Thresholds of Art and Activism Department of Art and Art History, FAH 092/

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1 Thresholds of Art and Activism Department of Art and Art History, FAH 092/ Spring 2014, Mondays and Wednesdays, 4:30 5:45PM Aidekman Arts Center, Room 012, 40 Talbot Avenue Claire Grace Office hours: 11 Talbot Ave, Room 108, Mondays and Wednesdays 6pm-7pm and by appointment. This course investigates transformations in artistic production and discourse since the 1960s by navigating the contested boundaries between art and activism. In the context of war and social upheaval, artists turned to the street, intervened in the public sphere, and made change thinkable through techniques of collaboration, performance, defamiliarization, and the counterfactual. Exploding familiar protocols of agitprop, they advanced a politics of representation as much as a representation of politics, rethinking both the forms of art and the channels of its distribution. Setting anchors in philosophical texts (Adorno, Benjamin, Debord, Rancière) and recent debates in art historical scholarship (Bishop, Bryan-Wilson, Enwezor, Kester, Lambert-Beatty), we will consider contexts as diverse as the social movements of the 1960s, postcolonial struggles, queer liberation, and Occupy Wall Street, with case studies ranging from the Art Workers Coalition, the Situationist International, and Emory Douglas to Gran Fury, the Yes Men, and Women on Waves. Whether flying under the banner art or not quite, these activities and their historical sources provoke our questions: Where is the line between art and activism today? What agency or value might that line continue to hold for us now, and why? How must we evaluate the efficacy, ethics, and aesthetics of such practices? And what conditions have made them timely for artists? The course coincides with Living as Form (The Nomadic Version), an exhibition and series of public programs at Harvard s Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts (CCVA) surveying socially engaged art from around the world, with a focus on Boston-area artists. Note that in addition to regular M/W class sessions, at least one Living as Form event is required for this course (an artist talk on February 20th, 6:30pm). It is possible to enroll in the class if you cannot attend this talk, but please see me within the first two weeks of class to arrange an alternative assignment. For more information about the exhibition and programs, visit: REQUIREMENTS: Preparation, Participation, and Attendance Assigned readings are available digitally via Trunk on the course website. All students are expected to read and be prepared to discuss each text in advance of the corresponding session listed on the Schedule of Classes below. In addition, Monday and Wednesday Focus Groups will be established in class on January 22nd. Beginning January 27th and every subsequent class meeting (with a couple of exceptions), each Focus Group member will prepare a written Text Lever (TL) for that day s assigned reading. Different from a traditional response paper, TLs should primarily serve both your comprehension and engagement with the reading and your participation in class discussion. TLs should consist of 1-2 pages of (preferably typewritten) bullet points, notes, diagrams, etc. that may: Synthesize the text s central arguments, contributions, and/or guiding questions Identify assumptions left unaddressed by the author Pose questions related to core ideas or historical material brought forward in the text 1

2 Connect the text to other readings, artists, or projects studied in (or outside) the class Take a position relative to the text by proposing counter-claims or alternative arguments Bring our attention to specific passages and page numbers Print two copies of your TL each week, one to turn in at the beginning of class, and one to keep with you for discussion. Short Papers [not required for FAH-192] Two 2-page response papers will be due at the beginning of class on March 5th and April 9th respectively. Both papers provide an opportunity to test concepts developed in the class by responding to a public event linked to Living as Form (and/or an in-class screening). Both papers should engage deeply with the content of the corresponding CCVA event, and should place it in conversation with one or more specific readings or discussions from class. Both papers should make an argument, or series of arguments, and/or pose an inquiry about what you heard and saw. Paper 1, due March 5th: A letter addressed to Doug Ashford in response to his Artist Talk (2/20/2014, 6:30pm, CCVA). Papers will be graded and returned, and clean copies will be sent the artist. (Anyone wishing not to have his/her letter sent to the artist, or wishing to revise and rewrite beforehand, may of course reserve these rights. Second drafts will be reviewed for a grade averaged with the first.) Paper 2, due April 9th: A response to one of the following: in-class screening of The Yes Men Fix the World (3/26/2014); Carpenter Center Lecture by Nato Thompson (3/27/2014, 6pm, CCVA); Performing Feminisms panel (3/28/2014, 7pm, CCVA). Final Paper A 7-8 page interpretive essay about any one work relevant to the class will be due May 9th (18-20 pages for FAH-192). Successful essays will be structured around a specific, clearly articulated argument about the work of art you ve selected, drawing on key questions and concepts addressed in the class. Support your analysis with carefully selected evidence drawn from the artwork (its physical properties, sensory details, etc.) and from outside research appropriate for your topic. Readings assigned for the course may be helpful in scaffolding the theoretical terms of your analysis, and for comparative purposes. Additional comparisons with related works by the same or another artist are encouraged where they help flesh out your argument. A list of potential topics will be provided. Students are encouraged to make use of office hours to discuss paper topics well in advance. All papers: 12pt Times New Roman, 1-inch margins. Cite sources with consistent adherence to either MLA or Chicago guidelines. Submit electronically via , preferably in Word or Pages. Research Presentation The last class meeting (with an extended session TBA) will be devoted to student presentations. Your assignment is to teach your classmates (and professor) about the artist, group, or phenomenon you have been researching, and to test the argument of your Final Paper. The goal is to give a polished 5-minute presentation that introduces your topic, provides necessary context, illuminates comparisons, and makes clear what important questions your topic raises. PowerPoint or Keynote is recommended (images will be helpful); send the file by midnight on 4/27/14 so that it can be incorporated into the showcase. Grading: Weekly TLs 20%; Participation 20%; Short Papers 20%; Presentation 15%; Final Paper 25% 2

3 SCHEDULE OF CLASSES: Week 1 / Introduction Wednesday 1/15 Week 2 / What Is Political Art? Monday 1/20 No class (Martin Luther King Day) Wednesday 1/22 Susan Buck-Morss, What is Political Art? in Private Time in Public Space: InSite97, ed. Sally Yard (San Diego: Installation Gallery, 1998), pp (English version on even numbered pages only). Tom Holert, Burden of Proof: Contemporary Art and Responsibility, Artforum (March 2013), pp Week 3 / Debates in Theory Monday 1/27 Theodor Adorno, Commitment, in Aesthetics and Politics (Verso, 1977), pp Wednesday 1/29 Walter Benjamin, The Author as Producer (1934), in Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation, ed. Brian Wallis (1984), pp Week 4 / Public Spheres and Counter-Publicity / Black Arts Movement Monday 2/3 Oskar Negt, Alexander Kluge and Peter Labanyi, The Public Sphere and Experience, October, vol. 46 (Autumn 1988), pp Wednesday 2/5 Kellie Jones, Black West, Thoughts on Art in Los Angeles, New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement, ed. Crawford and Lisa Gail Collins (Rutgers University Press, 2006), pp Emory Douglas, Position Paper No. 1 on Revolutionary Art, and Art for the People s Sake, in Art and Social Change: A Critical Reader, pp , Week 4 / War Monday 2/10 Francis Frascina, Art, Politics, and Dissent: Aspects of the Art Left in Sixties America (St. Martin s Press, 1999), pp , Guerrilla Art Action Group, Manifesto for the Guerilla Art Action Group, Art and Social Change: A Critical Reader, pp Wednesday 2/12 Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Performance Demonstration, from Being Watched: Yvonne Rainer and the 1960s (2008), pp Week 5 / Work Monday 2/17 No class (President s Day No Class) 3

4 Wednesday 2/19 All students participate in Wednesday Focus Group Art Worker s Coalition Statement of Demands in Art in Theory (2003), pp Julia Bryan-Wilson, Introduction, and From Artists to Art Workers, in Art Workers: Radical Practice in the Vietnam War Era (Berkeley: Berkeley University Press, 2009). Thursday 2/20* Attend talk by Doug Ashford, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge, Room B-04, 6:30pm. (No class at the regular meeting time.) Doug Ashford, Maria Lind Talks with Doug Ashford, and Abstraction and Empathy, in Writings and Conversations (Mousse, 2013), 11-22; [no Focus Group] (*substitute Monday s schedule) Week 6 / Feminisms, then and now Monday 2/24 Josephine Withers, Feminist Performance Art: Performing, Discovering, Transforming Ourselves, in The Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970s, History and Impact, eds. Norma Broude and Mary Garrard (Abrams, 1994), pp Wednesday 2/26 Lisa Darms, The Riot Grrrl Collection (Feminist Press, 2013), selections TBD. Week 7 / Flashback, Illuminate Monday 3/3 Augusto Boal, Invisible Theater reproduced in Art and Social Change Jacques Rancière, Distribution of the Sensible, The Politics of Aesthetics (2000), pp Wednesday 3/5 Guest Lecture, Ruth Erickson, on Paris, May 68 Guy Debord, The Commodity as Spectacle and Spectacular Time, Society of the Spectacle (originally published in 1967) (New York: Zone, 1994). First paper due March 5th at the beginning of class Week 8 / ACT UP Monday 3/10 Gregg Bordowitz, My Postmodernism, My 80s, Artforum (2003) Wednesday 3/12 Richard Meyer This is to Enrage You: Gran Fury and the Graphics of AIDS Activism, in But is it Art? The Spirit of Art as Activism (1995), pp Week 9 SPRING BREAK Week 10 / Culture Jamming, Tactical Media, and Neo-Situationist Practices Monday 3/24 Transversal Reading Exchange NB: All students participate (no Focus Group this week) 1) Mark Dery, Culture Jamming: Hacking, Slashing and Sniping in the Empire of Signs,

5 2) Michel de Certeau, General Introduction, and Making Do: Uses and Tactics, The Practice of Everyday Life (1984), pp. xi-xxiv, ) Nato Thompson, Trespassing a Relevance, Critical Art Ensemble, and SubRosa in The Interventionists: Users Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life (Mass MOCA, 2005), pp , , (see also and ) 4) Gregory Sholette, Dark Matter, Activist Art and the Counter-Public Sphere, Journal of Aesthetics and Protest 3 (and footnotes) 5) Jesse Drew, The Collective Camcorder in Art and Activism, in Collectivism After Modernism (2007), pp Wednesday 3/26 In class screening: The Yes Men Fix the World, 2010 Thursday 3/27: Optional talk by Nato Thompson, Lecture Hall, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy Street, 6pm Friday 3/28: Optional performance and discussion, Performing Feminisms, by artists of the Dirt Palace, A.L. Steiner, and Emma Hedditch, Sert Seminar Space, Third Floor, Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy Street, 7pm Week 11 / War, Parafiction Monday 3/31 Carrie Lambert-Beatty, Make-Believe: Parafiction and Plausibility, October (Summer 2009): pp Wednesday 4/2 Robert Bailey, Unknown Knowns: Jenny Holzer s Redaction Paintings and the History of the War on Terror, October (Fall 2012): pp Week 12 / Collaboration and the Social Turn Monday 4/7 Grant Kester, Introduction, in Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art (University of California Press, 2004), pp Claire Bishop, The Social Turn: Collaboration and Its Discontents, Artforum (2006): pp Wednesday 4/9 Okwui Enwezor, The Production of Social Space as Artwork: Protocols of Community in the Work of Le Groupe Amos and Huit Facettes, Collectivism After Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination After 1945 (University of Minnesota Press, 2007), pp Second paper due April 9th at the beginning of class Week 13 / Eco-Criticism, Counter-Cartography Monday 4/14 Yates McKee, Wake, Vestige, Survival: Sustainability and the Politics of the Trace in Allora and Calzadilla s Land Mark, October (Summer 2010): pp Wednesday 4/16: Content 5

6 T. J. Demos, Means Without End: Ayreen Anastas and Rene Gabri s Camp Campaign, October (Fall, 2008): pp Week 14 / Occupation Monday 4/21 No class (Patriot s Day) Wednesday 4/23 NB: All students participate in Wednesday Focus Group W.J.T. Mitchell, Image, Space, Revolution, The Arts of Occupation, in Occupy: Three Inquiries in Disobedience (Critical Inquiry, 2013), pp Week 15 / Student Presentations Monday 4/28 Final Paper Due Friday May 9th 6