.…these reasons, which we have seized on in the difficult passion of writing and creating, of living and struggling, are now becoming common places for us, that we are learning to share; but invaluable common places…Our common places, even though today they are of no use, of absolutely no use against the concrete oppressions that stun the world, are nevertheless capable of changing the imagination of human communities: it is through the imagination that we will ultimately conquer these derelictions that attack us, just as it already helps us, by shifting our sensibilities, to fight them.
– Édouard Glissant
6 Art Practices in 6 Relational Spaces
Six artworks were created based on experiences engaging in six art practices in six different relational contexts. While each of the six art objects was made with some element of collaboration, the primary purpose was to engage in the relational art practices themselves, not necessarily to make collaborative art. In addition, while any act of collaboration can be considered a co-created work of art, and elements of that appear in this project, the primary purpose was not to situate the relational acts themselves as works of art, but to engage in practices that nudge the structure of those relationships more toward equality by exploring mutual conditions and a unity through multiplicity and difference.
Warm-up Exercises
Inspired by Oliver Marchart’s notion of art activism, each practice functions similarly to warm-up exercise at the ballet barre, rather than the “final performance”, providing the building blocks for more equal relationships in order to make those conditions more and more possible.
Low-Resolution Behaviors
Inspired by Hiro Steryl’s notion of the low resolution or poor image and Dr. Steven Henry Madoff’s related “poor spaces”, I had in mind the idea of “low-resolution behaviors” of sorts – accessible, memetic practices which find their power in their multiplicity.
Finding the Trace
The main influence for this project comes from Édouard Glissant’s notion of the trace. In his book, Treatise on the Whole-World, he states that “the trace is what puts us, all of us, wherever we come from, in Relation.”[1] The trace, as a methodology for thought, activism, and artmaking, can provide us with a way of both practicing and simultaneously negotiating what it means to be in relationship with ourselves, one another, and even the environment. With trace thought as an operating principle, we can achieve relationships that honor the complex multiplicities in our needs, goals, desires, and identities, while also recognizing the mutual benefit of those multiplicities.
In relationships, we are often trying to “locate” the crossroads of our altruism and self-interest, but who gets to make the map? Glissant’s language here is very useful when he employs a type of spatial or locational language to juxtapose the notion of the trace with the mentalities of colonialism. He says, “the trace is to the route as rebellion to the command, jubilation to the garrotte.”[2] It turns out we don’t need a map! We need something less fixed, more open-ended, more negotiated:
The trace is not an unfinished path where one stumbles helplessly, nor an alley closed in on itself, bordering a territory. The trace goes into the land, which will never again be a territory. The trace is an opaque way…of being oneself, derived from the other. It is the truly disordered sand of utopia. Trace thought enables us to move away from the strangulation of the system. It thus refutes the extremes of possession. It cracks open the absolute of time. It opens onto these diffracted times that human communities today are multiplying among themselves, through conflicts and miracles. It is the violent wandering of a shared thought.[3]
In a sense, the trace is the conceptual and actual space that we are constantly searching for together in which no one is able to take up the space of domination or inequality. The trace is a bit of an abstract, poetic concept, but when I read about the trace, something unlocked inside me and I thought about the trace in everything. I realized that two people could find the trace in a dance or a conversation if the act of creating them looks like a shared wandering, an open-ended negotiation where we adapt to one another while maintaining our own dignity. All interactions could practice the trace. The trace is a method of operationalizing equality. It is action and mentality whereby we can find space for all of us.
[1] Édouard Glissant, Treatise on the Whole-World, trans. Celia Britton (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020), 9.
[2] Glissant, Treatise on the Whole-World, 10.
[3] Ibid., 11.