What is Relational Aesthetics / Relational Art?.

The term 'relational aesthetics' was coined in 1996 by French

theorist and curator Nicolas Bourriaud.
Relational aesthetics is a theory of aesthetics in which artworks
are judged based upon the inter-human relations which they
represent, produce, or prompt (Bourriaud 2002:112).
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."
(Bourriaud 2002:113) 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." (Bourriaud 2002:13). In relational art, the audience is
envisaged as a community. Rather than the artwork being an
encounter between a viewer and an object, relational art
produces intersubjective encounters. Through these encounters,
meaning is elaborated collectively (Bourriaud 2002:17).
Bourriaud believes this collective encounter can be both
democratic and microtopian.
Relational Art..."main feature is to consider interhuman
exchange aesthetic object in and of itself." -Bourriaud.

"Relational Aesthetics is a way of considering the productive

existence of the viewer of art, the space of participation that art
can offer." -Bourriaud.
Relational Artists propose as artworks:
a. moments of sociability.
b. objects producing sociability.
In Relational Art, the artist is no longer at the center. They are
no longer the soul creator, the master or even the celebrity. The
artist instead, is the catalyst. They kick-start a question, frame a
point of consideration, or highlight an everyday moment. And

then, they wait. They wait for a response from the random
stranger, the passer-by, the usual suspect - you and I.
"(Relational Aesthetics)...refers to artwork that is open-ended,
interactive and resistant to closure. Relational Art takes place in
time and space and creates interactive communicative
experiences and intersubjective encounters in which meaning is
ellaborated collectively." - Legier Biederman.
"Contemporary Art is a buffer zone of time in which
interaction (relational engagement) can take place, and
interaction between humans and art (humans and humans; art
and humans) becomes a form of special 'limited time only'
chance, therefore still commodified but in a radically different
way.
This goes to reinforce Bourriaud's understanding of the
relational in art - that contemporary art serves to look at things
not only in a different way, but through a whole set of new
categories, new forms of paradigm shifts that collide with
earlier modernist understandings of art." - Robin Campbell.