Where does this obsession with the interactive that crosses our era come from? After the consumer society, after the era of communication, does art today contribute to the emergence of a rational society? Nicolas Bourriaud tries to renew our approach to contemporary art by staying closer to the work of artists, and by exposing the principles that structure their thinking: an aesthetic of the interhuman, the meeting, the proximity, the resistance to social formatting. His essay aims to produce tools that allow us to understand the evolution of contemporary art: we will meet Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Louis Althusser, Rirkrit Tiravanija or Félix Guattari, and most of the innovative artists in activity.