Aesthetics= "nothing less than the whole of our sensation life together- the business of affections and aversions, of how the world strikes the body on its sensory surfaces, of which takes root in the gaze and the guts and all that arises from our most banal, biological insertion I to the world"(Eagleton 1990, 13 in Affect theory reader p 121)
Aesthetics= primarily concerned with material experiences, with the way the sensual world strikes the sensate body, and with the affective forces that are generated in such meetings. Aesthetics covers vehement passions-( fear, grief rapture )and so on and the minor and major affects and emotions ( humiliation, shame, envy, irritation, anxiety , disdain and so on)( see fisher, 2000,Ngai 2005 and Altieri 2003) it is attuned to forms of perception , sensation and attention( distraction, spectacle concentration, absorption, for eg) relates to De Bord?
.to the world of the senses( haptic, aural, gustatory, olafactory, and visual) andtothebody ( as gestalt and in pieces) ( see Heller-Roazen2007)
Most importantly it would've concerned with the utter entanglements of all these elements. (P 121)
How does this fit with relational aesthetics? Maybe it doesn't. The concern with material experiences does perhaps, as does the notion of emotion (haha!) but I think these sensory elements must meet the'audience, participants, public so that Affect starts a converstation with relational aesthetics. Perhaps this is a way of theorising Olafur Ellison, Carsten Holler, Dan Roosgaarde an locating them within a context and continuium?
