Nicolas Bourriaud discusses happenings in contemporary art concerning the role
of an artist in today’s global makeup. Relational Aesthetics addresses the current trend of relational art – that is, art in which the ‘art work’ occurs in an experience
that is facilitated to take place between two or more people, rather than a person
and an art object. Postproduction explores the evolution of originality in an age
where everything is said to derive from something else. Altermodern looks ahead
into the future of contemporary art with regard to how culture and mythologies are evolving. The concept for each of these book jackets came about with an inter-
active element in mind that would link back to each theme.
The jacket of Relational Aesthetics folds out into a game of checkers that one
could play with another person. The cover for postproduction is actually a movable grid with fragments of a passage from the book below each square. The passage reads “We are tenets of culture: society is a text whose law is production, a law that so called passive users divert from within, through the practices of postproduction.” The reader is instructed to paste different found imagery linking back to each fragment on its corresponding square – creating a movable grid of unique images. Lastly, the cover of Altermodern is a maze with multiple entrances and exits – merging time with space.
