escapelane

Bourriaud describes the negotiated relationships encompassed by relational art, where no precedence of creation is assumed, as witness, associate, customer, guest, co-producer and protagonist, encompassed as ‘participating viewers’ or ‘the beholder’. (Bourriaud 2002): 58).  Unfortunately Bourriaud does not explain these relationships any further, however the first four relationships of witness, associate, customer and guest could be understood as largely passive roles eg ‘summoned by the artist’  ((Bourriaud 2002): 29, author’s italics), and relate more to his language of typology ie the style of the work, rather than a heirachy of interaction.  So customer and associate relate to contracts and clientele.
Artist Suzanne Lacy’s observes that prior to her own development of a model of interaction, audience deconstruction had addressed specific aspects of the work such as gender, race and class.  Her diagram of audience detailed in Mapping the terrain:

New genre public art and my own breakdown of participation in an artwork offer a more considered model. Lacy defines audience in terms of an ‘evaluative construct’ that would enable the understanding of interactivity within the ‘work process’. (Lacy 1995): 178) She describes this audience–centred model ‘as ‘non-hierarchical in intention’ and allowing ‘continual movement back and forth’ but with the ‘more responsibility assumed (so then) the more central the participant’s role in the generation of the work.’
Similarly to Lacy I had categorised participation in my projects. These are ‘subjects, participants, collaborators or co-artists’, which relate directly to the level of my responsibility to them as contributors to an artwork and their ability to influence the project outcomes.  I do recognise her inclusion of ‘immediate audience’ as necessary for my model, because of their possible inclusion in documentation.