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There are a number of international artists and artist's cells that I feel meet the criteria of an avant-garde without authority and fulfill Ziarek's call for the space of nonpower of a middle voice. Such a list is obviously partial, but it identifies the trajectory of artists/art as an event that ruins representation. Many artists are situated in a post-Situationist paradigm. At first glance, the curatorial work and "postproduction" writings of Nicolas Bourriaud (1998, 2005, 2009a, b), who was the cofounder and codirector of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris throughout the 1990s up until 2006, seem to exemplify Ziarek's thesis, especially given that Bourriaud draws on the philosophy of Deleuze<Guattari. But a closer examination would worry that assessment. In the mid-1990s, Bourriaud coined the term "relational aesthetics, " which he defined as the possibility of "art taking as its theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context rather than the assertion of an independent and private symbolic space (1998 14, added emphasis). As he further states, "Intersubjectivity does not only represent the social setting for the reception of art […] but also becomes the quintessence of artistic practice" (22). Finally, in what seems to be an ideal statement in support of Ziarek's thesis, "Aesthetic theory [consists] in judging artworks on the basis of the inter-human relations which they represent, produce and prompt" (112).

DOI: 10.1057/9780230113602_8

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