Archive for the ‘Relational Esthetics’ tag
manner of encounter
“Meetings, encounters, events, various types of collaboration between people, games, festivals, and places of connectivity, in a word all manner of encounter and relational invention thus represents, today, aesthetics objects likely to be looked as such, with pictures and sculptures regarded here merely as specific cases of production of forms with something other than a simple aesthetic consumption in mind.”
Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. Paris: Presses du réel, 2002.
bundle of relations
“Each particular artwork is a proposal to liven in shared world, and the work of every artist is a bundle of relations with the world, giving rise to other relations, and on and so forth, ad infinitum.”
Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics. Paris: Presses du réel, 2002.
“dialogical self” goes beyond the self-other dichotomy
Dialogical self – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dialogical Self Theory (DST) weaves two concepts, self and dialogue, together in such a way that a more profound understanding of the interconnection of self and society is achieved. Usually, the concept of self refers to something “internal,” something that takes place within the mind of the individual person, while dialogue is typically associated with something “external,” that is, processes that take place between people involved in communication.
The composite concept “dialogical self” goes beyond the self-other dichotomy by infusing the external to the internal and, in reverse, to introduce the internal into the external. As functioning as a “society of mind”[1], the self is populated by a multiplicity of “self-positions” that have the possibility to entertain dialogical relationships with each other.
intersubjectivity<>empathy
Intersubjectivity – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In phenomenology, intersubjectivity performs many functions. It allows empathy, which in phenomenology involves experiencing another person as a subject rather than just as an object among objects. In so doing, one experiences oneself as seen by the Other, and the world in general as a shared world instead of one only available to oneself.
Symbolic interactionism
Symbolic interactionism – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
people act toward things based on the meaning those things have for them; and these meanings are derived from social interaction and modified through interpretation.

Relational Art
Nicolas Bourriaud explores this notion of relational aesthetics through examples of what he calls Relational Art. According to Bourriaud, Relational Art encompasses “a set of artistic practices which take as
their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space.’
Relational Aesthetics
A relational artist might, for example, convert a gallery space into a temporary stand for serving coffee, with the addition
of background music, suitable lighting, books to read, and comfortable chairs. The artwork here consists of creating a social
environment in which people come together to participate in a shared activity. Bourriaud claims “the role of artworks is no
longer to form imaginary and utopian realities, but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real,
whatever scale chosen by the artist.” [4]