First published in 1998, Nicolas Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics laid out a thesis for art’s turn towards participation, experience, and the whole of human relations. Now, over twenty years after its original release, Relational Aesthetics has been updated with a new translation by Denyse Beaulieu and a new foreword by the author.

Where does our current obsession for interactivity stem from? After the consumer society and the communication era, does art still contribute to the emergence of a rational society? Nicolas Bourriaud attempts to renew our approach towards contemporary art by getting as close as possible to the artists’ works, and by revealing the principles that structure their thoughts: an aesthetic of the inter-human, of the encounter; of proximity, of resisting social formatting.

The aim of his essay is to produce the tools to enable us to understand the evolution of today’s art. We meet Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Louis Althusser, Rirkrit Tiravanija or Félix Guattari, along with most of today’s practicing creative personalities.