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.
About the Authors
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.
About the Publisher
Sternberg Press is a London-based publishing house of art and cultural criticism, creative nonfiction, and literary and experimental fiction. Founded by Caroline Schneider in New York in 1999, it aims to support both new and established writers and nourish lasting editorial relationships. The press is committed to publishing books with an interdisciplinary focus on contemporary visual culture and related critical discourse.
