Nicolas Bourriaud – författare

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.

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.

A study of two exhibitions that took place five years apart in the same building in Brussels city-centreFull House explores two exhibitions that took place five years apart in the same building in Brussels and featured over 300 contemporary art works from the renowned collection of Frédéric de Goldschmidt.  The first show, Not Really Really, was organized in 2016 in a building that had only been vacated a few months before by a mental health clinic. The works were mostly sculptures made with everyday objects and played with the ambiguity of what the last occupants could have left and what the artists purposefully created.  The building then underwent a long renovation, with photos included illustrating this process. The second show, Inaspettatamente (Unexpectedly), then engaged with themes such as order and disorder, time, classification, the artist’s process or his/her position in world conflicts using the prism of the famous Arte Povera artist Alighiero Boetti.  Curatorial texts and images of the works both in context and in studio allow the reader to discover and appreciate both exhibitions.Distributed for MercatorfondsExhibition Schedule:Cloud Seven​, Quai du commerce 7(November 11, 2021–January 30, 2022)

Angel Vergara’s work tests the limits of art and reality by questioning the way the contemporary image shapes the intermingled public and private spheres—as well as our own experience  Angel Vergara’s (b. 1958; based in Brussels) work is a continued investigation into the power of the image. By means of performances, videos, installations, paintings and drawings, he tests the limits of art and reality. Each of his works is an attempt to break through the image and to make its impact on an aesthetic as well as a sociocultural and political level. Thus, Vergara creates a new, suspended reality, grown from the artist’s personal dialogue with reality and with the image by which it has already been transformed. Decontextualised images of reality are mediated by the artist and transformed into art, encouraging the viewer to question their way of perceiving the everyday as well as the way it is presented to them in images. Vergara’s art disorients and disconcerts the viewer. It questions what is known and opens paths to new modes of signification.Accompanying the 2023 retrospective exhibition “In the Instant” that the MACS is dedicating to Angel Vergara, this important book reviews the career of the Belgian artist and highlights the close relationship between his painting and the cinematic medium.  Distributed for Mercatorfonds  Exhibition Schedule:  02.11.2022–02.06.2023Outside installation. Musée de la batellerie—Conflans Sainte Honorine, France.  24.11.2022–19.03.2023Photo Brut - Centrale for Contemporary Art, Brussels  23.04.2023–08.10.2023Angel Vergara. In a Moment. Monographic exhibition. MAC’s in Mons, Belgium.

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.

En este polémico y desafiante conjunto de ensayos, el joven fundador y ex director del Palais de Tokyo parisino, Nicolas Bourriaud -autor del libro recientemente reeditado por Adriana Hidalgo, ''Postproducción''- precisa el sistema de ideas y el funcionamiento de un nuevo paradigma artístico destinado a interactuar en la esfera de las relaciones sociales. Las teorizaciones que recorren ''Estética relacional'' surgen precisamente a partir del conocimiento profundo de la obra de los más conspicuos artistas internacionales de los años noventa, hoy en plena actividad, y de exponer los principios que estructuran sus pensamientos. El libro viene a responder, entre otras, a la pregunta «¿de dónde viene esta obsesión por lo interactivo que atraviesa nuestra época?». Uno de los motivos que deslumbran al lector de ''Estética relacional'' es la eficacia de estos ensayos, el modo en que se vuelven herramientas imprescindibles para comprender las claves del arte actual.

Cómo producen sentido los artistas visuales a partir del caos de objetos, nombres y referencias que constituyen nuestra vida cotidiana.La cultura global y la avalancha informativa borran cada vez más la consabida brecha entre autor y público, y a través de ese límite progresivamente más exiguo, la obra de arte intenta reflexionar sobre esta serie de relaciones sin pretender originalidad. La noción de originalidad y creación se desdibuja en este nuevo panorama cultural en el que se destaca la figura del dj (disc jockey) o el programador, cuya tarea consiste en seleccionar objetos culturales insertándolos en un nuevo contexto. Se trata de captar los códigos de la cultura, las formas de la vida cotidiana, las obras del patrimonio global, y hacerlas funcionar. El arte representa un contrapoder y siempre será ''comprometido'' en su tarea de no dejar ningún signo intacto.