Relative Intimacies

An examination of the introduction of a non-human actor into the field of intersubjectivity.

Our most intimate spaces are increasingly sites of intersubjective relations. The widespread presence of technological networks in particular has made visible the ways in which agency and subjectivity are often distributed, engendering theories of hybrid subjects who might integrate the human with other biological or technological agents. These incursions into traditional notions of subjectivity not only destabilize our sense of autonomy but also explode the human sensorium, reminding us that it is only one of many viable systems for sensing, perceiving, and communicating.
 
Relative Intimacies collects essays, conversations, and artworks to explore how technology now mediates our encounters and, in doing so, forms alternate, networked subjectivities. It asks how intersubjective intimacy might be theorized epistemologically, aesthetically, philosophically, and politically, and considers how such relative intimacy might connect physical matter and cybernetic systems or forge new subjectivities between constellations of actors. Bringing together academic, curatorial, and artistic perspectives, Relative Intimacies initiates points of contact between artificial, biological, and emotional intelligence.
 
Contributors
Cecilia Bengolea, Dora Budor, Lou Cantor, Constant Dullaart, Hal Foster, Kevin Gotkin, Camille Henrot, Sun-Ha Hong, Tobias Kaspar, Devin Kenny, Agnieszka Kurant, Lynn Hershman Leeson, John Miller, Frederick Cruz Nowell, X Zhu-Nowell, Samantha Ozer, Aleksandra Przegalinska, Farid Rakun, Tiana Reid, Patrick Urs Riechert, Isabel de Sena, Jenna Sutela, Elena Vogman, Emily Watlington
 

Lou Cantor is a Berlin-based artist collective founded in 2011 whose main scope of interest is grounded in intersubjectivity and interpersonal communication. Lou Cantor’s practice explores the polysemic minefield of contemporary communication, where medium, message, and meaning constantly fold back into each other. Lou Cantor’s preferred theater of operations, in other words, is that which a certain French theorist has termed the “Empire of Signs” and their preferred subject the spell cast by the enigma of signification on the minds of this Empire’s peoples. Based on the collectives actual field of research they regularly release readers and contribute to various publications.
 
Emily Watlington is a critic, curator, and assistant editor at Art in America.