Nicolas Bourriaud (2002), Relational Aesthetics, trans. Simon Pleasance & Fronza Woods, Dijon-Quetigny: Les Presses de RŽel.

Nicolas Bourriaud attempts to decode process-related or behavourial arts practice without recourse to what he calls sixties art theory. He is interested in practices that are broadly interactive, user-friendly and relational. He says: "The space of current relations is thus the space most severely affected by general reification. The relationship between people, as symbolised by goods or replaced by them, and signposted by logos, has to take on extreme and clandestine forms, if it is to dodge the empire of predictability. The social bond has turned into a standardised artefact.' (2002: 9)
For Bourriaud, this separation is across 'relational channels' is the final stage of Debord's 'spectacle' - what he calls the 'society of extras' (2002: 113). However there are other possibilities for arts practice that stresses human interactions, proximity and resisting standardisation and the illusion of interactivity. 

Relational art is Bourriaud's way of describing practice that involves human interactions and social context and new aesthetic and cultural concerns that arise from this. This is not to be confused with Mannheim's 'relationism', to describe the location of ideas within the social system that gives rise through synthesising varying standpoints into a dynamic totality of thought (Eagleton, 1997: 193). In describing the place of artwork in the wider economic system, Bourriaud borrows the term 'interstice' from Marx as trade that eludes the law of profit (2002: 16). He sees contemporary art as engaging with politics in this way by operating in the relational realm. Who's he kidding? He further defines this practice as materialist by citing Althusser's 'materialism of encounter' where the purpose remains in question (2002: 18). Relational aesthetics then is not a theory but a study of form, 'spreading out from its material form: it is a linking element, a principle of dynamic agglutination.' (2002: 21) It consists of 'judging artworks on the basis of the inter-human relations which they represent, produce or prompt' (2002: 112). In this, form is a relational property that requires human interaction - what he subdivides in the categories: 'conviviality and encounters' (managing individuals and groups), 'collaboration and contracts' (moments or objects of sociability) and 'professional relation' (producing goods and services).  

In the context of technology, he sees artwork not using the computer as having as much potential to make work about its effects. The image is now defined by its 'generative power' he claims, and is a programme and thus in active mode (2002: 70). Here he is partly referring to artwork that is a programme to be followed, a model to be reproduced, or an encouragement to do something. He points to the parallel activities of artists engaging in ideas of interaction and sociability set against the hype of interactive computer systems. Art can be seen to be a programme for the generation of forms and situations.

Art:
Bourriaud sees art as largely a semantic leftover from the accepted definition of art as a set of objects that are presented as part of the narrative called art history. Instead of course he defines it as an activity of producing relationships with signs, forms, actions and objects (2002: 107).

In this connection, it was Benjamin Buchloh who referred to the conceptual artist of the 1960s as a 'scholar/philosopher/craftsman' who hands society 'the objective results of his [sic] labour'. Bourriaud updates this to 'entrepreneur/politician/director' who shows something to society (2002: 108).    


--
note:
It makes us sick that: Gordon Matta-Clark opened his food restaurant in 1971; Angela Bulloch set up a cafe playing the music of Kraftwerk; Georgina Starr described how it felt to have supper on her own; Rirkrit Tiravanija set up itinerant cafeterias, and organised a dinner in a collector's home leaving the ingredients for Thai soup; Ben Kinmont randomly selected people and offered to do their washing-up; Phillipe Parreno organised a party; Miltos Manetas held discussions around a cafe table... 
(all mentioned in Bourriaud's Relational Aesthetics). 
Kahve-Society simply wishes to run a cafe but doesn't have the resources to do so. The desire to do this, and the failure thus far, could be an artwork that expresses something far more poignant about social context.