[-empyre-] Relational Photography, Relational Aesthetics?

[Robert Summers]

I do not mean to subtract from the discussion of Solomon's and Lam's
"Tainted Love," but I want to share this, and I hope I am not being
too self-indulgent.  I would like a discussion, if only even briefly,
to be triggered.

The ‘Touch’ of Photography; the Reciprocity of Photography
Robert Summers, PhD

Within the study of photography, the photograph has been understood,
among other things, as a *trace* of something, or someone; the
photograph points to the facticity of the *that has been*—what Roland
Barthes has called the _noeme_.  With the advent of digital
technologies we have come to question the _noeme_: so now, *it may
have been.*  But, even with or without digital technologies there are
still moments when we hold (behold?) a photograph, and it touches us,
caresses us, and un-does us—sometimes (always?) violently so.  In the
words of Jacques Derrida, *a caress may be a blow and vice versa—it
comes down to the conceptual condition of concepts.  And let us not
exclude either that certain experience of touching (of ‘who touches
whom’) do not simply pertain to blows and caresses.  What about a
kiss?  Is it one caress among many?  What about a kiss on the mouth?
What about a biting kiss, as well as everything that can then be
exchanged between lips, tongues, and teeth?  Are blows wanting there?
… Is a *caress,* more so than a *blow,* enough of a concept to say
something of this experience of *touching* …* (Derrida, _On Touching_,
69)?
So, I am wondering about a poststructuralist phenomenology of
photography, and, also, of not viewing photographs, but rather looking
at them -- even as they look at, and touch, us -- which Nancy, as well
as others, has theorized.  I am wondering how and why, and here I am
following Nancy’s and Barthes’s lead, do some photographs capture us?
un-do us? ravish us?  Indeed, the art of the event, par excellence,
with regard to photography.  In other words, how and why do some
photographs touch us even as they bruise us by their punch—or what
Barthes has call their punctum?  I wonder about the reciprocity of
photography.  How it is a relationship?  How does it create, if it in
fact does, a relationality, a reciprocity?
I want to look at several photographs of a live art piece by Julie
Tolentino titled *A True Story About Two People* (ATSTP) (2005), which
was a durational performance piece—and which we only have remnants:
photographs.  It was constructed in such a way as to let anyone, for
any length of time, intimately dance with Tolentino, who was
blindfolded.  Now, I am not interested in the discussion of documents
of live art *being* art (this discussion would reify too many
modernist binaries and myths); rather, I am interested in how
photographs of live art have the potential to touch the viewer—even as
s/he touches them—even though s/he may never have been there.  And, I
am interested in what Barthes has stated in _Camera Lucida_, *What the
Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once [just as live
art] … the Photograph leads the corpus I need back to the body I see;
it is the absolute Particular, the sovereign Contingency … what Lacan
calls the Tuche, the Occasion, the Encounter, the Real, in its
indefatigable expression.*
I would like to use the photographs of Tolentino*s live art piece as a
case study, I want to think about the touch and the being touched by
photography—as well as its relationality, its reciprocity.  I will
enact a performative reading that reckons with two things I believe
are part and parcel to (some) photographs: their ability to touch,
caress—even as they bruise—and their ability to create a space of
reciprocity.  Now, pushing the latter further, I will gesture toward
_another_ form of Bourriaudian *relational aesthetics* -- one that
gives worth and weight to *objects* as much as it does to
*subjects*—so, a *relational aesthetics*—otherwise -- perhaps *queer.*
 Indeed, the touch of photography, the reciprocity of photography, the
*relational aesthetics* of photography—and the other.
Tolentino Website:
http://web.mac.com/thejulietolentino/Tolentino_Projects/Images.html --
scroll down if you want to see ATSTP