[-empyre-] Response to Judith on Bourriaud and Foucault / "Relational Aesthetics" and "Aesthetics of Existence"

[Judith Rodenbeck]

Because sometimes the obvious needs stating. How can one invoke, even
marshal, on the one hand, Foucault, Deleuze, and Guattari as the guardians
of thought and action, yet reduce material practices--which do think, do the
work of thinking, btw--to the status of tertiary terms in a metaphoric
chain? We can rub these two epistemological artifacts, "relational
aesthetics" and "aesthetics of existence," up against one another--and,
historically, they fall within the same generation, and the latter is
formative in some (small) ways of the former--but maybe the singularity of a
single big tumescent "line of flight" isn't the result.

Have a look at this thing (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-WyreE9ZkI) and
tell me what you see.


On 7/17/09 8:40 PM, "Robert Summers" <robtsum at gmail.com> wrote:

> Judith states, ""Aesthetics" as used in Bourriaud's/other art
> theorists' "relational aesthetics" is not the same as "aesthetics"
> used in Foucault's "aesthetics of existence."
> 
> Yes, this is (too) obvious, I argue: they are "not the same," okay.
> But I was wondering _how_ not to be so obvious.  And, I was wondering
> how do a "queer reading," how to "make" an ostensibly "non-queer"
> test, or texts, "queer," how to think relationally and beside.
> Furthermore, I want(ed) to fold the two together -- even if some rough
> edges emerge as a result.  So, without stating the obvious, or
> thinking the obvious, or re-inscribing some sort of unfathomable
> folding ("relational aesthetics" and "aesthetics of existence" as
> inherently not the same [which sounds so hetero -- as if not the same
> cannot produce "sameness in difference"]).  Finally, can we be more
> creative, so go on a "line of flight," inhabit an "in-between" -- such
> as Foucault and Deluze and Guattari were thinking, doing, enacting --
> not to say that these are discrete categories?  I think we can, and I
> think this is the challenge.
> 
> As ever, Robert
> 
> Robert Summers, PhD/ABD
> Lecturer
> Art History and Visual Culture
> Otis College of Art and Design
> e: rsummers at otis.edu
> w: http://ospace.otis.edu/robtsum/Welcome
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