The Environmental Method of RAAAF: Landscapes of Affordances and Experimental Surfaces of Existence

Abstract

The article is devoted to the environmental method in the artistic practices of the Dutch studio Rietveld Architecture-Art-Affordances. The studio, founded by architects brothers Ronald and Erik Rietveld in 2006, is participating in the transformation of the modern aesthetic field, drifting along with cognitive science at the turn of the century from an understanding of cognition in terms of information processing to its interpretation as a process of co-evolution of the organism and the environment. Analyzing the projects “The End of Sitting” (2014) and “Breaking Habits” (2017), the author demonstrates the heuristic potential of ecological thinking in the enactivism of F. Varela, E. Thompson and E. Roch and the ecological psychology of J. Gibson for contemporary art and design. Particular attention is paid to the intensification of the interaction of body and environment in the landscapes of affordances created by RAAAF to undermine rigid ways of being, and re-figurate behavioral patterns. In the artistic practices of the studio, the author discovers ecological styles of designing new environments of existence and experiments with contact surfaces of experience.