An introduction to the artist's merging of architecture, fashion and social activism.

À l’heure de l’Anthropocène, quel pourrait être le rôle de l’art ? Dans une culture qui a accéléré jusqu’au délire le passage de la marchandise à l’ordure, de la valeur au déchet, il n’est désormais rien qui ne puisse prétendre s’extraire de la logique de crise affectant la totalité des habitants de la planète Terre. À la crise climatique et à la crise économique répond en effet une crise de la culture, mêlant gaspillages, exclusions, pollutions, appropriations brutales – faisant de l’art le collaborateur de la destruction planétaire. Comment réagir à cet état des choses ? Dans ce nouvel essai, urgent et passionné, Nicolas Bourriaud se fait l’avocat d’une conception nouvelle de l’art, qui prenne la mesure d’une écologie et d’une économie instituant la décroissance, la décolonisation et l’inclusion en maîtres-mots. Convoquant les plus grands créateurs de notre temps ainsi que les derniers apports de l’anthropologie, de la philosophie ou de l’esthétique, Inclusions est un vibrant plaidoyer pour une forme enfin soutenable de vie, dont l’art pourrait constituer le modèle.

Art as a set of practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context: the manifesto that has renewed the approach of contemporary art since the 1990s. Where does our current obsession for interactivity stem from? After the consumer society and the communication era, does art still contribute to the emergence of a rational society? Nicolas Bourriaud attempts to renew our approach towards contemporary art by getting as close as possible to the artists' works, and by revealing the principles that structure their thoughts: an aesthetic of the inter-human, of the encounter; of proximity, of resisting social formatting. The aim of his essay is to produce the tools to enable us to understand the evolution of today's art. We meet Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Louis Althusser, Rirkrit Tiravanija or Félix Guattari, along with most of today's practising creative personalities.

Francois Bon

Villeglé

Jacques Mahé de La Villeglé

Kaira Cabanas

This is the first English-language publication of one of the most influential figures of the New Realism movement in France during the 1960s.

Jacques Villeglé

Back to Mulholland Drive uses David Lynch's cult classic Mulholland Drive to explore an emerging trend of "minimal fantasy" in contemporary art, surveying work where uncanny, magical atmospheres are conjured through glassy, minimal forms.

Minimal Fantasy

Back to Mulholland Drive

A proposal that artists are the anthropologists of our new era or ecological crisis. “Today, the ecological catastrophe challenges us to rethink the space our societies have assigned to art. Creativity, critical thinking, exchange, transcendence, the relationship to the Other and to History are values intrinsic to artistic practice that will soon be of vital importance for the future of mankind. We need art to give a meaning to our lives, and the banks will not supply that. By attempting to unfold a few of the aesthetic figures floating in the global imaginary, this book intends to describe what is at stake in artistic activity in the age of the Capitalocene and to argue for it as a vital need.” The current ecological crisis has brought about a new relational landscape: an unprecedented collapse of distances is creating interspecies promiscuities and a crisis of the human scale. With Inclusions, Nicolas Bourriaud proposes that artists are the anthropologists of this new era. Artists acknowledge the fading of the division between nature and culture, which has been the matrix of segregation for millenia. Capitalism, patriarchy, slavery, social segregation, the exploitation of land, subsoil, and animals—all are based on status distinctions between subject and object. Against the commodification of natural elements, Bourriaud sees a new generation of artists calling for a molecular anthropology that studies the human effects on the universe and the interaction between humans and nonhumans. Contemporary art reconnects to archaic magic, the witches, sorcerers, and shamans of precapitalist societies. Against the devitalization of the world, art has managed to preserve certain aspects of the social function and spiritualist practices of these societies. Inclusions explores art history as a network of underground galleries, and sutures sundered connections.

Aesthetics of the Capitalocene

Germano Celant

Works by legendary artists from the Carmignac Collection. A private collection is an account of an individual's passion and reveals something of its owner's personality. Composed of around 250 works by leading artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Martial Raysse, Gerhard Richter and Ed Ruscha, the Carmignac Collection is also an open dialogue with emerging art scenes and contemporary creation by artists like Zhang Huan and Korakrit Arunanondchai. First exhibited in the offices of Carmignac Gestion, and now shared with the public at the Fondation Carmignac's premises in Porquerolles, the collection belonging to �douard Carmignac has provoked its viewers since its inception in the early 1980s. In this volume Nicolas Bourriaud, Luc Ferry, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Camille Morineau, Catherine Millet and David Cronenberg lead you through six of its key themes: The Great Game; Shocks and Freedom; Heritage; Perception Introspection; Contemporary Mythologies; Trangression and Sex.

The Masterpiece of the Carmignac Collection Revealed

Walk on the Wild Side

D'où vient cette obsession de l'interactif qui traverse notre époque ? Après la société de consommation, après l'ère de la communication, l'art contribue-t-il aujourd'hui à l'émergence d'une société rationnelle ? Nicolas Bourriaud tente de renouveler notre approche de l'art contemporain en se tenant au plus près du travail des artistes, et en exposant les principes qui structurent leur pensée : une esthétique de l'interhumain, de la rencontre, de la proximité, de la résistance au formatage social. Son essai se donne pour but de produire des outils nous permettant de comprendre l'évolution de l'art actuel : on y croisera Felix Gonzalez-Torres et Louis Althusser, Rirkrit Tiravanija ou Félix Guattari, et la plupart des artistes novateurs en activité.

Esthétique relationnelle

el arte moderno y la invención de sí

Formas de vida

Author of the influential Relational Aesthetics examines the dynamics of ideology Nicolas Bourriaud is a leading theorist and art curator. Here he looks to the future of art as a place to tackle the excluded, the disposable, and waste—the exform. He argues that the great theoretical battles to understand the present will be fought in the realms of ideology, psychoanalysis and art and a “realist” theory and practice must begin by uncovering the mechanisms that create the distinctions between the productive and the unproductive, the assimilable and the inassimilable, and the includ-ed and the excluded. To do this we must go back to one of the greatest theorists of ideology, Althusser, and examine how ideology conditions political discourse in ways that normalize cultural, racial and economic practices of exclusion.

Huit ans après la parution de son dernier livre, Nicolas Bourriaud brise son silence avec L’Exforme, une méditation étonnante sur notre condition à l’âge de la multiplication des déchets – déchets du capitalisme, de la consommation, de l’industrialisation, des rêves nucléaires. Comment apprendre à vivre dans un monde de déchets ? Pour Nicolas Bourriaud, la réponse est claire : un tel apprentissage ne peut se penser sans le secours des œuvres de l’art d’aujourd’hui – œuvres qui ont fait du déchet leur préoccupation, leur constitution ou leur forme même. Ce dont nous avons besoin, c’est d’inventer des formes de vie qui soient des « exformes », qui acceptent de se confronter au fait qu’elles sont elles-mêmes en train de se transformer en déchets. Inspiré par les écrits de Karl Marx, Walter Benjamin et Louis Althusser, Nicolas Bourriaud propose une ronde à l’intérieur d’une nouvelle « fantasmagorie du capital » : la ronde de ce qui est rejeté, et qui, d’être rejeté, ne cesse de faire retour et de réclamer sa place. À la fois panorama remarquable de l’art contemporain, méditation puissante sur la condition politique d’aujourd’hui et essai de définir les coordonnées existentielles du présent, L’Exforme est un livre majeur.

Art, idéologie et rejet

L'exforme

Inclusioni. Estetica del capitalocene

Liam Gillick

Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland

Catalogue of an exhibition held 1. April - 8. August 2010 in the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn.

Nicolas Bourriaud

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