Immersionism

Song of Fuaa a production by multipolyomni
early 1990s. From an album by DJ Olive

Immersionism is a cultural movement that took shape in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in the early 1990s. It bears some affinity to the ideas of Buckminster Fuller, to Relational Aesthetics, paganism, and multi-media art. Here are a few articles and albums that I and some others have assembled on Immersionism:

Articles

Immersionism: Manifesto and Introduction with further links, February 13, 2011

Bernard Carey of Yale Radio talks with Immersionist pioneer Ebon Fisher, July 2016

The Omnisensorialists 1991-1999, by V Owen Bush, January 19, 2012

Immersionism and Relational Aesthetics, March 19, 2012

Go with the Flow (pdf download), Domus, February 1998. Suzan Wines coins the term "immersive environments" in this article.

The Cat's Head, Constructing Utopia in Brooklyn and Dublin (pdf download), TDR, Fall 1993. Melanie Hahn investigates early appearances of immersive culture.

The Inflatable Man – Dennis Del Zotto and the Williamsburg Scene, June 7, 2006

Discourse sur la Moutarde: the evolution of warehouse events in Williamsburg (pdf download 622 KB), Breukelen Magazine, Winter 1993

Williamsburg's Arcadian Past, NY Observer, Zachary Woolfe on Billy Basinsky, November 2011

David Brody's 4-part series, From Biofreak to Organism, 2001 (pdf download)

Facebook albums of key immersive laboratories

Immersionism: Warehouse Events in Williamsburg, 1989-98

The Lizard's Tail

Lalalandia 

Nerve Circle

Mustard

The Federation of Ongolia

The Inflatable Man, immersive pioneer Dennis Del Zotto

Multipolyomni

The Sayanayas

Google spreadsheet on immersive events and players

Immersionism and Relational Aesthetics

I don't see any difference between relational aesthetics and the phenomenologies that were established by minimalism in the 1960s. They are both concerned with the "condition" that establishes "the work."

To say, as Bourriaud does, that relational art works "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," is just an extension of the in-your-face environmentalism of Donald Judd or Richard Serra. Throw a Jenny Holzer slogan in there and you've got postmodernism. Rehash it as a "relationship" between viewer and art condition, and you're just restating the obvious.

Relational aesthetics are a way of defining an art condition, with special emphasis on its relation to social and physical space. It is a field that was well-tilled by the minimalists. Immersionism is also a development of the early 90s, and it is also involves interactive and relational aesthetic experience. However, these are not necessary conditions for the immersive event. One has found in immersive events quite conventional, stand-alone art works, as well as interactive works. There are large communal spaces, and frequently as well cloister-like private spaces.

This is because in Immersionism the "theoretical point of departure" does not reside in the question of "human relations and their social context," a piece of jargon borrowed from the social sciences by art criticism. Hardly the first time this has been done.

Immersionism leaves human relations alone, does not try to inscribe "human relations" into aesthetics. One notices in the immersive aesthetics, just to cite two examples, of Nerve Circle and the Federation of Ongolia, that the aesthetic condition is already resolved. It does not hang self-consciously upon the entrance of a "viewer" to complete its condition. The world is already made, and the viewer is immersed in it. In what aspect the viewer or the participant stands in relation to the immersive condition is not really a concern of Immersionist theory.

Relational aesthetics advance a pedagogy of participation in which the participant completes the event. This is barely any different from the essentialism explored nearly half a century ago in, for example, a row of bricks on the floor by Carl Andre. Immersionism advances a world without these self-conscious comforts. The participant has to sink or swim, both as a "subject" and as a "communal" member.

Immersionism starts with systems that engage loops and spheres of information and sensory feedback. And these systems lie beyond just the sphere of "human relations." If Immersionism has a godfather from the 1960s, it would probably be Buckminster Fuller, rather than the minimalist and conceptualist art world.

Relational aesthetics entail a program about the use of gallery space and the "art condition." Immersionism addresses aesthetic experience as a general matter, and immersive practice has rarely taken place in galleries or theaters.

General Introduction to Immersionism

Compilation of links to Facebook albums on Immersionism and North Brooklyn art history

Facebook album on Immersionism in Williamsburg