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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2013/2014 -
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DRPS : Course Catalogue : Edinburgh College of Art : History of Art

Undergraduate Course: Dematerialized? Art and Ephemerality c. 1968 (HIAR10131)

Course Outline
SchoolEdinburgh College of Art CollegeCollege of Humanities and Social Science
Course typeStandard AvailabilityNot available to visiting students
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) Credits20
Home subject areaHistory of Art Other subject areaNone
Course website None Taught in Gaelic?No
Course descriptionIn 1967, the Argentinian critic Oscar Masotta encapsulated the art scene in Buenos Aires with the words ¿after pop, we dematerialise¿, a year before the North American critics Lucy Lippard and John Chandler published their influential 1968 essay in Art International formulating the ¿dematerialisation¿ of the art object. Taking this synchronous coinage as its starting point, this course addresses how transience and impermanence have played important roles in the artistic production of the second part of the twentieth century, with continued ramifications for contemporary practice.

We will start by tracing the roots of ¿dematerialisation¿ in the Happenings and Fluxus performances of the late 1950s and 1960s, through Body Art, Land Art and Conceptualism, and its impact on the development of participatory practices, as well as installation and institutional critique. Throughout, we will attend closely to the stakes involved in the concept of ¿dematerialisation¿, asking why it might be particularly important for artists engaged with issues of gender, race, and the labouring body to resist ephemerality and retain a sense of materiality, particularly in terms of the archive and its use to construct historical narratives. We will focus on how ephemerality has been closely linked to media including film, photography and artist¿s video, considering the impact of mass media on so-called ¿dematerialised¿ forms and how this complicates understandings of transience in art. In relation to this, issues of global exchange and their intersection with debates about globalisation, raised through addressing artistic connections between North and South America and Europe, will also be central.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Students MUST have passed: History of Art 2 (HIAR08012) OR Architectural History 2a: Order & the City (ARHI08006) AND Architectural History 2b: Culture & the City (ARHI08007)
Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Additional Costs None
Course Delivery Information
Delivery period: 2013/14 Semester 2, Not available to visiting students (SS1) Learn enabled:  Yes Quota:  20
Web Timetable Web Timetable
Class Delivery Information 1 x 2 hour seminar per week
Course Start Date 13/01/2014
Breakdown of Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 200 ( Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20, Revision Session Hours 1, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 175 )
Additional Notes
Breakdown of Assessment Methods (Further Info) Written Exam 50 %, Coursework 50 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Exam Information
Exam Diet Paper Name Hours:Minutes
Main Exam Diet S2 (April/May)Dematerialized? Art and Ephemerality c. 19682:00
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
1. On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

1. Explain the forms and aims that ¿dematerialisation¿ has taken in the post-1945 period among a range of artists.

2. 2. Articulate the interactions between artists in North America, South America and Europe during the latter part of the twentieth century.

3. 3. Engage critically with the main issues attendant on writing histories of ephemeral art, including re-performance, the archive, collaboration and audience participation.

4. 4. Compare and contrast a range of different media, including film, video, photography, event scores and installation.

5. 5. Analyse and use a range of theoretical and critical; approaches in the formulation of their own critical responses, articulating views on the function of ephemerality in artistic practice from the 1960s to the present in written and verbal formats, using appropriate academic conventions.
Assessment Information
1 x 2 hour examination (50%) and 1 x 2500 word essay (50%)
Special Arrangements
None
Additional Information
Academic description Not entered
Syllabus 1: Introduction ¿ Dematerialisation and (re)performance
2: Happenings, Fluxus and the Judson Dance Theatre
3: Group Experiments and Kinetic Theatre - Gutai, GRAV and Zero
4: Body Art and Performance as Labour in the 1970s
5: (Global) Conceptualisms?
6: Expanded Cinema, and Artists Film and Video
7: Feminism, Pedagogy and New Genre Public Art
8: Art and Identity ¿ US / UK connections in the 1980s
9: Installation and Institutional Critique
10: Participation and its Discontents in Contemporary Art
Transferable skills Advanced visual skills, communication skills (written and oral), group work skills, ability to conduct independent, in-depth research, analytical and interpretative skills, ability to asses and evaluate sources, capacity to work to deadlines.
Reading list Ault, Julie. Alternative Art New York (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002).
Bishop, Claire. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (London and New York: Verso, 2012).
Bryan-Wilson, Julia. Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009).
Camnitzer, Luis. Conceptualism in Latin America: Didactics of Liberation (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007).
Cullen, Deborah ed., Arte ¿ Vida: Actions by Artists of the Americas, 1960-2000, exh. cat. (New York: El Museo Del Barrio, 2008).
Curtis, David; Rees, A. L.; White, Duncan, Expanded Cinema: Art, Performance, Film (London: Tate Publishing, 2011).
Dezeuze, Anna. The ¿Do-it-yourself¿ Artwork: Participation from Fluxus to New Media (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010).
Frascina, Francis. Art, Politics and Dissent: Aspects of the Art Left in Sixties America (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999).
Fusco, Coco. Corpus Delecti: Performance Art of the Americas (London: Routledge, 2000).
Gonzalez, Jennifer. Subject to Display: Reframing Race in Contemporary Installation Art (Cambridge MA and London: The MIT Press, 2008).
Jackson, Shannon. Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics (London and New York: Routledge, 2011)
Jones, Amelia. Body Art: Performing the Subject (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998).
Katzenstein, Inez ed., Listen, Here, Now! Argentine Art of the 1960s: Writings of the Avant-Garde (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2004).
Lambert-Beatty, Carrie. Being Watched: Yvonne Rainer and the 1960s (Cambridge MA and London: The MIT Press, 2008).
Lippard, Lucy. Six Years: the Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966-1972 (New York: Praeger, 1973).
Phelan, Peggy. Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London and New York: Routledge, 1998).
Sholette, Gregory, and Stimson, Blake. Collectivism After Modernism: the Art of Social Imagination After 1945 (Minneapolis and London: The University of Minnesota Press, 2007).
Tiampo. Ming. Gutai: Decentering Modernism (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2011).
Study Abroad Not entered
Study Pattern Students meet for one two-hour seminar per week over one semester.
The set reading is compulsory for all students, and students are expected to come prepared for class discussions.
Each student will be asked to make a short presentation and to lead group discussion on one of the weekly seminar topics (listed above).
Students are expected to read widely and independently around the material studied.
KeywordsDematerialization, Ephemerality, Performance, Theatre, Dance, Photography, Video, Time-based Art, Co
Contacts
Course organiserMs Catherine Spencer
Tel:
Email: cspence3@exseed.ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMrs Sue Cavanagh
Tel: (0131 6)51 1460
Email: Sue.Cavanagh@ed.ac.uk
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