[-empyre-] relational objects

[Julian Oliver]

..on Tue, Jun 09, 2009 at 09:36:14AM -0400, Norah Zuniga Shaw wrote:
> This is a fantastic discussion this month. Thank you to all the
> contributors. I'm thinking about two things that may be relevant.
> 
> First, in relation to the idea of a trace, in our work we've been interested
> in the idea of a generative trace (meaning that the trace generates
> creativity more than preserves a past present). Davin and others speak of
> the idea of an original and of the "gap of difference between the event and
> the representation." Perhaps the decoupling of trace and original is of use
> here. This also decouples the idea of a trace from the idea of document.
> Even more traditional dance scholars who work on reconstruction of
> historically important pieces have begun to question the existence of "an
> original." What is the essence (yikes, not a great work) or better said,
> what within a moment, a dance, an experience can be traced and represented
> and created a new with change being a central value, not stasis?
> 
> Others note a desire for a "moment without feedback, without a document,
> without a traceable trace." I understand and would say that this constitutes
> the majority of my experience as a dancer. For those of us in dance, this
> moment with out a traceable trace is the norm and while there is beauty in
> it, it also holds our field in perpetual obscurity. But, in our field, the
> endless, perhaps even Sissyphean effort to recreate past moments, while
> important, has limited the scope of our inquiry. What has been liberating
> for us in our work on Synchronous Objects has been the decoupling of the
> ideas of trace and document. What if we do not try to recreate the
> experience of the live performance but instead trace the principles, events,
> ideas, and possibilities inside the event and re-present these principles
> with the intent not of documenting but of sharing (creating relationships)?
> This also relates to the issue of "the object" that is flying around a bit
> this month and last. We in western cultures tend to think primarily of
> objects as commodities but they are of course also generators of
> relationships. Perhaps some of this is useful.
> 
> Secondly, I'd love to hear from this month's contributors and others on the
> list about relationships between participatory art and participatory
> pedagogy and perhaps even some of the rhetoric around cyberlearning these
> days. I'm finding really productive connections between my research in this
> area and my teaching and I'd love to hear from others about this as well.

Here's a good text outlining Serres' Quasi-Object, which seems to be close to
the 'relational object' you are describing. Here he refers to the 'furet' (the
object in a French children's game where a ring of players hide the object from
one of the players. That player must deduce who in the ring has the object).

"The quasi-object is not an object, but it is one nevertheless, since it is
not a subject, since it is in the world; it is also a quasi-subject, since it
marks or designates a subject who, without it, would not be a subject. He who is
not discovered with the furet in his hand is anonymous, part of a monotonous
chain where he remains indistinguished. He is not an individual; he is not
recognized, discovered, cut; he is of the chain and in the chain. He runs, like
the furet, in the collective. The thread in his hands is our simple relation,
the absence of the furet; its path makes out indivision. Who are we? Those who
pass the furet; those who don’t have it. The quasi-object, when being passed,
makes the collective, if it stops, it makes the individual. If he is discovered,
he is “it” [mort]. Who is the subject, who is an “I,” or who am I? The moving
furet weaves the “we,” the collective; if it stops, it marks the “I.” (Serres
1982: 225)"

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/skc/milieux/

Perhaps my favourite description of a Quasi Object from Serres employs a
football: to understand quasi objects, imagine a football fixed in space with
the whole stadium spinning around it, players are thrown at the ball, limbs
drawn toward it, bouncing off it and flung away in turn. It is the ball that
steers them, directs them, not the other way around.

I can't find the actual reference though, just numerous recursions of links
pointing to academically closed PDF's. It may have been in his book, The
Parasite, but it's been some years since I've read it.

Chairs,

-- 
Julian Oliver
home: New Zealand
based: Madrid, Spain
currently: Madrid, Spain 
about: http://julianoliver.com