Art’s New Transactions

To begin, it is important to clear up the ambiguity that may be suggested by our title, Commerce | Intercourse. The French term clearly evokes ­monetary exchange, whereas the English calls to mind human relationships, even sexual ones. It is precisely this double meaning that is tackled in this current issue, dwelling as it does on the “transactions” implicit in what has meanwhile become known as relational aesthetics. More than a decade has passed since this theorization on a (perhaps less recent) practice first appeared, unleashing a truly pivotal reaction in the art world. Initially focused on the principles of encounter and community by attempting to rethink the relationships with institutions and to free itself from the economy of the art market, with the benefit of hindsight, relational aesthetics is now giving rise to new avenues of thought.

In approaching the subject, we asked several questions in order to know if — in practices so dependent on the participation of another — the individual had not become a new kind of material, if we were not demonstrating how even participation can be monetized, and whether or not these two phenomena were actually contributing to an undermining of the relational utopia. Such questions, which have their source in the many critiques formulated by certain American authors (Claire Bishop and Rosalyn Deutsche, for example), have led to extremely diverse ideas. We should stress that we in no way wish to invalidate the manifestations or work arising from relational aesthetics, nor do we wish to call into question the motivations underlying them. Rather, we would like to examine, via different voices, certain less widely discussed issues or ones that were perhaps not considered when such practices were emerging.