Postgraduate Course: The Need to Document: Contemporary Art from Performance to Biopolitics (HIAR11089)
Course Outline
| School | Edinburgh College of Art |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This MSc course focuses on the deployment of lens-based documentary strategies by artists from the 1960s to the present day including photography, film and video. Though the compulsion to document has undoubtedly taken on new levels of urgency since 1990, it is certainly not a new concern within contemporary art. Incorporating an examination of performance practices, 'global conceptualism', the politics of representation under postmodernism and the complexities of art's recent 'biopolitical' and 'documentary turns', we will analyse the decisive role that lens-based documentation has played in the heterogeneous intersections between art and life in the 20th and 21st centuries.
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| Course description |
The work of a range of international artists and collectives will be considered including Mary Kelly, Tino Sehgal, Grupo de Artistas Vanguardia, Sanja Ivekovi, Martha Rosler, The Hackney Flashers, WochenKlausur, Anton Vidokle, Hito Steyerl, Artur Zmijewski and Hans Haacke. Through close examination of such practices we will consider the ways in which the document relates to artists' radical concerns with performance, dematerialisation, live social relations and knowledge production. Particular attention will be paid to why the demand for art documentation increased in parallel with the shifting political and cultural realities induced and accelerated by globalisation.
The seminar format will encourage active participation through informal student presentations (one fifteen-minute presentation per week) followed by class discussion chaired by the course organiser. Local exhibition visits will be built into the seminars as appropriate. Students will be expected to prepare for each seminar by reading key set texts, undertaking independent research on specific artworks and watching moving image works online as directed. A separate weekly screening programme will run alongside the seminars.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2017/18, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: 16 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
196 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Your essay (4000 words) will comprise the sole component of assessment for this course and will therefore be weighted at 100% of the final mark. The essay will give you an opportunity to analyse in depth a particular facet of the use of documentary modes in contemporary art practice, enabling you to draw upon the course readings and associated seminar discussions in line with a topic of your choosing. Whether responding to a set essay question or articulating one of your own, your essay research will enable you to significantly develop your knowledge and understanding of the field, improve your visual analysis skills and demonstrate your ability to construct an argument through the effective management of source materials. In addition, this assessment and the associated feedback will help to prepare you for the dissertation. |
| Feedback |
Constructive feedback can accelerate and refine learning, optimising the quality of your work. In preparation for the essay, you will be required to submit a working title and short abstract (detailing the proposed topic, examples and structure) together with a brief bibliography. This material will be discussed in detail with the course tutor through a one-to-one 30-minute meeting. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Discuss the development of contemporary art since the 1960s both in terms of its theoretical contexts and through the work of key artists, specifically in relation to the use of lens-based documentary modes.
- Develop your skills in visual and theoretical analysis, particularly in relation to lens-based media.
- Learn how to effectively structure an argument which synthesises theoretical and artistic positions introduced through the course and, in some cases, presents original research.
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Reading List
Alexander Alberro and Blake Stimson (eds), 1999. Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology (Massachusettes and London, MIT Press)
Ursula Biemann, 2003. Stuff It: The Video Essay in the Digital Age, (Zürich, Edition Voldemeer and New York, Springer)
Claire Bishop, 2012. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship (London, Verso)
Nicolas Bourriaud, 2002. Relational Aesthetics (Dijon, Les Presses du Reel)
Alfredo Cramerotti, 2009. Aesthetic Journalism (Intellect, Bristol)
TJ Demos, 2013. The Migrant Image: The Art and Politics of Documentary during Global Crisis, (London, Duke University Press)
Angela Dimitrakaki, 2007. 'Materialist Feminism for the Twenty-first Century: The Video Essays of Ursula Biemann', Art Journal, 30.2: 205-232
Steve Edwards, 2012. Martha Rosler, The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems (London, Afterall)
Okwui Enwezor et al (eds), 2002. Documenta 11, Platform 5: Exhibition Catalogue (Ostfildern-Ruit : Hatje Cantz ; London : Art Books International)
Hal Foster, 1996. 'The Artist as Ethnographer' in The Return of the Real (London, MIT Press): 171-203
*Boris Groys, 2008. 'Art in the Age of Biopolitics: From Artwork to Art Documentation' in Art Power (London, MIT Press)
Jonathan Harris (ed), 2011. Globalization and Contemporary Art (Chichester, Wiley-Blackwell) 1-15
Amelia Jones (ed), 2006. A Companion to Contemporary Art since 1945, (Oxford, Blackwell)
Amelia Jones, 1997. '"Presence" in Absentia: Experiencing Performance as Documentation' in Art Journal Vol. 56, No. 4: 11-18
Dan Karlholm, 2005/06. 'Reality Art: the Case of Oda Projesi' in Leitmotiv 5: 115-124
Grant Kester, 2004. Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art (Berkeley, CA.: University of California Press)
Stewart Martin, 2007. 'Critique of Relational Aesthetics', Third Text, Vol. 21, Issue 4: 369-386
Tanya Leighton (ed), 2008. Art and the Moving Image: A Critical Reader (London, Tate Publishing and Afterall)
*Maria Lind and Hito Steyerl (eds), 2008. The Greenroom: Reconsidering the Documentary and Contemporary Art # 1, (Berlin, Sternberg Press & CCS Bard)
Martha Rosler, 1989. 'In Around and Afterthoughts (on Documentary Photography)', The Contest of Meaning, (Cambridge Mass, The MIT Press): 303-341
*Julian Stallabrass (ed), 2013. Documentary (London, Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press)
Julian Stallabrass, Contemporary Art: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004)
Brian Wallis (ed), 1999 [1984]. Art after Modernism: Rethinking Representation (New York, The New Museum of Contemporary Art)
* denotes key text
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
- Independent research (locate, access and interpret information)
- Critical analysis
- Presentation (oral and written)
- Communication
- Organisation (the ability to plan workloads and meet deadlines)
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| Keywords | Contemporary Art,Performance Art,Globalisation,Documents,Biopolitics,Feminism,Participatory Pr |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Kirsten Lloyd
Tel: (0131 6)51 5799
Email: Kirsten.Lloyd@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Remi Jankeviciute
Tel: (0131 6)51 5773
Email: Ramune.Jankeviciute@ed.ac.uk |
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