Paper short abstract:

Whilst relational-art revels in an internally constructed volatility, illicit aesthetics encounter precarity in dual form, intrinsically via their veneration of process, extrinsically by their basic transgressive status. Following these practices, this paper aims to explore the efficacy of risk.

Paper long abstract:

Functioning outside of traditional institutional confinement, under the radar of authorization, practices of illicit public ornamentation (more popularly termed 'graffiti' or 'street-art') can come to elide the set politico-aesthetic policies of the state whilst still replicating many of the socially efficacious processes of relational-art. Yet just as they reproduce the consensually motivated sentiments of this form of cultural production, these transgressive images also come to follow the debates between relational-art and what has recently been termed relational-antagonism. Situated within what I see as a Habermasian framework in the former case and a Lyotardian one in the latter, I aim first to outline the key aspects of these ornamental discourses within my paper, delineating the particular visual and political structures they adhere towards. Whilst pursuing quite radically divergent communicative values however, one aiming toward a centrifugal, the other a centripetal aesthetic, I then hope to argue that it is their joint commitment to risk, to process, to practice, that comes to unite them under a more all encompassing, holistic rubric. Providing one works within certain moral (and tacit) prescriptions then, eschewing instrumental gain, embracing ephemerality, uncertainty, embracing an improvisational creativity, an orthopraxic bond is formed which surpasses any distinct aesthetic sensibility. Focusing on the production of these public artefacts, this paper will thus examine the importance of play and risk in the aesthetic process; it will explore not only the latent potential carried within these charged images, but their ability to break down the often misleading division between art and ritual.