On Relational Aesthetics
After living in Vancouver for over a decade, I recently learned about a geographical boundary of the small piece of neighbourhood where I live: West Southlands. The name is almost unknown to the general public, as it is a subdivision of Southlands, and comprises only 300 households bounded by Southwest Marine Drive, the north arm of the Fraser River, Collingwood Street, and the Musqueam Reserve.
This fall I happened to learn about it when the West Southlands Residents Association (WSRA) hand-delivered a notice for their AGM to my mailbox. Out of curiosity, I decided to attend. Up to that time, I had not heard about them, as they did not have an online presence yet. I was curious about – and also grateful for – my diligent neighbours, whoever they were, who hand-delivered such notices, remembering the ”Kairan ban", a circulating community clipboard which most Japanese towns still use as a communications system for each district.
During the AGM, I learned that protecting local biodiversity and building climate resilience were the WSRA's top priorities. I felt inspired to meet many kindred spirits there. Before I knew it, I joined the group and volunteered to help design their website, even though I am far from being an expert on website design. I was moved by their dedication and commitment to make our area more hospitable for all living things. I wanted to contribute in any way I could.
My subsequent experience making the website with my new WSRA friends has been so transformative that it felt as if we were turning everything into art – I mean relational art. The French curator and art critic Nicolas Bourriaud coined the term relational aesthetics in his eponymous 1998 book. He defined relational art as making art based on, or inspired by, human relations and their social context. In a sense, the WSRA’s AGM was, for me, a form of relational art: passionate neighbours spontaneously coming together and discussing natural ecosystems and wildlife at risk, like a performance. How could we visually and authentically convey the spirit of the WSRA’s important work to the public through a website? This became my challenge: What if viewers could experience the website as relational art? In other words, could the new website provoke a new aesthetic experience, so that viewers would be inspired, get involved, and pay more attention to our environment and its living inhabitants? How can things like residents’ associations or websites be regenerative (spawning successive generations)?
The answer to the alienation and isolation so widespread in modern society lies in evoking and spreading a participatory sense of place and community. Is a sense of place a “reception (appreciation)” or a “creation”? I still keep the old Christmas card, with the original print attached, from my neighbour, Steve, who photographed a snow-covered creek in our neighbourhood (West Southlands!). While I recognized the location, I was mesmerized by the beauty: “How could our neighbourhood possibly look like a place out of National Geographic?” Through his photograph, I was able to sense his reflection. It was a reminder that even though appreciation seems “passive” when compared with the act of making art, it is still a creative act – a construction of meaning that opens our eyes to ordinary life in an extraordinary, aesthetic way. To put the idea of relational art into action, I invited Steve to share his photography in our new website. Behold the results.
There is nothing more meaningful than being guided by knowledge, experience, and wisdom from our neighbours, especially our non-human neighbours. I recently learned that one third of Great Blue Herons worldwide live around the Salish Sea, and the Southlands’ river banks are one of the important foraging spots for the herons, as the estuarine and freshwater marshes are rich in nutrients. This summer I often spotted Great Blue Herons in my neighbourhood, always standing peacefully alone. As the adults take up solitary lives, I feel a special kinship with them. Standing motionless, as if performing relational art, the Great Blue Heron is showing us the abundance of life at the edge of intertidal spaces with patience and grace. I wonder: what do these intertidal spaces mean to me?
Living in West Southlands is like standing still in an intertidal zone, literally and figuratively. I am committed to notice – and thus create – the wild variety of pullulating life in these waters, and in the wider expanse of nature, including myself and all my relationships. From the Japanese roots of my Wabi Sabi philosophy, I took the liberty of creating a page, “Submit Your Artwork,” within the WSRA website, and I added my watercolour rendition of the Fraser River bank to embrace the imperfect and incomplete in everything, just like dents or uneven shapes in pottery. Bringing out an awareness of the natural forces involved in the creation of the website (a social construct) might hopefully allow the viewer to see themselves as part of the natural world. Rather than hiding our own receptions and expressions because they seem incomplete and imperfect, we can instead see them as creations of nature - much as a bright red maple leaf might fly and land on the green grass by our feet, revealing a colorful spectacle of which we are an essential part.