Abstract
Abstract In 2012 artist Tino Sehgal created These Associations, the last in the Unilever series of commissions for the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, London. Within this space Sehgal transformed and challenged the role of the public and ‘participants’ or interpreters in the creation of a relational art piece which represents ‘[…] a direct response to the shift from a goods to a service-based economy’ (Bishop 2004: 54). In common with earlier works by Sehgal, and with the ‘social turn’ of relational aesthetics, These associations (2012), is centrally concerned with alternative modes of production. And as has been extensively noted elsewhere (Umathum 2009, Pape, Solomon and Thain, 2014, Green 2017) Sehgal is uninterested in adding to the ever-increasing mass of objects in the world. Instead he asks; how do we think of production in our times? How (and what) can we produce without producing objects?
Highlights
The artist Tino Sehgal is the self-proclaimed ‘bastard child’ of the two practices of art and dance.1 Like dance, his work invests in the performance of actions rather than the construction of art objects
The space of the Hall effectively blurred the boundaries between a public realm characterized by free movement and free entry, with the Tate Modern’s main gallery spaces and the traditional decorum associated with the museum
As has been extensively noted elsewhere (Umathum 2009; Pape et al 2014; Green 2017) he is uninterested in adding to the ever-increasing mass of objects in the world. Instead he asks; how do we think of production in our times? How can we produce without producing objects? And if the answer is relational, conceptual, abstract, one might ask, how can the results of such work avoid the pitfalls of creating the material conditions that inadvertently buttress the more insidious dimensions of the ‘experience economy’ more concerned with the metrics of participation, than it is with the aesthetics of the work or the quality of that engagement?
Summary
The artist Tino Sehgal is the self-proclaimed ‘bastard child’ of the two practices of art and dance.1 Like dance, his work invests in the performance of actions rather than the construction of art objects.
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