POSTPRODUCTION questions

1.

Nicolas Bourriaud speaks about contemporary artists including: Paul Huyghe, Christine Hill, Alix Lambert, Alexander Gyorfi, and others...

"The obvious point in common among these artists and many of the most creative today resides in the capacity to use existing social forms."

I tend to question the creativity of claiming a preexisting social situation a work of art. What sets the social transactions that occur in a travel agency apart from the actual realty of this situation? The fact that an artist is reinacting the situation? This may be heading into Duchampian waters, but unless the artist is making a statement of Bourriard's term "detournement", then I don't see how this scenario is an artform.

If I go to class today, can I call that art? Everyday activities are not recognized like an artistic performance of the same situation; so how is this a true reinactment with all of the hype and discourse that follows?

Bourriard explains,

"In this way, social objects, from habits to institutions through the most banal structures, are pulled from their inertia. By slipping into the funtional universe, art revives these objects or reveals their absurdity."

2.

Has art today become a method of advertising our social scenarios and forms of media? I'm with Walter Benjamin.
An example: Daniel Pflumm

Advertising advertising?

3.

Bourriaud writes,

"...citizens would gain autonomy and freedom if they could participate in the constructions of the "bible" of the social sitcom instead of deciphering its lines".

I think that this statement is on the verge of social issues. How much does one's background, ethnicity, social class, schooling, financial status, and so on have to do with their ability to be constructive towards our "social sitcom" rather than merely "deciphering its lines"?

4.

How is the idea of "gallery space" going to change, now that art is moving into the reality of social scenarios? How much of art is taken from reality and transported into an exhibition space? How does this change the statement that is being made?

This question may be redirected to my first question of how art differs from reality these days? Gallery walls?

5.

"To rewrite modernity is the historical task of this early twenty-first century: not to start at zero or fine oneself encumbered by the store-house of history, but to inventory and select, to use and download." - Nicolas Bourriaud

The instant availability of history is at our fingertips. We are flooded with information of what is going on globally in the avant garde art scene. Does this mean that everything that is made now relates back to some form of art, social, or political history? Where is the energy to do something original? Or is there any originality left? Is our originality the use of history?