On Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics

Graham Coulter-Smith — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 06:34:09 +0000

Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics (2002) was the most sophisticated theoretical text to accompany the new generation of artists that emerged in the 1990s. Compared with the writings of the New York-based October critics, however, who framed the postmodern appropriation movement of the 1980s (Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, Sherrie Levine, Hans Haacke) Bourriaud’s text lacks theoretical depth and cohesion. Relational Aesthetics contains a section on the aesthetics of Guattari but Bourriaud pushes this to the end of his book as if he does not want to scare the reader away with too much theory. Most of the book consists of mentioning the names of artists and providing very short glosses on particular works which they have produced. The only sustained analysis of a particular artist is devoted to Felix Gonzalez-Torres. (more…)

Bergson: Creative Evolution

Graham Coulter-Smith — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:45:06 +0000

[click image to enlarge]
Bergson develops Nietzsche’s key concept of evolution as a creative process and follows Nietzsche in postulating a vital force of nature. For Nietzsche the latter was a ‘tremendous shaping, form-creating force’ (ungeheure gestaltende herformschaffende Gewalt), for Bergson it is élan vital, a vital impulse. For Nietzsche the forces that produce phenomena are considered in terms of “dynamic quanta, in a relation of tension to all other dynamic quanta” (Colli 1967:; Schacht 1992:). Bergson continues this process-oriented trajectory by proposing that phenomena are fundamentally dynamic and interconnected.

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On Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics

Bergson: Creative Evolution