Walking Art

The Movement In-Between

Abstract

Following Nicolas Bourriaud, art is a state of encounter which keeps together and provides a space of relations. Unfortunately, though, he pays not enough attention to the lived experiences of the participants enabled by this relationality. So the question we are interested in is not what ‘is’ relational art. It is neither about approaching relationality as a theoretical concept, nor defining art as relational aesthetics. It is about the question of what relational art ‘does’, or how it comes to its force as a practice. Therefore, we want to use Brian Massumi’s idea of art as a political happening by taking a closer look at the relational dimensions of the Alter Bahnhof Video Walk by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller presented at dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel. We want to explore the variety of affective encounters within the relational dimension provided by the frame of Video Walk. By describing the practiced artfulness of the Video Walk-frame as a relational transformation we will focus on its performative potential approaching the happening of art as an ‘in-between’ of space and time.