1+1. The relational years
edited by Nicolas Bourriaud
texts by Sara Arrhenius, Lars Bang Larsen, Noah Barker, Daniel Birnbaum, Nicolas Bourriaud, Maria Emanuela Bruni, Diana Campbell, Bassam El Baroni, Verónica Erazo, Eleonora Farina, Angela Harutyunyan, Mami Kataoka, Mihnea Mircan, Stéphanie Moisdon, Linda Motto, Francesco Stocchi, Monia Trombetta, Wato Tsereteli, Jochen Volz
bilingual edition, Italian and English
Quodlibet, 2025
24 × 17 cm
228 pages
€ 26
ISBN 978-88-229-2417-9
Published on the occasion of the exhibition at MAXXI, this volume documents the world’s first retrospective dedicated to Relational Aesthetics — a “theory of form” coined by Nicolas Bourriaud in the mid-1990s that places human relationships at the centre of artistic practice and transforms the audience from spectators to active participants. The book historicises this artistic movement by bringing together a rich array of essays, documents, interviews and images.
The curator’s essay, alongside contributions by Noah Barker and Sara Arrhenius and interviews conducted by Eleonora Farina with international critics, traces the origins, developments and impact of relational art on the global contemporary scene. In parallel, Linda Motto’s chronology retraces the movement’s key moments — from its historical antecedents, dating back to the 1960s, through exhibitions and seminal texts, to the critical debates of recent years.
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