领域：学术论文 · 人文科学

This then returns me to the question of an aesthetics of care. If as I have already argued a care based ethics helps raise questions of justice and ‘other regarding effort’, how might art making be judged from this perspective? The starting point is the notion of relations and the simplistic statement that art making takes place in a series of relational acts, some more explicit and intentional than others. Where an ethics of care focuses upon the values inherent, exhibited or perhaps desired within these human interdependencies, the aesthetics of care seeks to focus upon how the sensory and affective are realised in human relations fostered in art projects. The French art theorist Nicolas Bourriaud is a useful point of departure here in his work on relational aesthetics. Bourriaud deﬁnes a relational aesthetic as a ‘set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and private space’ (2011, 113) and his book announced from the perspective of the late 1990s French visual art scene how ‘for some years now, there has been an upsurge of convivial, user-friendly artistic projects, festive, collective and participatory, exploring the varied potential in the relationship to the other’ (61). Bourriaud’s work appears to attach an implicit value to this upsurge, with the ‘angelic programme’ I mentioned at the top of the article being instigated in order ‘to patiently re-stitch the relational fabric’ (36) and ‘turn the beholder into the neighbour’ (43). However, ultimately he is more concerned with the formal aspects of this trajectory than the potential that new relational practices have for announcing or creating a fairer world. Inventing new neighbourly relations today, he asserts, is disconnected from programmes that seek to foster ‘happier tomorrows’ (45). As the writing above on the ethics of care would suggest, and the contract of mutual regard urged by Geras, the values that can be materialised in the convivial should in fact be the ground on which happier tomorrows are built. The power of the concept of relational aesthetics is weakened by the fact it does not suggest why relations with others might be endorsed or what type of relations we might aspire to develop. If the socially critical inference in the notion of relational aesthetics is to have greater explicit ethical weight, and to move from a moderately interesting description of a form to a movement with more normative clout, it needs to be reﬁgured. And the argument here is that thinking in terms of an aesthetics of care might provide this reorientation.

An ‘aesthetics of care’ is then about a set of values realised in a relational process that emphasise engagements between individuals or groups over time. It is one that might consist of small creative encounters or large-scale exhibitions, but it is always one that notices inter-human relations in both the creation and the display of art projects. It is an aesthetics that is unafraid to lay bare what Shannon Jackson calls the ‘supporting infrastructures of [ … ] living beings’ (2011, 39), but importantly this is an aesthetics that could both present those mutually beneﬁcial structures and foster them. It would not pretend to a distinction between a process and an outcome because both might stimulate affective solidarity between people – perhaps participant to participant or performer to audience. There is a sense that this aesthetics would value intimacy, but it would not be at the expense of what Nato Thompson refers to as ‘explicitly local, long-term, and community-based’ engagement (2012, 31). While care might be exhibited ﬂeetingly, it is more likely that care aesthetics would be realised in more enduring, crafted encounters between people. Seeking to overcome widespread social indifference implies commitment to deep and extended processes.

At the beginning of the article it was noted that the ethics of care is a reference to both a set of values and a practice. This is repeated in this proposal for an aesthetics of care, so that it suggests both a demonstration of mutual regard, but simultaneously it instigates a process that is seeking to create or secure it. Amin asserts that there is a process of cultivation in his project for overcoming the disregard experienced in a society of strangers. It is a ‘craft that requires continual attentiveness and care, such that empathy – for objects, projects, nature, the commons – can spread as a public sentiment that also serves to regulate feelings among strangers’ (2012, 7). Attentiveness (a term also found in Tronto (2013, 34)) is both at the heart of the creative process, and the outcome of it. An aesthetics of care is, therefore, a sensory ethical practice, that following Robinson, involves ‘not only learning how to be attentive and patient, how to listen and respond, but also how to rethink our own attitudes about difference and exclusion’ (1999, 164).

The difﬁculty in nurturing an ethics of care through an aesthetic process should of course be acknowledged. Kester in talking about participatory modes of art making explains it as a ‘temporally extensive form of social interaction in which models of expression, enunciation, and reception are continuously modiﬁed and reciprocally responsive’ (2011, 112). It is a form of crafted caring where learning to create, respond and be in close dialogue with others is vital for the quality of the experience: but it is a ‘temporally extensive form’ because it needs to be ‘continuously modiﬁed’ as it is practiced. In order to outline something of the shape of that form, the remainder of this article will divide care aesthetics into preparation, execution and exhibition, where each of these moments might be minutely connected but they are also likely to be dispersed over a long period. First, preparation would involve an openness and honesty of intention, the selection of artists or participants and questions of the location of a project. Decisions about accessibility (whether in terms of the appropriateness of the space for disabled people, the location in terms of costs of travel or the timing for people with different commitments) are not mundane organisational matters, but crucial ethical propositions. In being taken in reference to the ethics of care, they will imbue the project with an affective sense of the importance of mutual respect and regard. Jackson’s ‘supporting infrastructures’ are not the hidden mechanism of creative endeavour but a valued component of the aesthetics. Preparation is, therefore, paradoxically part of the exhibition within this mode of artistic project: it can demonstrate and model a form of mutual regard. There is a sensory quality in the relationships to which a project that prepares in this way aspires.

The notion of execution focuses on the process of collaborative working on artistic projects which forge inter-human relationships. The emerging connections between individuals coalescing in this process have an aesthetics – a shape, feel, sensation and affect. This does not exist within one particular person or object of the work, but appears in-between those involved, so that there is a sensory quality of the process and outcome that cannot be disaggregated from the collective effort. This connects to Richard Sennett’s work on the history and practice of cooperation. His conviction that a practice of working together, and his central example of the Hull House settlement in Chicago, demonstrates that a shared commitment to building caring relations turns ‘people outward in shared, symbolic acts’ and these in turn have a potential place in countering a society that is ﬁgured ‘brutally simple: us-againstthem coupled with you-are-on-your-own’ (Sennett 2012, 280). For theatre this form of cooperation might involve a challenge to the quality and texture of a rehearsal or devising experience so that the reciprocity of gradual creation is valued over and above the discipline of the single-minded voyage towards the ﬁrst night. Those intimate negotiations are the aesthetics of the project, and not merely an unremarkable preparatory period. Borrowing from David Gauntlett’s work on craft, there is a suggestion that within a creative process the power is realised ‘in gentle and quiet ways, with no need for grand celebratory announcements’ (2011, 66). This is not meant as a dismissal of the art of public theatre making as part of the search for a more care-full aesthetics, but it does suggest that ‘actively seeking out opportunities to be creative together’ (67) might be a good starting point where the show is not always the thing. I would argue that there is a boldness and important aesthetic quality in work that ‘seeks no external recognition’ (66) because it implies that aesthetic value is found in co-created moments and not only in public display. The execution of a project ﬁgured around an aesthetic of care, therefore, relies on building mutual activities of sharing, support, co-working and relational solidarity within a framework of artistry or creative endeavour. Aesthetic value is located in-between people in moments of collaborative creation, conjoined effort and intimate exchange: these are new virtuosities of care that do not rely on the singular display of self-honed skill.



翻译考点：
考点1：relational acts 推荐翻译为“关系实践”
考点2：‘other regarding effort’ 推荐翻译为“关怀他人的努力”
考点3：supporting infrastructures 推荐翻译为“支撑性基础设施”
考点4：user-friendly artistic projects 推荐翻译为“公众易参与的艺术项目”或“亲和型艺术实践”
考点5：Hull House 推荐翻译为“赫尔馆”
考点6：relational fabric 推荐翻译为“关系纽带”
考点7：theater 推荐翻译为“戏剧”
考点8：Nicolas Bourriaud 推荐翻译为“尼古拉斯·伯瑞奥德”
考点9：Geras (David Geras) 推荐翻译为“吉拉斯”
考点10：Tronto (Joan C. Tronto) 推荐翻译为“特朗托”
考点11：Richard Sennett 推荐翻译为“理查德·桑内特”
考点12：David Gauntlett 推荐翻译为“戴维·冈特莱特”
考点13：Nato Thompson 推荐翻译为“内托·汤普森”
考点14：reciprocity推荐翻译为“交互性”
考点15：useful point of departure 推荐译为“一个切实的出发点”，不可译为“一个实用的出发”
考点16："temporally extensive form"推荐译为“短暂深入的过程”
考点17："figured"推荐译为“被塑造”