ART THEORY AND CRITICISM II CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL MODELS ___________________________________________ New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development Department of Art and Art Professions ARTCR-GE 2802 Wednesdays 10:30AM-12:40PM Room 506, Barney Building, 34 Stuyvesant St. Instructor: Andrew Weiner Office: Barney Building, Room 522F Email:
[email protected] Office Hours: Wednesdays 1:30-2:30 PM and by appointment Course Description This seminar surveys the recent emergence of new critical models for artistic practice, along with the theories that have been used to interpret them. We will consider important historical precedents for these practices in the work of the modernist and post-modernist avant-gardes and their critical advocates. As we do so, we will analyze the different forms that criticality might take, thinking carefully about what it means to position art as a mode of critique. Topics will include: counter-surveillance, eco-aesthetics, forensics, social practice, artistic research, and parafiction, among others. We will work closely with a group of New York-based artists, critics, and curators. Learning Objectives Students will learn an interdisciplinary, historically informed and theoretically grounded approach to understanding the emergence of contemporary critical art practices. They will become familiar with important tendencies in art production and criticism, and will learn how to use relevant methodologies drawn from the fields of aesthetics, cultural theory, media studies, and art history. Students will develop their ability to understand and intervene in current critical debates concerning the relationship between aesthetics and politics. Engaging a broad range of materials, including philosophical texts, experimental art projects, and artists’ writings, students will expand their interpretative capacities. Frequent site visits will give them the opportunity to build their aesthetic judgment and analytical skills, while writing assignments will help them develop their abilities to conduct research and construct persuasive arguments.
Requirements The primary course requirement is a critical essay, which is to be based on original research and to be between 4000 and 4500 words in length (roughly 15 double-spaced pages). The essay should advance an original argument based on an issue of your choice pertaining to the topic of the course. It should address questions that are both theoretical and aesthetic. Your analyses may be based on readings, studio visits, primary and secondary sources, and additional research. Students will begin the research process early in the semester, so as to be able to turn in proposals by the October 26 deadline. We will discuss research methods and writing techniques on several occasions. In our final meeting, students will informally present their research projects. The final paper will be due on Friday, December 16; please submit it to me via email as a Microsoft Word file, with images attached separately as a PDF. Each student is expected to make one presentation on the course materials. This will typically consist of a summary of a text’s key points and overall argument, or of the central formal and/or conceptual issues in an artist’s work, followed by a critical response and talking points for class discussion. You are also expected to attend the livestream of the Creative Time Summit on October 14-15, and to visit at least one of the exhibitions listed on the syllabus. Following this visit, please email me a 300-400 word critical response to the exhibition. Each student is permitted one unexcused absence; all other absences must be cleared with the instructor. Please refrain from using your cell phone in class, and restrict laptop usage to courserelated purposes. Course evaluation will be based on these requirements as follows: Research Paper Participation Class Presentations Exhibition Response
50% 20% 15% 15%
Readings/Resources All course readings will be available for download from the course page on the NYU Classes website. It is not required to buy a course reader or textbooks. Please come to class with that day’s readings on hand, whether in print or on a screen. The materials listed as “Resources” are not required reading/viewing, but are intended to supplement the readings for that week, and to serve as an aid for further research. Feel free to use these as you see fit, including in your class presentations
2
Academic Integrity All students are responsible for understanding and complying with the NYU Steinhardt Statement on Academic Integrity. Please familiarize yourself with that statement, which is available at: http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/policies/academic_integrity.
Students with Disabilities Students with physical or learning disabilities are required to register with the Moses Center for Students with Disabilities [719 Broadway, 2nd Floor, (212-998-4980)], and are required to present a letter from the Center to the instructor at the start of the semester in order to be considered for appropriate accommodation.
Grading Evaluation Criteria A = Excellent This work demonstrates comprehensive and solid understanding of course material and presents thoughtful interpretations, well-focused and original insights and well-reasoned analysis. “A” work includes skillful use of source materials and illuminating examples and illustrations. “A” work is fluent, thorough and shows some creative flair. B = Good This work demonstrates a complete and accurate understanding of course material, presenting a reasonable degree of insight and broad level of analysis. Work reflects competence, but stays at a general or predictable level of understanding. Source material, along with examples and illustrations, are used appropriately. “B” work is reasonable, clear, appropriate and complete. C = Adequate/Fair This work demonstrates a basic understanding of course material but remains incomplete, superficial or expresses some important errors or weaknesses. Source material may be used inadequately or somewhat inappropriately. The work may lack concrete, specific examples and illustrations and may be hard to follow or vague. D = Unsatisfactory This work demonstrates a serious lack of understanding and fails to demonstrate the most rudimentary elements of the course assignment. Sources may be used inappropriately or not at all. The work may be inarticulate or extremely difficult to read. F = Failed Work was not submitted or completed according to parameters (page length, topical focus, types of sources), or completely failed to express the most basic and elementary aspects of the course. Plus (+) or minus (-) grades indicate your range within the aforementioned grades.
3
COURSE SCHEDULE
September 7
Introduction
Topics
Course Overview Synopsis of Critical Postmodernist Art and Aesthetic Theory
Background Reading
(see attached bibliography)
September 14
What Is Critique?
Topics
Intellectual History of Kritik; The Role of “Theory”; Logics of Critical Art
Readings
Michel Foucault, “What is Critique?” Judith Butler, “What is Critique? An Essay on Foucault’s Virtue” Jacques Rancière, “Problems and Transformations of Critical Art” Boris Groys, “Under the Gaze of Theory” Bruno Latour, “Why Has Critique Run out of Steam?”
Additional Materials
Transversal, Issue 04 2008 (“The Art of Critique”) Transversal, Issue 08 2006 (“Critique”)
Exhibition
“Art AIDS America,” The Bronx Museum of the Arts 1040 Grand Concourse, Bronx
September 21
When Was The Contemporary?
Topics
Periodizing Contemporaneity; Judgment; The Crisis of Postmodernism
Readings
Terry Smith, “‘Our’ Contemporaneity?” Hal Foster et al., “The Predicament of Contemporary Art” George Baker et al., “The Present Conditions of Art Criticism” Lane Relyea, “After Criticism” Hal Foster, “Post-Critical” Claire Fontaine, “Our Common Critical Condition”
4
September 28
Memories of the Future: Archival Strategies
Topics
Intersubjective Memory; Decolonial History; Recording Technologies
Readings
Sven Spieker, et al, “Roundtable on the Critical Archive” Okwui Enwezor, “Archive Fever” L’Internationale, Decolonizing Archives (selections) Maryam Jafri, “Archives on Archives” pad.ma, “10 Theses on the Archive”
Resources
Radical Archives (conference website) http://www.radicalarchives.net/ra/ Mariam Ghani (artist’s website) http://www.mariamghani.com The Incidental Insurgents (artists’ project) http://www.ibraaz.org/projects/52 Maryam Jafri, “Between Storyboard and Grid” (artist’s talk) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQcSiqJpTjc
Exhibition
Mariam Ghani, “The City and the City” Ryan Lee Gallery, 515 West 26th St.
October 5
Social Practice In Theory
Topics
Participatory Aesthetics; Activism as Art
Readings
Shannon Jackson, “Quality Time: Social Practice Debates in Contemporary Art” Grant Kester, “The Device Laid Bare” E.C. Feiss, “Response to Grant Kester” Kester, “Response to E.C. Feiss” Boris Groys, “On Art Activism” Tom Finkelpearl, Interviews with Rick Lowe and Tania Bruguera
Resources
FIELD (online social practice journal) http://field-journal.com Grant Kester, “Involvement, Autonomy, and the Aesthetic” (lecture) https://vimeo.com/171072010 Claire Bishop, “Participation and Spectacle: Where Are We Now?” (lecture) https://vimeo.com/24193060 Shannon Jackson, “Unruly Engagements” (lecture) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlioUtaXuA8
5
October 12
Social Practice In Practice
Topics
Urbanism and Gentrification; Non-Western Models; Solidarities
Readings
Thomas Hirschhorn, Selected Texts Conversation With Jacques Rancière Lisa Yun Lee, “Everything and the Burden Is Beautiful: Theaster Gates” Jonas Staal, “To Make a World” (Parts I and II) Clémentine Deliss, “Brothers in Arms: Laboratoire AGIT’art and Tenq in Dakar in the 1990s” Thomas Berghuis, “ruangrupa” Zheng Bo, “An Interview with Wu Mali”
Resources
Thomas Hirschhorn discusses Deleuze Monument (2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uxYtzYOM-4 New World Summit (Staal) https://vimeo.com/album/3243253 Theaster Gates and Hamza Walker in conversation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBfDQjAE9lI Tania Bruguera, “The Artist as Activist” https://vimeo.com/160104924
Special Event
Creative Time Summit Livestream Event with Community Practice MA Students October 14-15, Einstein Auditorium, Barney Bldg, 10am-6pm
October 19
“The Innovator’s Dilemma”: Digitality and Power
Topics
Regimes of Visuality; Counter-Surveillance; Encryption
Readings
Julian Stallabrass, “Negative Dialectics in the Google Era: An Interview with Trevor Paglen” Alex Danchev, “Troublemakers: Laura Poitras and the Problem of Dissent” Finn Brunton and Helen Nissenbaum, Obfuscation (selections) Caitlin Jones, Interview with Aleksandra Domanovic and Oliver Laric” Hito Steyerl, “Medya” and “In Defense of the Poor Image” Martine Syms, “Black Vernacular”
Resources
Conversation between Laura Poitras, Trevor Paglen, and Jacob Appelbaum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDxue3jGAug Hito Steyerl, “Circulationism” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhEl7FxiY5g Simon Denny, “The Innovator’s Dilemma” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6EBluPHYXs
Exhibition
Simon Denny, “Blockchain Future States” Petzel Gallery, 456 W 18th St. (open through October 22)
6
October 26
Talk Shows: New Modes of Performance
Topics
Re-enactment; Parafiction; Lecture-Performance; The “Discursive Turn”
Readings
Sven Lütticken, “An Arena in Which to Re-Enact” Carrie Lambert-Beatty, “Make-Believe: Parafiction and Plausibility” Rike Frank, “When Form Starts Talking: On Lecture-Performances” Audrey Chan et al., “Rupture and Continuity in Feminist Re-Performance” Tanja Ostojic, “Assuming a Migrant Woman’s Identity” Liam Gillick, “Maybe it would be better if we worked in groups of three?”
Resources
Omer Fast, “Talk Show” https://vimeo.com/57090671 Walid Raad, Artist’s Talk http://www.walkerart.org/channel/2007/artist-talk-walid-raad
Exhibition
Mierle Laderman Ukeles, “Maintenance Art,” Queens Museum Flushing Meadows Corona Park
November 2
Identity/Politics
Topics
Intersectionality; Mediatization; Performativity
Readings
Huey Copeland et al., “Collective Consciousness” Lynn Hershman Leeson and Juliana Huxtable, “Personae of Interest” Julia Bryan-Wilson, “Sharon Hayes Sounds Off” Melissa Gronlund, “From Narcissism to the Dialogic: Identity in Art after the Internet” Monika Szewczyk, “Exchange and Some Change: The Imaginative Economies of Otobong Nkanga” Andrea Geyer and Sharon Hayes, “Wu Tsang in Conversation with Mary Kelly”
Resources
Carlos Motta, Various Projects http://carlosmotta.com Sharon Hayes, Artist’s Talk http://www.walkerart.org/channel/2008/artist-talk-sharon-hayes Park McArthur, Artist’s Talk https://vimeo.com/159085350 Charles Atlas in conversation with Wu Tsang https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbkz1Inq0Mk Otobong Nkanga, “Diaoptasia” (performance) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR8_t1AM0dw
7
November 9
World Pictures: Eco-Aesthetics
Topics
The Anthropocene; Sustainability; Climate Justice
Readings
T.J. Demos, “Contemporary Art and the Politics of Ecology” Gerald Raunig et al., “Post-Media Activism, Social Ecology, and Eco-Art” Sven Lütticken, “Abstract Habitats: Installations of Coexistence & Coevolution” Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin, “Art & Death: Lives Between the Fifth Assessment and the Sixth Extinction” Etienne Turpin and Anselm Franke, “The Fates of Negativity” Patrick Flores, “Delicacy and Danger”
Resources
World of Matter (artistic research project) http://www.worldofmatter.net HKW Anthropocene Curriculum (educational platform) http://www.anthropocene-curriculum.org Politics of Ecology (conference) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDUv3CrNUFQ
November 16
Is There No Alternative? Art and Neoliberalism
Topics
Precaritization; Cognitive Capitalism; Debt
Readings
David Joselit et al., “Recessional Aesthetics: An Exchange” Sven Lütticken, “The Coming Exception: Art and the Crisis of Value” Tom Holert, “Art and the Knowledge-Based Polis” Andrew Norman Wilson, “The Artist Leaving the Googleplex” Melanie Gilligan and Tom Holert, “Subjects of Finance” Cassie Thornton and Max Haiven, “On Exiting Capitalism”
Resources
Carey Young, “Unfinished Business: Notes toward an Artist Statement” Video work by Melanie Gilligan http://popularunrest.org http://thecommonsense.org Liz Magic Laser, “The Thought Leader” https://vimeo.com/116379552 Interview with Zachary Formwalt https://vimeo.com/95485911 Projects by Cassie Thornton http://feministeconomicsdepartment.com/projects/
November 23 (no class)
8
November 30
Admissible Evidence: Forensic Aesthetics
Topics
International Human Rights Law; Critical Architecture; Scientific Imaging
Readings
Thomas Keenan, “Getting the Dead to Tell Me What Happened” Eyal Weizman, “Forensis” M. Feher et al., “On Forensic Architecture: A Conversation with Eyal Weizman” Emily Apter, “Shibboleth: Policing by Ear and Forensic Listening in Projects by Lawrence Abu Hamdan”
Resources
R. Leckie, “Equivocally Yours: A Conversation with Lawrence Abu Hamdan” Forensic Architecture Program, Log of Investigations http://www.forensic-architecture.org Lawrence Abu Hamdan, “What Now: The Politics of Listening” http://lawrenceabuhamdan.com/blog/2015/6/12/video-of-my-keynote-lecture-what-now-the-politics-of-listening
December 7
#art? The Aesthetics of Global Leftisms
Topics
Transnationalism; Anti-Austerity; Global Media Ecologies
Readings
Yates McKee, “Occupy and the End of Socially Engaged Art” Kim Berman, “Students as Agents of Change” Mark Watson, “‘Centering the Indigenous’: Postcommodity’s Trans-Indigenous Relational Art” Peter Weibel, “People, Politics, and Power” Dietrich Heissenbüttel, “Protest Everywhere?” David Joselit, “Material Witness: Visual Evidence and the Case of Eric Garner”
Resources
Global Activism (exhibition/research platform) http://www.global-activism.de Chto Delat? (Russian art-activist collective) https://chtodelat.org Abounaddara (MENA documentary video collective) http://www.abounaddara.com
December 14
Presentations
December 16
FINAL PAPER DUE
9
