Social relevance and engagement are aspirations, more often nebulous than not, of many an artist's production.  In Germany in recent years, fine words have yielded surprising, concrete results. Here Emma Mahony describes the trends and their inspirational sources.

Yes Madam, you can touch, in fact you can sit on it if you wish.  The remote control is in the table to the left, in case you want to change the channel, and there is plenty of hot and cold water if you feel like having a bath.

In the Winter of 1996/97 Rirkrit Tiravanija installed a full-size, completely functional replica of his New York apartment in the Kölnischer Kunstverein in Cologne, Untitled (Tomorrow is Another Day) .  For the duration of the installation the gallery operated a twenty-four-hour open-door policy, serving the needs of any passer by or visitor who wished to cook a meal, throw a party, have a bath or just chill out in front of the television.  "The point is not to see but to be there, said Tiravanija of his intentionally pragmatic concept." [1]  For skulptur.projeckte in Münster in the summer of 1997 , Tiravanija constructed a theatre stage in the grounds of the Alter Zoo , on which he held puppet performances, performed by the children of Münster and directed by the artist.  More recently (1998) he constructed a multifaceted 'shopping complex', Das Soziale Kapital ('the social capital') in the Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich .  The complex comprised a bar, a seamstresses' workshop and a branch of the Swiss supermarket chain, Migros.

What is clear from this approach is that Tiravanija has made a fundamental and radical break from the conventions of twentieth-century art.  His practice eschews  'the autonomous object', the 'art for art's sake', the 'truth to materials' of high Modernism.  It avoids the irony, the fragmentation inherent in Post-Modernism.  His work is antithetical to the 'highly revered and precious' art object of past production.  It is functional, useful and interactive; it welcomes touch. Tiravanija deliberately contravenes the rules of the White Cube and creates works that reject the instruction "Do not touch."  On the contrary, he invites the viewer to use his artworks.  He is interested in the consequences of his actions and interventions on the context of art. [2]

The practice of Tiravanija stands as an excellent canonical example for a new approach to art which has of late crept up upon the western art scene.  It is a model of practice which seeks to blur and merge the boundaries between art and life as was first outlined by Peter Bürger in The Theory of the Avant-Garde.  But the work being produced by Tiravanija and his contemporaries, Jorge Pardo, Carsten Höller, Atelier Van Lieshout, Siah Armajani, Tobias Rehberger, Tadashi Kawamata and many more, goes way beyond what Bürger was indicating at the time.  It takes Joseph Beuys' dream of "Art for Everyone" and realises it. The artist has effected what Joseph Beuys only suggested in formal, more egocentric terms - the democratisation of art. [3]

It is the opposing roles of active artist (the creator of the work) and passive audience (the recipient of the work) which this particular model of art seeks to redress.  I shall term this 'socio-cultural art'.  It is a model whereby the artist retains the active role, but the audience also assumes a similarly active role, by physically interacting with and actually using the work.  It is a model where the work depends upon a proactive response from its audience.  It begs to be interacted with, in order for its legitimisation and 'conceptual completion'.  Not only is the work being razed from the lofty heights of its traditional pedestal, but the gallery door has been flung open to anyone who wishes to party, eat, drink, sleep, etc.  This approach necessitates that the status of its public be re-examined and rewritten.  In some sense, the term audience is no longer appropriate; perhaps the term 'participant' would be more apt to describe the engagement that is demanded by these works.

I should like to argue that this model has been particularly embraced by the German art scene - if not by German artists, then by the showcasing of foreign artists who work in this manner in Germany, recent instances being both Documenta X and the third skulptur.projeckte in Münster.  For the latter, Tobias Rehberger turned a university building into giant lamp which lit the outside bar he installed on the university terrace.  For Hausfreund II , Atelier Van Lieshout parked four custom-designed 'blobby caravans' along the green belt.  Wolfgang Winter and Berthold Hörbelt built Kastenhaüser (crate houses) made from empty bottle crates which were sited all over Münster and doubled as information kiosks.  Fischli and Weiß planted a kitchen garden, Garten , to feed a family of twelve.  For Boat Travelling , Tadashi Kawamata took passengers on a trip along the Aasee on a raft built by patients from a drug rehabilitation clinic, as far as Jorge Pardo's Californian-redwood Pier .  Also on the theme of travel, Elin Wikström and Anna Bragg's bicycle club Returnity offered willing participants an alternative mode of transport around Münster, namely backwards on their modified bicycles.  After one had spent the day traipsing around the city, Marie Ange Guilleminot's circular pavilion, Le Paravent , provided weary travellers with a foot massage.

The predominance of this socio-cultural art now in Germany owes more than lipservice to the anti-establishment legacy of Beuys and the Zero Group and can also in part be attributed to postwar climate of reconstruction of German towns and cities.  In such a climate of constant rebuilding it is not surprising that the art scene has sought to emulate this architectural trend.  Alongside purpose-built cites springs up purpose-built art or 'art with a purpose'.  As part of this intensive building programme, there have been several 'ambitious' art museums erected of late, not least the oddly triangular-shaped Museum für Moderne Kunst (MMK) in Frankfurt which was designed by the architect Hans Hollein.  The art scene however, seems to have first embraced and subsequently bypassed architecture.  Art has assumed the situation of beings its own self-contained environment.  This is particularly true of the East Berlin art scene which, it can be argued, is conducive to this 'socio-cultural art', as was exemplified by last autumn's first Berlin Biennale Berlin/Berlin .  The remit of the Biennale was to acknowledge East Berlin's role at the forefront of the western art scene, by highlighting the city as a centripetal force which, since the removal of the wall in 1989, has attracted an influx of artists, gallerists and curators from the rest of Germany and Europe.  As such it showcased both German and international artists who are currently located in Berlin and those who had, in the past, been located there.

Albeit on a more modest scale to either Documenta or skulptur.projeckte , the curators of Berlin/Berlin , Hans Ulrich Obrist, Nancy Spector and Klaus Bisenbach, borrowed from the ever-growing pool of 'socio-cultural' artworks to display at the three sites, the Postführamt, Kunst-Werke and the Akademie der Künste.  The first piece to strike one on entry to the Postführamt , was the 3 de lux Leisure Lounge which was installed in the circular atrium of the building.  It comprised two concentric circles of white leather seating, subdivided by muslin hangings, on which one was literally encouraged to 'lounge', a thankful prospect after traversing the other 38 exhibits housed in the same building.  A Dan Graham mirrored Pavilion had been put to practical use in Kunst-Werke , where a café had been installed inside it.  Also sited in Kunst-Werke were Carsten Höller's fabricated stainless-steel slides which bisected the building and offered an exciting alternative to using the stairs (while also doubling as a fire escape).  If one took the stairs to the third floor then one could slide down to the second floor, see the art and slide down again to the ground floor, a process which could be repeated ad nauseam until the gallery closed.  Perhaps this piece could be construed as a means of speeding up the process of viewing art while adding an element of fun and revelry along the way? In fact, what most of these 'socio-cultural' artworks have in common is that they provide a welcoming respite from the mentally demanding task of looking at art, be that respite drinking tea in Dan Graham's Pavilion or simply chilling out on the Leisure Lounge.  Rooted as they are in mass culture and not in theory they beg physical interaction instead of mental consideration and hence are the perfect antidote to art.

Aside from Berlin/Berlin , there are several instances of this 'socio-cultural' work in permanent collections of German art museums.  The question here is whether this environment is conducive to this type of work?  Surely such work cannot sit happily in an institution which has neither legitimised nor welcomed the interaction that this sort of work demands?  A pertinent example would be the installation of the Van Lieshout beds in the Sprengel Museum in Hanover, where contrary to Joep Van Lieshout's intentions, the security guards were preventing the visitors from sitting or lying on them, another instance of "don't touch, it's art."  The idea of collecting and conserving this type of work by an art institution is contrary to its socio-cultural function.

There are however works which are specifically designed for institutions of this sort, as with Siah Armajani's Indoor Reading Room in the MMK .  Its specific function, as a library, serves to segregate it from the rest of the museum's collection.  Paradoxically, those visitors to the gallery who are unfamiliar with the practice of Armajani mistake it as another 'precious' artwork and are reluctant to interact with the piece and use it as it should be used.  Only when they see someone else climb into one of the reading rooms and leaf through the catalogues do they feel justified in doing likewise.

When art steps down off its pedestal and attempts to become part of life, the implications are far reaching.  Firstly, the socially engaged nature of all this work serves to negate art's traditional function as the autonomous and hence culturally valued object.  It redresses the Greenbergian elite/mass distinction by creating what is essentially consumer art, as Tiravanija blatantly shows by installing a supermarket in an art gallery.  Das Soziale Kapital 's function as a supermarket is only second to its role as a supermarket in an art gallery or art in the guise of a supermarket.  Likewise, Dan Graham's Pavilion is a tea pavilion second only to its function as a tea pavilion inside an artwork, inside a gallery.

Paradoxically it is the legitimisation of the art establishment echoed through its display within the confines of the establishment that heralds its ultimate failure as socio-cultural art.  Acceptance negates the aim of this work; art cannot break through any radical boundaries as long as its seen to be upheld and legitimated by the art establishment.  Art can wave goodbye to the pedestal, the vitrine, the canvas and the object but maybe it can never truly be 'life' as long as its still art.

[1] Udo Kittelmann, Untitled, 1996 (tomorrow is another day), Kölnischer Kunstverein Publications, Cologne, 1997, p. 3
[2] Yilmaz Dziewior, Neue Bildende Kunst, 1, 1997
[3] Francesco Bonami, Cream, Phaidon Press, London, 1998, p. 406