Rirkrit Tiravanija at MoMA P.S.1

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A dinner enshrined, behind closed doors, enshrined in an image. Posted on this day of our own relational aesthetics, Christmas Eve. So when you pass your uncomfortable uncle the taters imagine the utopian world foods you could be enjoying. Think of art as your moral compass, the curry you could be sharing. 

We need someone to unpack what happened here. And this is it; this is the case study. From utopian salespitch to museum display.  The salespitch is enshrined as meaning. This is the machine of art. It's not quite history, not quite record. It's a series of things that point elsewhere, are elsewhere. But we're here. Asked to be elsewhere. A long explanatory text explaining the process of this. How art in its current regime promotes this, basically corrals all art into this, endless meaning elsewhere.

Rirkrit Tiravanija at Chantal Crousel

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Those fucking potted palms. What a trope - since at least Broodthaers(?)... the same species even. Plants ironize the space of art, their temporality (as decoration and life) clashing with our notions of art's eternality. "Life is short, and art long." Here is the art is short. Requires watering. Dies after exhibition. Broodthaers even called his installations "decors" a primordial institutional critique, the system itself up for question, that has now become a stand-in, a symbol, invoking critique. "If so much art looks like Broodthaers today, it is because Broodthaers was of the first invested in the arrangements of display as a credence to meaning, institutional or otherwise."

Then some poetics crusted into marble. On art rags. It's the art's metadata that's important here, the halo. The signals of "critique" are just polish for that halo.


See too: David Hartt at Graham Foundation, David Lieske