Relational Aesthetics

From Social Practice Wiki

Relational Aesthetics was coined by curator and theorist, Nicolas Bourriaud. It also served as the title to his 1998 collection of essays.

Bourriaud defines the term as a system under "which artworks are judged based upon the inter-human relations which they represent, produce, or prompt." He also uses the phrase to refer to "an art taking as its theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an independent and private symbolic space"

He championed many artists of the 1990s including: Felix Gonzales Torres, Pierre Huyghe, Liam Gillick, and Jens Haaning. Bourriaud considered these artworks to be forces for social change and the creation of 'micro utopias.' This stance provoked a series of reactionary essays by other theorists, notably Claire Bishop.