Course detail

Media Archive Presentation - summer

FaVU-1PMA-LAcad. year: 2020/2021

Documents of Presence and Experience is a series of lectures accompanied by audiovisual projections. Art films, videos, and documentaries and excerpts from lectures by international artists and collectives from the early 20th century to the present are shown throughout the course, illustrating theoretical deliberations on given themes and artistic movements. Art and artist databases, institutional resources, alternative communities, and artist residencies are also showcased within the sessions. Conceptual texts and deliberations are included as part of the curriculum. The course's primary objective is to aquaint the student with the manifesto as a transdisciplinary device.

Language of instruction

English

Number of ECTS credits

Mode of study

Not applicable.

Guarantor

MgA. Jennifer Helia De Felice, Ph.D.

Department

Department of Art History and Theory (KTDU)

Offered to foreign students

Of all faculties

Learning outcomes of the course unit

Upon succcessful completion of the course students will be able to: - identify and summarize the guiding concepts of important avant-garde movements - recognize conceptual tendencies within contemporary art practice - write a theoretical text detailing or adopting the mechanisms of the manifesto - analyse the socio-politcal context which gave/gives rise to shifts in aesthetic paradigms Students should be able to identify and describe the socio-politcal contexts which gave rise to avant-garde cultural movements, discuss key works, and understand the mechanisms of a written manifesto and participatory practice.

Prerequisites

User IT skills. Basic orientation in the history of 20th century culture.

Co-requisites

Not applicable.

Planned learning activities and teaching methods

The presentations are divided into semester-long blocks which deal with individual themes related to perfomativity as a phenomenon. Key concepts such as experience, contemporaneity, avant garde, ritual, play, indeterminacy, social engagement, participation, and improvisation are explored, relying heavily on artistic texts and theoretical works. Lectures are accompanied by audiovisual material. The classes are based on presentation and class discussions. Students will asked to participate actively in discussions based on reading assignments.

Assesment methods and criteria linked to learning outcomes

Final evaluation will be based on attendence (75%), active participation in class, the presentation of a project or theme of the student's choice accompanied by a theoretical text (comparative study, curatorial project, personal manifesto (approx. 2 n/s)) based on the given theme of the semester. Semester projects will be assesed based on relevance of theme and quality of research and delivery (presentation, text).

Course curriculum

Key Themes: Underground, The Manifesto, Declarations, Participation, Surveillance, Social engagement, Identity Politics

The manifesto is a philosophical and theoretical framework within which deeds or experiments can and are performed in support of its proclamations. It provides a platform, radical in how it instates itself at the moment of its presentation, distribution, or publication, its incubation having taken place prior to it's formulation. What is characteristic for the avant-garde art manifesto is its intention to serve as a tool to initiate a paradigm shift in the approach to both the creation and the consumption of art, while having, at the moment of its inception, already bore witness to its establishment as a movement. When the avant-garde manifesto is written, there is already a body of work that represents what is being proclaimed. What is being proclaimed is a message intrinsic, or at the very least carried by the works that are made in its name, including those preceding its actual utterance. In addition the manifesto serves as a call to action, an invitation to join a movement with the potential to initiate change. Where, or whether, a paradigm shift takes place along this axis, and to what degree, varies from manifesto to manifesto. As with the political manifesto, the art manifesto is meant to cause a fracture or fissure through the representation of a communal body which speaks in the first-person plural, 'we'.

Work placements

Not applicable.

Aims

Specification of controlled education, way of implementation and compensation for absences

Projections are optional, but students who are absent must produce a paper corresponding with the presented document on the given session.

Recommended optional programme components

Not applicable.

Prerequisites and corequisites

Not applicable.

Basic literature

Alex Danchev, 100 Artists Manifestos, From the Futurists to the Stuckists, Peguin Modern Classics (EN)
Hakim Bey, TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism (EN)
Serpentine Gallery Manifesto Marathon, Koenig Books (EN)

Type of course unit

Seminar

26 hod., compulsory

Teacher / Lecturer

MgA. Jennifer Helia De Felice, Ph.D.