Found online while searching for definitions of “immaterial art” (and I can’t find it in the library’s databases)

Ibrahim, Dina. “Immaterial Art.” Contemporary Art Practices. Accessed November 4, 2020, http://www.contemporarypractices.net/essays/volumex/immaterialart.pdf

Tino Sehgal. Visitors walking into the Guggenheim rotunda were immediately confronted by a man and a woman entwined in a changing, slow-motion, amorous embrace. Every so often, the performers struck recognisable erotic poses derived from Courbet, Rodin, Brancusi and Jeff Koons. This was a piece by Tino Sehgal called Kiss (2008). (62)

Sehgal experiments with the notion of immaterial art, art that does not manifest itself in any physical form, that rids itself completely of the material object. Sehgal’s work, despite being unique in its form and delivery in a contemporary art context, was preceded by the “situation art” of the 1960s and 1970s. However, before being too quick to dismiss Sehgal’s immaterial art as a derivative of the conceptual movement of the sixties, a closer analysis highlights fundamental differences that distinguish the two. (62)

The catalyst for such radical changes must have been prompted by the release of such publications as Michael Fried’s Art and Objecthood and Theodore Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory. In essence, Fried and Adorno share the same view on the inevitability of the ‘thinghood’ of artworks, and yet at the same time it is that which art must always turn against. In other words, the transcendence of objecthood can occur only in negativity. (62-3)

However, the unresolved contradiction in the methods of the 1960s and 1970s persisted because, apart from a few exceptions, there has never been a complete “dematerialization” of art. There are very few examples where material support (visual or written documentation) for the art work does not exist. Conceptual artists in the 1960s therefore did not destroy the object, but rather expanded its definition. By contrast, in Tino Sehgal’s work, there are no objects. Instead, his works are realised as actions (movement and talking) and the only material support they require is the human body. Sehgal does not allow visual documentation of his work in order to prevent the translation of situations into a two dimensional medium, thus preventing documentation from functioning as a kind of surrogate for the work. (63)

In Sehgal’s view art can therefore not be about somehow weakening the object, and definitely not about replacing it with a certificate of documentation, but rather about literally changing the material substance of a visual artwork, which has always followed the model of production of the transformation of natural resources. (63)

Sehgal believes it is essential that an artwork can be bought and sold. He works with galleries who sell the work’s rights and instructions to museums and collectors. There exists no material object in these transactions, not even a certificate as a material surrogate for the artwork. Buyer, dealer and artist meet in the office of a notary and agree to the terms of the contract orally. (63)

“Just because something is not material, doesn’t always mean that it doesn’t exist”, he explains. (Griffin 2005: 105). Museums such as the Guggenheim and MoMA in New York are indeed purchasing his work, which is proof enough of its existence as a commodity, but what gives it the status of visual art? Does the mere fact that it is in a museum make it art? Marcel Duchamp and his Fountain (1917) proved that anything can be art if the artist says it is. (63-4)

Firstly, Sehgal’s work follows the mode of presentation of a conventional visual artwork in that it is always present and can be viewed during any of the exhibition’s opening hours, from the first to the last day. Secondly, and of equal importance, is the fact that, although the work is a temporary artefact, it can be repeated in another venue, therefore it persists and can be transmitted over time. (64)

Thus the structure of the artwork always remains open and subject to modification although this does not imply an arbitrary enactment. (64)

On another note, the work is documented through reviews and publications such as this one, however they act as external factors to the artwork. (64)

Unlike sculpture, immaterial art resides in the bodies and voices of the people who execute it: in its reception, in memory, and in the time and space it occupies. It is more about dematerialisation than conceptual closure. It is close to dance, acting, speech, or song, and yet it is clearly concerned with the art context, with its modes of production, circulation/mediation and consumption, with art’s history and concepts. In a world where our endless search for authenticity is no longer found in the material object and social value increasingly becomes the new currency, immaterial art is on the rise. (65)