AH216 Berlin’s Museum Controversies Module: Exhibition Culture and Public Space Instructor:
Aya Soika, co-taught with
Andrea Meyer (TU Berlin)
Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fridays all day (9:00-17:15) starting on 30 October
Berlin has a long history as a museum center, possessing collections to rival Paris and London. Recently, the institution of the museum – quintessentially a nineteenth-century invention – has been the subject of radical transformation, resulting in changing modes of display and communication and a critical revision of existing notions of its public function. This class looks at some of the crucial themes within the current curatorial discourse, focusing on three sites that are at the center of contemporary German and international discussion of museum politics. The first is the Humboldt Forum, a reconstruction of the former Prussian City Palace and the new home to Berlin’s ethnographic collections. Controversy regarding the Forum hinges on the wider issue of European treatment of the colonial past, and the rightful status of objects which had very different functions and meanings in the original contexts from which they were appropriated. Our second site of investigation will be the historical complex on Museum Island, including the recently opened James Simon Gallery. Thirdly, we will examine the planning of a new building for the National Gallery’s twentieth-century collection near Potsdamer Platz by Herzog & de Meuron architects. This scheme has raised questions of aesthetic and topographical continuity and compatibility, as well as issues of cost. Pursuing these investigations will give us a unique insight into the decision-making processes, choices, and public discourse surrounding the modern display and understanding of art.
Please note: This course will take place as a block seminar.SyllabusFA302 Advanced Painting: Oil Paint and After
Module: Media, Practices, TechniquesInstructor:
John KlecknerCredits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 9:00-12:15
This advanced studio course is designed to connect the gamut of materials and techniques in contemporary painting with the development of an individual aesthetic style. Weekly sessions will expose students to a wide range of experimental paint applications with the aim of synchronizing chosen materials and methods with personal expression and content. Classes will feature demonstrations of techniques such as airbrushing, marbling, masking, projecting, stamping, stencils, collage, and inkjet printing on canvas. Students will gain experience working with oil, acrylic, enamel, vinyl, and gouache paints. Material demonstrations will be augmented by readings, slideshows, gallery tours, and studio visits. The syllabus begins with directed assignments that become increasingly more personalized and independent as the course progresses. The ideal student will have previous painting experience and be highly motivated to make a body of original work. The semester culminates in an “Open Studios” group exhibition.
SyllabusTH312 Postdramatic and Contemporary Theater in BerlinModule: Artists, Genres, Movements / Media, Practices, TechniquesInstructor:
Nina TecklenburgCredits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 14:00-17:15
The term "postdramatic theater" was coined by the theorist and critic Hans-Thies Lehmann in the late 90s to describe a radical new mode of performance that repudiated "traditional" practices and assumptions. Driven by technological and social transformation, this kind of theater came to be associated with a range of features such as aesthetic innovation, emancipation from text-based theater, self-reflexiveness, political intervention, low-hierarchical working conditions. Though the concept is over two decades old, it has proved durable, and is often invoked to characterize Berlin's theater world in particular. Through an intensive theoretical and practical exploration of contemporary performing art in the city, we will look at the way in which postdramatic theater has changed and diversified. We will study works by current postdramatic theater makers such as Gob Squad, She She Pop, andcompany&co, René Pollesch, Gintersdorfer/Klaßen, Rimini Protokoll, as well as works by an emerging generation and ask the question: what new aesthetic, technological and socio-political parameters are reflected in contemporary performing arts? What comes after the postdramatic theater? We will look at (post)migrant and decolonial theater, immersive and participatory theater, feminist and queer performance, posthuman, (post)digital and (post)Corona theater. Besides readings from performance studies, culture studies and social science we will create (postpostdramatic) theater, hold lecture-performances and write manifestos. No previous experience in theater and performance is necessary. Open to all students with a curiosity for experimenting with thought and theater.
SyllabusFA308 Finding the Stories
Module: Media, Practices, TechniquesInstructor:
Carla ÅhlanderCredits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon 9:00-12:15
This course combines photo analysis and practical photo work. We will look at what narrative constitutes a narrative and how the meaning of a photograph is created. In addition to producing their own photo series, the participants will become skilled at looking at, reading and talking about photographs. We will deal with issues such as subjectivity and objectivity, private and public, as well as technical issues like light situations. The workshop will include collaborations between students together we will explore a variety of aesthetic, practical and conceptual issues, asking questions like "What is my attitude to the topic?" or "Where does this narrative begin or end?"
SyllabusFA329 Playing with PerceptionModule: Media, Practices, Techniques / Aesthetics and Art Theory This course fulfills the mathematics and science requirement for Humanities students Instructor:
Nick HoudeCredits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue 9:00-12:15
Rather than simply make music that is provided to a listener, experimental composers in the late 20th century such as Maryanne Amacher and R. Murray Schafer tinkered with how sounds are met by the ear and body through working with the material structure of the inner ear (cochlea), haptic (touch/vibration) sensations, and the subtleties of the sonic environment in which they were heard. Their work explored went beyond making “music” by pursuing the frontiers of human perception and experience using scientific understanding as a framework for composition and, subsequently, challenging how perception rather than mere reception could be moulded through sonic experiments.
Starting from these innovative ideas, this class will unpack the human perceptual apparatus for “hearing” from evolutionary, cognitive, cultural, and aesthetic perspectives to provide a more considered and curious way of approaching sonic experiences. The idea is to take hearing and sound out of the restrictions of the musical context so that it can be explored and played with as an innate part of human experience.
The core of the class will be structured around understanding the anatomical and cognitive capacities for the human perception and experience of “sounds” as they have developed over the long course of human biological and cultural evolutions. This will also involve negotiating norms around what it means to “hear” through within the context of technological augmentation and notions of disability. Psychoacoustic experiments of later 20th century composers will then be explored through the prism of these evolutionary processes, affording a broad understanding of why this could be a compelling aesthetic and philosophical project.
This class does not require any background in music composition or theory and aims to be transdisciplinary in scope. The course will, however, involve listening to lots of sonic material and also making recordings of sound in some fashion. As this is a studio class, students will be asked to create and share sonic material but this should be seen as explorative and tied to any field of interest.
SyllabusAH219 Landscape, Land Art, and the CityModule: Artists, Genres, Movements / Aesthetics and Art TheoryInstructor:
Geoff LehmanCredits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue 15:45-19:00
This course will examine landscape art as a mode of representation, of experience, and of site-specific intervention, through close readings of a small number of major works. In the first part of the course, we will focus on European landscape paintings, from the Renaissance to modernism (where landscape plays a foundational role), as well as exploring the landscape tradition of Song dynasty China. In the second part of the course, we will turn our attention to land art, an artistic practice in which the engagement with landscape becomes a direct intervention in, and experience of, the actual physical landscape, and consider its relationship to landscape painting as well as its place within the transition from modernism to postmodernism. Topics for the course include: nature and human experience; landscape painting as expression of (scientific) curiosity or invitation to (religious) contemplation; subjectivity and the aesthetics of landscape; the materiality of the art object and the “post-medium condition” in site-specific work; art, ecology, and environmentalism; and the relationship of land art to the experience of urban space. Among the artists whose works will be our focus are Leonardo da Vinci, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Fan Kuan, Xia Gui, Caspar David Friedrich, Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey, Claude Monet, Mary Miss, Robert Smithson, Ana Mendieta, and Agnes Denes. Readings will include art historical, philosophical, and literary texts. Visits to sites in Berlin to experience works of land art firsthand are an integral part of the course.
SyllabusFA328 Embodied Storytelling Through VideoModule: Media, Practices, TechniquesInstructor:
Dafna MaimonCredits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Tue: 15:45-19:00
This advanced video class will explore embodied ways to approach storytelling and script creation within video by working with our own autobiography as experienced through the body. Our aim will be creating video works that do not merely tell a story but allow viewers to experience it viscerally. We will relate to the filmed medium as an extension of our senses, and to the body itself, as a stage for an emotional landscape that can be both personal and political at once. Our goal is to unravel new approaches in communicating empathy, memories, feelings and sensations through video. As such, experiments with different self- empowering movement techniques such as Body Mind Centering, Authentic Movement, Improvisation, collaboration and drawing will be at the center of our curriculum, and applied to different video assignments. These methods will help us gain bodily awareness and creativity, as well as a sensitivity for time and space: the two major elements we need to learn to control as video artists. Prepare to move, play, and perform utilizing your own body as material and subject within on-site class workshops; extreme curiosity, group participation and open-mindedness will be expected. Students applying for this course should already have some experience in filming and be self-sufficient in editing. We will also analyze works from artists and filmmakers who work with the body and autobiography as their starting point. Likewise, visiting body practitioners will be invited to host workshops within the class. The focus of this course will not be on technical video instruction. Instead, students will delve into a rigorous process and develop their own visual language that can at once analyze, criticize, and transmit visceral experiences reflecting on our existence and potential as humans in this highly digital age.
SyllabusAH302 The Idea of the Aesthetic
Module: Aesthetics and Art TheoryInstructor:
Katalin MakkaiCredits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 15:45-17:15
“Aesthetics” and “aesthetic” are terms that are often taken for granted inside as well as outside academic discourse. We speak of aesthetic experiences and judgments and qualities, and we employ “aesthetics” to designate the study of such matters. Although their root is taken from the Greek, the now-familiar terms (in their now-familiar usages) are, however, comparatively new. They are commonly regarded as having been introduced into the philosophical lexicon in the eighteenth century—a few hundred years ago. This course studies some of the texts that were key to the discovery, or perhaps the invention, of the “aesthetic”. What work was the idea meant to do? How did its evolution retain or reconfigure its original senses and purposes? Is the idea of the aesthetic problematic, ideological, or chimerical? Do we need an idea of the aesthetic to think about art? Authors include Plato, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Edward Bullough, Clive Bell, Clement Greenberg, John Dewey, Jean-Paul Sartre, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, Susan Sontag, Noel Carroll, Alexander Nehamas, Jacques Rancière, and Yuriko Saito.
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FA330 Politics, Practices and Theories of Contemporary ArtModule: Exhibition Culture and Public Space / Aesthetics and Art TheoryInstructor:
Dorothea von HantelmannCredits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Fri 14:00-17:15
Where is art situated in modern societies? Is it part of everyday life, or something apart? How did its social function evolve historically – and how is it transformed today? Are concepts such as “autonomy” and “criticality” still appropriate to describe the position and function of art in society? These are among the questions we will explore in this course, which combines the study of texts by scholars of philosophy, art theory and sociology with excursions into Berlin's art scene. In the theory part we will discuss authors such as Immanuel Kant and Theodor W. Adorno. The aim will be to understand art's double character as “autonomous” and “social fact” (Adorno). How can we comprehend this ambiguous condition that situates art simultaneously in and outside of society? How does the fact that “creativity” today has become a major social force, even a cultural imperative, challenge this position? In order to understand how politics, economy and creativity are linked in the 21st century, we will read several chapters of Andreas Reckwitz’ seminal book “The Invention of Creativity” (2019). Our discussions will be complemented by field trips to artist studios and exhibitions. As far as Covid-19 regulations allow, we will spend several sessions visiting the 11th
Berlin Biennial and the exhibition
“Down to Earth” at Gropius-Bau. Some of these field trips will take place on Saturdays and schedule changes may occur.
Syllabus The following courses are cross-listed with Literature and RhetoricAR317 Critical FabulationModule: Artists, Genres, Movements Instructor:
Clio NicastroCredits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Mon & Wed 10:45-12:15
What happens when cinema tries to recover and “repair” stories that have never been entirely told – due to the lack of archival material and witnesses, or because they belong to minoritized groups, or are simply considered inexplicable? And what if, in fact, repairing does not mean to fill the gaps, to seize and freeze a past event but rather to intentionally fail in reconstructing a history of violence, injustice and domination? In the article “Venus in two acts” (2008), Saidiya Hartman wrestles with the erasure of the murders of two women on a slave ship crossing the infamous Middle Passage. With the method of “critical fabulation”, Hartman proposes a reading of the archive that mimes the figurative dimensions of history in order “to tell an impossible story and to amplify the impossibility of its telling,” to reconstruct “what could have been.” This temporality at the fictional crossroads between past and future wants to impede a cathartic experience in the spectator, pointing out how the aftermaths of that story still affect the present. By following Hartman’s research method, this course will look at films that combine different genres and styles (documentary, historical, supernatural) to challenge the unidirectional linear representation of marginalized stories and characters. We will watch and discuss, among others, Atlantics (Mati Diop, 2019), Images of the World and the Inscription of War (Harun Farocki, 1991) Lazaro Felice (Alice Rohrwacher, 2019), The Fits (Anna Rose Holmer, 2015).
SyllabusLT328 The Modernist Fringe: Writing at the Edge of Experience Module/s: Aesthetics and Art TheoryInstructor:
Ross Shields Credits: 8 ECTS, 4 U.S. credits
Course Times: Wed 14:00-17:15
In 1892, William James defines the
psychic fringe as a “halo of relations” surrounding any definite mental image or thought and associating it with others. Although we are not generally aware of this fringe, it directs the stream of our consciousness and supposedly plays an essential role in both religious and aesthetic experience. This seminar will pursue James’s insight by examining seminal texts of literary modernism against the background of contemporaneous psycho-physiological, phenomenological, and psychoanalytic theories of the fringe. On the one hand, we will interrogate scientific and philosophical concepts of perception and association, focusing on the limits of discursive thought and its pre/un-conscious other. On the other hand, we will consider literary explorations of the fringe, reflecting on the strategies used by the modernists to articulate the ineffable. We will ask:
How does literary experience inform theoretical concepts of the psychic fringe? To what extent do these ‘fringe theories’ in turn condition and regulate literary production? Does literature succeed in showing what science cannot say? What is it that emerges in the particular encounters between theorist and authors at the turn of the century?Texts by Proust, Musil, H. James, Wolff, Valéry, Stein, Kafka, Hofmannsthal, Rilke; Bergson, Husserl, Helmholtz, Mach, W. James, Freud, Benjamin, Whitehead, Wittgenstein. Readings by Adorno, Dewey, Greenberg, Eisenstein, H.D., Kandinsky, Klee, Kulbin, Picasso, Pound, Schönberg, Stein, Valéry, Webern, etc.
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