Course detail

Artists and Issues

FaVU-AIS-LAcad. year: 2023/2024

The course will examine several perspectives relevant to contemporary art. We will look at feminist and queer issues of representation and explore some ideas and essential thinkers whose work is influential in posing questions about the environmental crisis through visual art.

The course will look into the texts below through a detailed analysis and discussions; the selected texts, ranging from the disciplines of contemporary ecocriticism, antropology, cultural studies , botany , etc, reflect the state of Anthropocene, the fix in which "humankind" has found itself (in)voluntarily (?). We will problematize the equal share of "humankind" on Anthropocene, we will look at texts which not only ask the classical question What Is To Be Done, but also "what to say"? (to whom). We will compensate the highly theoretical texts offering a trully global/comprehensive insight into the reflection of the state of the world by reading about and watching plants in forrests, steppes, and meadows.

The course will aim at active participation of students. Two classes will be devoted to issues which they will vote about, and the assigned texts will be read and presented to the class by small teams. Two more classes will be devoted to workshops or lectures with invited guests.

Language of instruction

English

Number of ECTS credits

Mode of study

Not applicable.

Guarantor

Mgr. et MgA. Barbora Lungová

Department

Department of Art History and Theory (KTDU)

Entry knowledge

Students have to have excellent communicative skills in English.

Rules for evaluation and completion of the course

CStudents will be assesed from discussing and writing short, in-class response papers about the assigned texts. Not having read those texts will count as an absence.
The answered quiz questions regarding each text for homework have to be uploaded to the shared drive a day before the class. Before the last class in the semester, students will have to have fulfilled at least 60% of the assignments in order to be able to finish the remaining assignments by the end of the exam period.
Students will be assessed from the regular, continuous work during the semester.
Attendance is mandatory, students are allowed to miss two classes per semester.

Aims

The course should encourgare students to critically reflect the issues dealt with in the syllabus by way of studying the assigned texts, discussing them in class and reflecting them in essays.
Academic reflection of selected problems of contemporary art, a detailed knowledge of artworks and viewpoints of selected contemporary artists.

Study aids

Not applicable.

Prerequisites and corequisites

Not applicable.

Basic literature

Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome and Duckert Lowell: Veer Ecology (EN)
Haraway, Donna. Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chtulucene. (EN)
Jones, Amelia. The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader. (EN)
Latour, Bruno. Facing Gaia. Eigth Lectures on the New Climatic Regime. (EN)
Morton, Timothy. All Art Is Ecological (EN)
Myvillages: The Rural. Whitechapel: Documents on Contemporary Art (EN)
Sandilands, Catriona. Queer Ecologies (EN)
Tsing, Anne. Mushroom at the End of the World. (EN)
Wilson, Edward O. Biophilia (EN)

Type of course unit

Lecture

13 hod., optionally

Teacher / Lecturer

Mgr. et MgA. Barbora Lungová

Syllabus

See the bibliography list - each week one reading, plus two field trips (literarilly). (Real fields.)

Feminist perspectives on the canon. How to study to become a woman artist. Griselda Pollock, Judy Chicago.
Feminisms in art historical perspectives (1960s - 1990s) - curatorial perspective.
Feminist and queer perspective (artists).
Is all art ecological? Timothy Morton. Queering nature.
Queering nature after Catriona Sandilands a Bruce Erickson
Matsutake and ruins of the world after Anna Tsing. (Mushroom at the End of the World). Feral Atlas.
Antropocene, capitalocene, chtulucene and Dona Haraway
Biophilia after Edward Wilson
Earthlings and New Climate Regime after Bruno Latour. Lovelock and his Gaia hypothesis.
Artists on the peripheries. The Rural (Whitechapel), Řečiště a vlna (Ondřej Navrátil).
Sádlo, Pokorný, Haluzík.Aspects of landscape from geological and anthropic perspective. Field trip.
Field trip.

Seminar

13 hod., compulsory

Teacher / Lecturer

Mgr. et MgA. Barbora Lungová