http://richmedia.lse.ac.uk/publiclecturesandevents/20131030_1830_pointOf...

Rirkrit Tiravanija has established "Relational Aesthetics" as one the art world's current new movements. However, for this "intervention" he was invited to reconfigure "Square Tubes Series D", 1967, by Charlotte Posenenske with some personal alteration of the piece. Tiravanija decided to place all the Square Tubes on rolling dollies and invite attendees to simply roll them into whatever configuration they wish.

PIPILOTTI RIST
Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters)
November 19, 2008–February 2, 2009
Museum of Modern Art, Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, second floor

Tuesday, November 18, 2008. Don't look now, but MoMA seems to be entering the Relational Aesthetics sweepstakes with their installation of Pipilotti Rist's Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters). It opens about a month after the Guggenheim's group foray into RA, theanyspacewhatever.

I missed today's press opening, but as Rist outlines the project in the attached video, she definitely envisions it as an interactive work. She wants people to "bring their bodies to the museum", to come into the huge atrium and feel "stretched". She hopes to "redirect" the institution "to the body of the visitors". Her images, loaded onto hard disk and edited into various sequences, are arranged into seven distinct programs, thrown by seven banks of video projectors, to create a seamless 25-foot-high enveloping projection that covers all four walls.

In the center of the atrium is a large round seating and lounge area, a sofa that encloses a central padded platform with additional throw pillows. Rist feels that it resembles an eye, the dark interior pupil surrounded by a larger white circle. She expects people to orient themselves in various directions and in various postures as they watch her video unfold, and cites rolling, singing and the practice of yoga asanas as particularly apt viewing responses.

The video is ten minutes long and non-narrative, condensed from an original fifty minute loop. The protagonists include one human, one pig, several earthworms and two snails, and the soundtrack - squishy, synthesized "body" sounds in addition to a more melodic portion - will be played by speakers arranged within the seating area, to better contain the work within the museum. Pour Your Body Out uses shots and sequences from a narrative feature film that Rist plans to release in 2009.

Jerry Saltz was allowed an overnight stay at the Guggenheim Museum in the context of theanyspacewhatever exhibition, which I have previously discussed on these pages, but have not yet seen.

My comments below were first posted online in response to his review of the exhibition, and the experience, in New York Magazine.

theanyspacewhatever
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NY, Oct 24 - Jan 7

Angela Bulloch, Maurizio Cattelan, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordon, Carsten Höller, Pierre Huyghe, Jorge Pardo, Philippe Parreno, Rirkrit Tiravanija

organized by Nancy Spector

I have not yet seen the Guggenheim show on relational aesthetics (RA), due to the fact that the museum no longer maintains an aesthetic relationship with me. But who knows, I might drop by one of these days and actually view it.

It's interesting to see stuff from seven or eight years ago. Here's a group of streamed video interviews or "Relational Aesthetics" pieces I did at The Thing's former location on 26th street. You need a RealPlayer to see these.