Making less may seem contradictory considering climate change, turbo-capitalism and political gridlock. Yet for Rirkrit Tiravanija, it is a crucial practice that has shaped him for many years and has rarely seemed as relevant as it does right now: using fewer resources; intervening less and observing more; looking less at results and more at the process. It can also mean collecting fewer objects in museums or accumulating fewer artworks in galleries and instead using these spaces for cooking, playing table tennis or spending the night. For Tiravanija as an artist, it can even mean deciding not to make art at all and instead renting a rice field to collectively test methods of sustainable energy production. Or it can mean simply waiting to see what happens.
In this book, Rirkrit Tiravanija compiles various ideas and approaches to this method on 128 pages, including an essay from the 1970s about "Do-Nothing Farming" by Masanobu Fukuoka, a pioneer of today's organic farming. He also shares a fast recipe for a Negroni, a slow recipe for fish sauce and instructions for composting, and provides insights into his process-oriented work.
This is the first title in the new book series The Practice – What Moves Artists by Gropius Bau, that invites artists to showcase a practice that they pursue, that has influenced them or that has been with them for a long time.
The work of
Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija (born 1961 in Buenos Aires, lives and works in Berlin, New York and Bangkok), pioneer of the the Relational Aesthetics movement, has not stopped questioning the format of artworks and the exhibition system. A mix of performance, sculpture, installation, and more, with Tiravanija, the artistic space transforms into a place of social interaction, often dotted with meeting points, encounters, and exchanges. Frequently immaterial, his work invents new connections in a world based on reciprocity, conviviality, and hospitality. Whether transforming art centers and galleries into banquets, printing workshops, or pirate radio stations, the artist enjoys overcoming the usual spatial and temporal limitations of the "white cube."
