On the morning of January 19, 2022, my classmates and I attended a contemporary art and anthropology course. The professor asked us to identify unfamiliar anthropological terms at the end of the class. I then read “WAYS OF WORKING” (Arnd Schneider and Christopher Wright 2013). I noticed the term “relational aesthetics”, which recurred in social relationships. I was very curious and repeatedly consulted different literature in anthropology. I would use the word “relational aesthetics” as an important concept that I will apply in my contemporary art and anthropology research. In the course of this review, Bourriaud (1998) describes the “relational art” of these artists as “taking as its theoretical horizon the whole of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an independent and private symbolic space” ( 2002: 14). As a result, I became aware of the trend towards ‘relational aesthetics’ to create art based on human relationships and their social context.
When I finished reading the introduction to relational aesthetics, I think I gained new knowledge and terminology, which made me feel very happy. I think I felt that way because it was my first exposure to anthropological knowledge. I spent more time on relational aesthetics because artists were facilitators rather than makers and regarded art as information exchanged between the artist and the viewers. The artist, in this sense, gives audiences access to power and the means to change the world.
As I have found new words and concepts, I realize that something similar has happened and that I am feeling excited. It reminded me of the ‘aesthetics of production’ that I had fun with last semester when I presented it in my contemporary art class. The common factor in these cases is that the concept is also about the relationship between labour, post-industry, craftsmanship and the artist.
Over the last few decades, many art collectives and activist groups have been working in specific locations: a neighbourhood, a town, a ‘field’. Going beyond the gallery space, these artists propose explicitly social and political forms of work. Their projects aim not just to enact social relations but also to intervene in the existing environment to produce social and political effects. For me, an essential aspect is the emergence of a ‘relational aesthetic’ from the enclosed art space (Thomson 2012; Kester 2011).
