MA in Art & Politics
The appeal within arts colleges, and among art students, to ‘situate’ practice in terms of current contemporary discourse has increasingly led to the incorporation of political and social theory into art school courses. While our intention is to keep the focus on art, our main aim is to extend that process of contextualisation by running a programme which views both art and politics differently.
Gruppe edvard kunzt beyond the fotos
1 year full-time or 2 years part-time.
Please see How to apply.
You should normally have an undergraduate degree of at least upper second class standard in a relevant subject.
Creative industries.
Critical awareness of issues in art and politics.
Please see Tuition fees.
Please see Staff research interests.
Politics
This new MA, being launched by the Department of Politics in 2009/2010, aims to create a new space for an examination of art as intrinsically political. Its dual focus challenges conventional courses of study which are confined to established disciplinary boundaries within either Art or Politics and will equip graduates for innovative research into areas which are still evolving.
What you study
The programme will investigate shifts in the relationship between art and politics – theoretically, historically and operationally. Using a diverse range of discourses, the programme will consider, from a variety of perspectives, changes in the relationship between politics and art.
The programme consists of two core courses taken over 1 year of full-time, or 2 years of part-time study. Both courses seek, in different ways, to problematise the conventional categories within which knowledge and experience of both art and politics are produced, ordered and transmitted. You also choose a total of two units of option courses.
Art & Politics 1 explores the politicisation of aesthetics. The focus is particularly on developments that connect (or seek to disconnect) art and politics in the 20th and 21st centuries. You will gain considerable knowledge about how, historically and theoretically, art and politics have been variously cemented together and held apart. You will explore the long-term endurance of this relationship – despite routine attempts to return art to an ‘autonomous’ status as ‘art for art’s sake’.
Art & Politics 2 explores the aestheticisation of politics. You will consolidate your learning from Art & Politics 1 and extend it, by exploring how a Western-centric art-world has increasingly sought to identify artworks and exhibitions as carriers of both implicit and explicitpolitical meaning. You will also be encouraged to critique the range of aesthetic and political positions that have been adopted historically, as identified in Art & Politics 1, exploring the many ways by which those positions are transgressed and problematised by artists.
These core elements are supplemented by a wide range of option courses offered both by the Department of Politics and other Goldsmiths’ Departments, such as Art, History, Sociology and Anthropology and the Centre for Cultural Studies.
Project-based element
The purpose of the project-based element of the course is to find ways of ‘doing’ politics which employ ‘artistic’ strategies and interventions in the public domain. The project-based element will begin from your own research interests and explore through practice, the ‘techniques’ and ‘strategies’ used by artists, curators and the art world in making, distributing and exhibiting work and how these ‘techniques’ and ‘strategies’ can be deployed within a variety of public space contexts where the outcomes are not necessarily claiming to be, or being claimed as, art.
Projects have a student-centred material focus, which complements the theoretical emphasis of the Core and Option courses. Outcomes may be written, broadcast, performed, curated, or constructed, and involve any other kind of appropriately documented submission.
Assessment
Dissertation of 10,000 words.
Application enquiries
Please see how to apply for information on applying to this programme.