MA Contemporary Art Theory

The core module strands introduce you to the problematics that resides at the heart of the MA programme: how to explore the relations between critical theoretical enquiry and contemporary visual arts practices. You choose either A and C or B and D. They present differently articulated contemporary perspectives on 'art' and 'theory' drawn from a variety of traditions (e.g. The Frankfurt School, Post-structuralism, Performance Studies, Contemporary Continental Philosophy, Phenomenology, Psychoanalysis, and Post-Colonial Studies and Ecology). The core module strands are supported by student-led Reading Groups.

What is a suitable ethical position today? What cause should a curator support? What can philosophy do to address and/or support these ethical decisions? This course explores the act of taking on an ethical position in curatorial projects today. The material explored ranges from specific curatorial practices that have developed means of addressing ethical issues to philosophical engagements in ethics.

Authors studied are taken from both Western and non-Western traditions and range from Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas, Valentin Mudimbe, Jean-Luc Nancy, Nkiru Uwechia Nzegwu, and Timothy Morton.

The visual work explored on this course mainly consists of key exhibitions that have defined the way art engages itself ethically. These include: Dada ist Politisch, When Attitudes Become Form, Inside the Visible, Making Things Public, Altermodern, etc. Teaching involves lectures, student presentations, and discussions of key art historical and philosophical texts.

This 15-week MA Special Subject will explore two kinds of writing practice that are increasingly prevalent with the expanded field of contemporary art and the critical humanities: art writing and theory-fiction. As far as the first of these goes we will and look at some precursors to this new field, from artist’s writing to experimental forms of literature. We will then go on to look at a selection of different forms of art writing from the last ten years, attending, especially, to the connections, but also differences with both ‘autofiction’ and more standard art theory. In terms of theory-fiction, again the module will map out some precursors in terms of those philosophers and theoreticians that have employed fictional modes or tropes; and those fiction writers whose writings tend towards the invention and explication of concepts and theories. We will then look at some examples of theory-fiction, again from the last ten years. In each case, the module aims to critically survey and evaluate these new kinds of writing – in terms of their content, but especially their style – and attend to both the intersections between the two modes and their differences. Crucial in all this will be an exploration of the political and critical potential of these modes of expression, and, in particular, the connection of them both with technology and the web and with other ways of writing outside of the Western tradition. It should be said that the indicative reading list below concerns a very particular ‘contemporary tradition’; students will, of course, be encouraged to extend the range or contest the boundaries between these different kinds of writings in other ways. In terms of assessment, students will have the option of submitting work that moves between the critical and creative, and thus explore these new forms of writing from, as it were, a practice-based angle. Important here will be identifying and developing forms of rigor appropriate to these other creative modes of expression.

Over the past few years, novel modes of interaction and collaboration have been sweeping through economic, political and social life: peer-to-peer platforms, time banks, co-working communities, alternative currencies, self-managed spaces, digital commons and crowdsourcing schemes. The module investigates the relationship between these developments and contemporary art practices. Artistic experiments with alternative forms of funding, production and distribution are not only shaking up the roles of creators, audiences, institutions and the art market but have also begun to spearhead a new culture of operations, in which citizens become enlisted in the self-servicing of the social, cultural and infrastructural fabric of societies. These processes raise critical questions about issues of access and technology, global inequality and citizenship arrangements.

In this module, we will discuss these questions by considering the ways in which art and culture are enlisted in shaping new public experiences, attitudes and expectations. The public of these new “data publics” is a multi-faced figure. In that it is implicated in its own generation, conventional political paradigms such as the protection of rights or the division and demarcation of powers fall short when it comes to engaging the dynamic realities of the hybridised analogue-digital realm. Departing from this much more active participation of today’s populations in the shaping of new public spheres, we will discuss the political implications of environments, in which individual, commercial and governmental agendas and actions become increasingly blurred.

Research as Intervention – We will explore this changing relationship between art and politics by way of capturing the transformative capacity of new modes of artistic engagement, new “commons” for collective action and new social and political climates. Producing individual case studies, we will trace, map and analyse specific cultural, temporal, geographic and systemic dimensions of the changing ways in which art practices are embedded in today’s socio-economic environments. Addressing the global scope of these changes, we will engage with discourses on globalisation, social and political movements, technological restructuring, contemporary public culture and creative economies. Drawing on the individual case studies, this module will conclude with a collectively organised public event.

‘Reading the Performative’ addresses the potential of performativity to think through contemporary art, focusing on feminist and queer theories and artworks. The course begins by exploring the ‘contemporary’ of contemporary art as a performative concept, setting up key issues around temporality and reenactment that will be explored throughout the course. Different approaches to performativity will be discussed, focusing on Judith Butler’s use of the term in relation to gender. The course continues with the theme 'Performing History/Imagining Futures', looking at various aspects of performance and performativity in contemporary art, focusing on feminist and queer narratives. Of central concern is the critical potential for performance to disrupt stable notions of identity and history.

The performing of histories will be considered as a way of actively engaging with the past, moving from the creation of personal histories to the passionate re-working of political legacies. We will also address the possibilities of performative writing as an affective and political strategy. The reading will draw upon theoretical perspectives from performance studies, queer and feminist studies, art theory, and philosophy, alongside selected encounters with contemporary art and performance works. The focus of this course is on Anglo-American art since the 1970s, but students are encouraged to use the theoretical tools discussed to address a broader range of case studies.

This module asks how animal and sexual differences matter in and through a range of contemporary art, films and literature. Methodologically, it brings contemporary feminist thought into creative dialogue with deconstruction.

Recent years have shown a surge of interest in what Derrida’s late writings name ‘the animal question’, that is to say, the philosophical tendency to divide ‘man’ from ‘animal’ and for this difference to allow for a ‘non-criminal putting to death’ of the latter. This module provides an in depth investigation into the ‘logics’ that erect this critical division thought together with those of gender and sexuality. Thus this module interweaves study of works by feminist thinkers to enable the ways that ‘the feminine’ is problematically figured in relation to both ‘the animal’ and to a supposedly neutral and human ‘subject’ to come into view (Beauvoir, Haraway, Jardine, Kristeva, Wilson). In so doing, what we call ‘nature’ is necessarily refigured (Haraway, Kirby, Wilson).

While the module may have different foci from year to year, it will initially explore animal and sexual differences through one particular interface: the mouth. This oral locus bridges eating, biting, sucking, licking, and speaking, all of which trouble strict divisions between literal and figural. Identification, sexuality, kinship and cannibalism are all implicated. Eating appears to be literal and described by need alone, yet it has a strenuous metaphorical connection with identification and thus both introjection and incorporation (Freud, Abraham & Torok, Derrida). It marks the interface between sexuality and language (Freud, Irigaray, Klein). Kinship ostensibly asks to whom am I related, keeping a watchful eye on the incest taboo as symbolic law. Closer inspection shows it to also necessarily ask who – or what – can I eat? (Derrida, Haraway, Kristeva). Speech opens up the relation to voice and conflicting positions between the dialectical overcoming of voice by speech defined as human (Lacan) and the performative bridging of both voice and speech and thus a non-hierarchical relation between human and animal voices (Derrida, Cixous). Need becomes enmeshed in desire, and sexuality becomes enmeshed in a politics of species (Oliver, Wolfe, Adams). Thus, questions of the limits of actual and symbolic cannibalism as well as vegetarianism/veganism inevitably comes to attention, anchored by Derrida’s enquiry into what it might mean to ‘eat well’ as well as Haraway’s ethical insistence that we also rethink what it might mean to ‘kill well’.

Students will be encouraged to explore these questions as they are refracted through contemporary art, films and literature on a weekly basis and through their assessed work. Examples include films such as White God, Trouble Every Day, Babette’s Feast, Whiplash; plays such as Equus; fiction such as We are all Completely Beside Ourselves, art by Catherine Bell, Kira O’Reilly, the Tissue Culture & Art Project, Diana Thater, Dorothy Cross, Olly & Suzi, Christine Wertheim.

This course engages with questions of memory, placing particular emphasis on the encounter of different histories and recollections between and across cultures. Drawing on a variety of art works, exhibitions, films, literary texts and theoretical models, the course explores spaces in which memories neither compete with nor erase each other, but interact in productive and unforeseen ways.

We shall read some of the historical texts that are crucial to the emergence of the field of memory studies: texts that have taught us to think of memory as being shaped by the social milieu in which the subject lives (Maurice Halbwachs), to regard memory as a performative process that might be concerned with the past, but is enacted in the present (Pierre Nora) and to comprehend the long-term effects of trauma (Sigmund Freud). By studying these works together with writings by the contemporary generation of memory scholars (Michael Rothberg, Astrid Erll, Cathy Caruth, Marianne Hirsch and others), we shall also probe their limitations, thereby considering the shift from ‘cultural’ to ‘transcultural’ memory studies.

“What we are dealing with in this new technology of power is not exactly society...nor is it the individual-as-body. It is a new body, a multiple body, a body with so many heads that, while they might not be infinite in number, cannot necessarily be counted.” Michel Foucault, ‘Society Must Be Defended’

Spatial Biopolitics develops an alternative critique of globalisation, asking the question: given that society is becoming increasingly ’planetary’ in scale and urban in form, how can the space of culture provide an alternative political understanding of what a social body can do and how social life is formed? Departing from classic analyses of the spatial apparatuses which give form to life - the body, personal identity, the market, the city and the state (Kant, Hegel, Marx, Foucault, Arendt, etc.) - we will engage with debates across postcolonialism, feminism, political economy, critical race theory, literary theory and urban studies, to try to understand how socio-spatial forces act on the body, how bodies react to these forces, and thereby transform our sense of what bodies can become. The module will be of interest to students interested in developing a critical understanding about how contemporary art and culture relate to biopolitical processes integral to the turbulent spatial dynamics of global politics - like migration, sovereignty, neoliberalism, financialisation, social media, urbanisation, accumulation by dispossession etc.

See the results of the 2020 Spatial Biopolitics collective group project in the 'student work' section.

The Ocean as Archive explores several interdisciplinary approaches to reading the water. It starts by examining discourses on the "watery Anthropocene". Spurred by this crisis it considers other ways of reading the water: materially through oceanographic studies of watery depths and strata, and marine life therein; and temporally by considering the ocean as a speculative site, and as a space of residues. This module also explores alternate ways of reading this crisis: through non-western (Pacific Island, West African) maritime epistemologies and myths, through discourses on migration (both contemporary and historical), through the mobilisation of the image of water in critical theory, in literature, in music and in art.

The class examines the site of the ocean not with the aim to systematically plumb its depths so to speak, but rather sees the ocean as a laboratory with which to examine multiple and often contradictory approaches when taking to the sea. As a result, a key summative assignment is a creative journal, which is intended as a site to explore critical experimental approaches to interdisciplinary ways of knowing, which the crisis of the watery Anthropocene urgently demands.

The Ocean as Archive considers methods with which we can begin to understand what is at stake in articulating the visual cultures of the sea. These methods are practice-led and are aimed at students interested in exploring experimental methods in their critical work. Its thematics resonate with concerns raised by Geopolitics, Conceptual Ecologies, Conflicts and Negotiations, and Spatial Biopolitics in the MA Contemporary Art Theory offerings.

Conflicts and Negotiations as Spatial Practices offers readings of contemporary political issues as constituted by relations in space and over time. Political and social conflicts will be shown to play themselves out within constructed, real or imaginary architectures and through the representation, organisation, transformation, erasure and subversion of these spaces. As such “research architecture” always assumes an expanded notion of architecture. We discuss social and political conflicts as they register themselves in the transformation of environments, shifting the scale and register of our investigation from the architectural and urban to the territorial and planetary, all the while dealing with the spatial dimension of geopolitical conflicts. From the micro-scale of buildings and infrastructure to the macro-scale of borders and global flows, space will be analysed as an elastic medium constantly reshaped by political and mediatic forces. While the vocabulary of architectural discourse is useful – and will thus be introduced and unpacked -- it is not singularly sufficient to address the many geo-political shifts that characterise our time. For example, media has come to play an increasingly significant role in providing access to spaces of contemporary conflict and war through remote sensing technologies and online blogging by citizen journalists.

The course is organised thematically around concepts, products and processes as they bear upon questions of space, politics, aesthetics, human rights and the law. It integrates historical, theoretical, and contemporary understandings of issues and introduces students to a wide-ranging set of thinkers, spatial practitioners, artists and activists in order to develop a common language and set of tools for unpacking and working through several theoretical positions. These thematic seminars will help to construct different, and sometimes contradictory understandings of the spatial dimension of social, environmental, and political conflicts. We will deal with a number of thinkers – Michel Foucault, Hannah Arendt, Isabelle Stengers, Gilles Deleuze, Elisabeth Gross, Jacques Rancière, Judith Butler, Bruno Latour, Ariella Azoulay, Manuel Delanda, Paul Virilio, Cornelia Vismann, Boaventura de Sousa Santos – and identify spatial conceptions that emerge out their theoretical and political positions. Seminars address the space of the event, material flows, contaminated geographies, bio-politics, crisis and resistance, terrorism and security, the figure of the refugee and the pirate, indigenous knowledge, critical epistemologies as well as the emergent geographies of extra-territoriality and climate change. We also take seriously the idea that engaged cultural and spatial production can play an operative and transformation role within social and political conflicts. In this seminar space is understood not simply as the backdrop of conflict, nor its consequence, but as the very medium and language within which political conflicts and negotiations are conducted. 

Having already produced an assessed oral presentation on your topic (see above) you work on your dissertation over the summer and submit your completed project for assessment early in September.

Assessment: one 12-15,000-word dissertation.