Critical Art Practice in the Public Sphere

 
Art As Social Pactice-Home


Art As Social Practice-Home


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Art As Social Practice

1.Course Description

This series of seminars will familiarize the group with histories of politically engaged work

 
in the public sphere. "Art as Social Practice"is a seminar and studio course.


Bringing in my cultural background, we will focus on working models in Eastern Europe, Britain,


and the United States as well as linking cultural theory and art practice. Each seminar will be 


divided into a seminar segment and work on a site-specific group project. The art project will be


a collaborative work on one interventionist project that draws from your experiential background. 


It is hereby linked to the demographics of the class. 


Issues discussed in seminars then will be applied to practice. The course encourages a sense of 


solidarity amongst the student's through the collaboration on this group project.


In the prevailing atmosphere of the disenfranchisement of critical interventionist


art practices this course argues for a critical practice that is based on a socio-economic analysis


of societal processes but is inclusive of pleasure and desire as well. It aims to create an awareness


of different sites in today's United States where critical art practice is taking place. Areas we will


consider are gender, queer politics, and race. Also discussed


are related questions of memory structure, community, site specificity, and institutional critique. 


These canonized but useful notions are dealt with as interwoven non-hierarchical aspects of the social


text.  
The course focuses on visible artists like Joseph Beuys, Hans Haacke, Adrian Piper, Michael Asher,


Felix Gonzalez Torres as well as less well known artists like Dubravka Knezevic, Tom Kalin, Roza 


El-Hassan and others.
"Art as Social Practice" advocates a practice that is "invested in questions challenging 


the surety of knowledge, to displace the flow a bit or redirect it". (Barbara Kruger). A practice


that does not approach these questions in terms of oppositionality in its binary sense of anti's and pro's.


Political work tactically aligns, affirms, and fosters ideas. It creates an argument, a productive confusion


that causes discussion. 


2. Questions of "Art As Social Practice"


What are our chances to be affective / effective as individuals or small groups dealing with issues like


homelessness, the US prison system, progressive union activities, and (urban) poverty in the prevailing 


surroundings of corporate late capitalism? How do we handle the arbitrary nature of a sign? Are we concerned

 
with direct change or do we define political interventionist artwork mainly in terms of causing a productive 


confusion leading to discussion? How do we think about the necessity of a connection between political 


discursiveness with artistic media-specific memory? How do we make our own (in many respects privileged) subject


position visible in the interrogation? Do we have the right to talk for "the Other"? How do we avoid a reductive


"over-identification" with the "Other" that assumes that they are by nature always right? 


How can we avoid pseudo-political work and cultural practices that are rather orientated on self-aggrandizement

 
or a sort of "feel goodiness"?