[-empyre-] Returning to Relational Aesthetics, Queerly

[Robert Summers]

I would like to re-turn us to the text that started this discussion,
namely, Bourriaud's _Relational Aesthetics_ (RA). So, where to begin?
Here ...

In the "forward" to Bourriaud's text he argues, "What are the real
challenges of contemporary art?  What are its links with society,
history, culture?  The critic's primary task is to recreate the
complex set of problems that arise in a particular period or age, and
take a close look at the various answers given" (7).  This resonates
with what Preziosi has written in _Rethinking Art History_.  In the
text he states, "The art … critic is the implied practitioner or
operator of a revelatory machinery, working at the recuperative task
of reconstituting for a lay audience an originary fullness of meaning
and reference, a semiologically articulatable presence of real being"
(22).

Bourriaud enacts the art critic who revels the "truth”; he sanctions
certain artists (he desires) who guarantee his narrative and theory
via their agreement or acquiescence.  Yet, this type of relationality
(one touched by desire) is not surfaced in RA, but it is not hard to
imagine why.  Bourriaud’s staging must seem "natural" -- given he is
exploring a "real" situation "and [he] take[s] a close look at the
various answers given" (7).

But who is _left out_ of Bourriaud's staging?  How does Bourriaud's
construction of RA both legitimize certain practices even as it
de-legitimizes others?  What is "wrong" with RA?  And, by "wrong" I
mean "disagreement" -- to borrow from Rancière; so, what “wrong” can
be surfaced in a discussion of RA?  Who are those who have been
"wronged"?

I’m not arguing for a more inclusive Bourriaudian RA: an additive one.
 And, I’m not arguing for tossing out the term tout court.  I’m
arguing that RA must be re-thought and re-deployed; it must be
un-moored from its current location(s); it must become more than a
neo-liberal theory on art and its practices.

As ever, Robert

Robert Summers, PhD/ABD