Hello All,
I'm teaching a seminar on collaboration this term at UCSD and Trebor
suggested posting it to the list. I'll include the readings/topics
here, FYI. Some of the URLs may not come through, so just let me know
if anyone wants more info. on specific readings (a lot of them are from
on-line sources).
Best wishes,
GrantVIS 255: Seminar in Contemporary Art
Winter 2004
Grant Kester
Collaboration in Contemporary Art
What is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is; if someone asks me,
I no longer know.
St. Augustine, The ConfessionsCourse Overview
This seminar will examine recent developments in collaborative art
practice. Specifically we will discuss projects that challenge the
conventions associated with solitary artistic expression via
collaborative production carried on either among a group of artists, or
between the artist and other groups or individuals. Examples include
Superflex, MuF, B+B, Littoral Arts, Platform, Park Fiction, Temporary
Services, Ernesto Noriega, Mongrel, Sarai Media Lab, Wochenklausur, and
Khave Society, among others. How do we account for the re-emergence of
the collective unit as a mode of artistic production at this moment?
What is the history of this tendency? How do we theorize collaborative
production and how does it parallel, and challenge, the forms of
knowledge generated by solitary artistic practices? We will discuss the
ethical and epistemological questions raised by collaborative practice
(with reference to forms of collective identity), it’s conflicted
relationship to research paradigms drawn from the sciences as well as
the history of vanguard political movements, and its roots in modern
art history. Grading will be based on attendance, class participation
and completion of a final paper presenting a case study of a specific
collaborative group or project. Readings for the class are on-line and
on the Geisel Library “Electronic Reserves” site (ER).
WEEK 1
Introduction to class
Tuesday, January 6Week 2
Art History and the Banality of Collaboration
Tuesday, January 13
READINGS
Peter Bürger, “On the Problem of the Autonomy of Art in Bourgeois
Society,” Theory of the Avant-Garde (University of Minnesota Press),
(ER)
Holland Cotter, “Doing Their Own Thing, Making Art Together” New York
Times (January 19, 2003), provided by instructor
Annick Bourguignon and Christopher Dorsett, “Creativity: Can Artistic
Perspectives Contribute to Management Questions” at:
Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello, “The New Spirit of Capitalism,”
(Columbia University, 2002) at: www.columbia.edu/cu/ces/conference2002/
papers/j6_boltanski_chiapello.doc
Conference Report, “The Beauty of Collaboration: Manners, Methods and
Aesthetics” Banff New Media Institute (May 2003) Overview and “Agenda”
(pdf.) at:
Quovix, Four Dimensions of Collaboration and Networked Organizations,
at:Week 3
Duration and Theatricality
Tuesday, January 20
READINGS
Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood,” Art and Objecthood: Essays and
Reviews (University of Chicago Press, 1998), (ER)
Alan Kaprow, “Happenings in the New York Scene” (1961), “The Happenings
Are Dead: Long Live the Happenings!” (1966) and “The Education of the
Un-Artist, Part I” (1971) on-line at: (this URL is accessible to UC
students only via UCSD networked computers)
Chris Hill, “A Radical Communications Paradigm for a Participatory
Democracy,” Attention! Production! Audience! Performing Video in its
First Decade, 1968-1980 at
“Countdown to Zero, Count up to Now: An Interview with Artist’s
Placement Group by Pauline van Mourik Broekman and Josephine Berry,”
Mute #25 (11.28.02) at: (go to “Archive” and locate “M25” to access
the article)Week 4
Theorizing Collaboration
Tuesday, January 27
READINGS
Steven Crowell, “Dialogue and Text: Re-marking the Difference,” The
Interpretation of Dialogue, edited by Tullio Maranhao (University of
Chicago Press, 1990) (ER)
Martin Morris, “The Paradigm Shift to Communication and the Eclipse of
the Object,” South Atlantic Quarterly vol. 96, no.4 (Fall 1997) (ER)
Grant Kester, “Dialogical Aesthetics” Conversation Pieces: Community
and Communication in Modern Art (University of California Press, 2004)
(ER)Week 5
Ultra Red Presentation
Tuesday, February 3
• Case study outlines due
Ultra Red URL:WEEK 6
Recent Projects
Tuesday, February 10
READINGS
“John Ahearn on the Bronx Bronzes,” Dialogues in Public Art, edited by
Tom Finkelpearl, (MIT Press, 2000) (ER)
Ernesto Noriega, “Memory and Creativity: Indigenous Peoples and the
Struggle for Self-determination” (unpublished paper) (ER)
“Desire, and a kind of playfulness: An edited transcription of an
‘exchange-situation’ at the Copenhagen Free University, March 18, 2002”
Variant (Summer 2002) at:“Concrete Social Interventions: Interview with Pascale Jeannèe of the
artists group WochenKlausur,” Variant (Winter 2002) at:
“Oh Gag Me: An Inclusive Conversation with Suzanne Lacy,” Variant
(Winter 2001) at: http:WEEK 7
Collaboration and Collectivity I
Tuesday, February 17
READINGS
Jacques Ranciere, "The Rationality of Disagreement," Dis-agreement:
Politics and Philosophy (University of Minnesota Press, 1999) (ER)
Alberto Melucci, “Conflicts of Culture“ and “Collective Action and
Discourse,” Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age
(Cambridge University Press, 2001) (ER)
Pierre Bourdieu, “Delegation and Political Fetishism,” Language and
Symbolic Power, translated by Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson (Harvard
University Press, 1994) (ER)
Edina Husanovic, “Cultural Networks in Bosnia-Herzogovina, Croatia and
Serbia,” (Sheffield Hallam University, 2003), pp.34-43. Instructor will
provide copies.WEEK 8
Collaboration and Collectivity II
Tuesday, February 24
• Begin case study presentations
READINGS
Jean-Luc Nancy, “The Inoperative Community” The Inoperative Community
(University of Minnesota Press) (ER)
Miwon Kwon, "The (Un)Sitings of Community," One Place After Another:
Site Specific Art and Locational Identity (MIT Press, 2002) (ER)
Grant Kester, “Community and Communicability,” Conversation Pieces:
Community and Communication in Modern Art (University of California
Press, 2004) (ER)WEEK 9
New Technologies
Tuesday, March 2
• Case study presentations
READINGS
Edward O. Wilson, excerpt from Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge
(Knopf, 1998) (ER)
John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, “The Advent of Netwar (Revisited),”
The Rand Corporation (2002) at:
Marion Hamm, “Activism in Physical and Virtual Spaces,” Republicart
“Real Public Spaces” issue at:
David Noble, “Digital Diploma Mills, Part I and II” at:
Critical Art Ensemble, “Collective Cultural Action” Variant (Summer
2002) at:WEEK 10
Final Class
Tuesday, March 9
• Finish case study presentations