In the first meeting of the Institution Under Construction program, the father of participatory artistic trends Nicolas Bourriaud was called to discuss the link between participatory practices and the development of digital technologies.

Nicolas Bourriaud, French art critic, is best known for his work in the fields of contemporary art and aesthetic theory. One of his most influential works is the book “Relational Aesthetics”, published in 1998, in which he introduced the concept of “relational art”. This theory suggests that the aesthetic experience in contemporary art is centered on the social and interactive relationships that are created between spectators and the work itself, rather than on the artistic object itself.

In this talk, the themes discussed are some fundamental questions for the designing new projects about contemporary art: how much public participation should there be in digital art projects? How interactive does an online art institution need to be? How does the development of online interactive processes impact traditional curatorial activities in exhibitions in the physical space of museums and galleries?