schedule

January 7 Introductions, objectives, schedules…

January 14 dada > data will discuss changes in a.g. theory and practice over time and consider how a.g. practice is now imagined and enacted. The introduction will survey classic Dadaist projects, including early media practices, poetry, happenings and installations and contemporary manifestations of similar forms considered in comparative terms: Harun Farocki – strategic montage; Thomas Hirschhorn –materiality of information; Golem Levin, Lev Manovitch, Pall Thayer – database art.

Required reading/viewing:
Tristan Tzara, “Dada Manifesto, 1918”

Concepts of the avant-garde

Futurist Manifesto

Surrealist Manifesto


January 21 Language and Mediation: Speech, Signs, Codes will examine the material and conceptual exchanges and implications of different systems of communication and different instances of communication—i.e. between humans and humans, humans and texts, humans, texts and machines—with reference to select database artworks and experimental literary works.

Required reading/viewing:
N. Kathleen Hayles, “Speech, Writing, Code: Three World Views,” My Mother was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts, Chicago + London, University of Chicago Press, 2005. (to be distributed)

or N. Kathleen Hayles,
“Narrating Bits: Encounters Between Humans and Intelligent Machines,” Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular, (2005)

or
N. Kathleen Hayles, "Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers" October 66 (Fall 1993) available via Concordia e-journal

C Theory Interview with K. Hayles

January 28 Post-Media/Post-Production: New Media + Political Economy
considers the political economy of new media and new media art. We will discuss the affects of the loss of media specificity in an age of digital data flows, and the social, cultural and political values of ‘rear-garde’ actions and ‘relational aesthetics’

Required reading/viewing:
excerpts from Nicolas Bourriaud, ‘Relational Aesthetics’ in Participation, Claire Bishop (ed.) London + Cambridge,Mass.: Whitechapel and MIT, 2006 and from Postproduction ~Culture as Screenplay: How Art Reprograms the World, New York: Lucas + Sternberg, 2002 (to be distributed)

Michael Hardt + Antonio Negri, “Postmodernizaton or The Informatization of Production,” Empire, Harvard U. Press, 2000

Mark Amerika: Remixology, Hybridized Processes, and Postproduction Art: A Counternarrative

February 4 Documents (1929-30) to Documenta 12: Magazine Project (2007) will broadly consider the various and changing views of mass media in avant-garde practice, with specific reference made to key publication projects—the Dadaist and Surrealist journals, Fluxus posterings and later a.g. documents

Required reading/viewing:
excerpts from Dawn Ades + S.Baker (eds.)Undercover Surrealism: Georges Bataille and Documents, London + Cambridge,Mass.: Hayward Gallery + MIT Press, 2006 (to be distributed)

http://www.documenta12.de/magazine.html?&L=1

http://magazines.documenta.de/frontend/

February 11 Visitor: TBA

February 18/Break

February 25 - April 7 Student presentations ~ groups of 2 to 3

March 24/university closed