Course syllabus

 This is a double-semester course 2018 (30 points)

SEMESTER 1:

Mondays, 12-2pm.  Arts 1 206-314

SEMESTER 2:

Fridays, 2-4, 260-307

Course Convenor and Teacher:

Greg Minissale

Course delivery format:

E.g. - 2 hours of lectures and 1 hour of tutorial

(Timetable and room details can be viewed on Student Services Online)

Summary of Course Description:              

Concepts are not just things in our heads they are things we can explore immersed in the world around us. When we make art or interpret it we explore concepts with our eyes and bodies, and with materials, techniques and rhythms. Art does not merely represent thought it helps to expand its definition.

Artworks can produce cognitive dissonance; this suggests art isn’t just there to make us feel happy and content. It also presents us with cognitive and perceptual problems (or "problem spaces") that help us to become aware of implicit attitudes and values acquired through childhood, cultural and institutional learning and through the daily consumption of images in mass media and digital culture. 

In our seminars we try to unpick some of the dualisms by which we acquire implicit assumptions about the world. Some of the main traditional dualisms are:

• Mind/Matter
• Body/Mind
• Subject/Object
• Masculine/Feminine
• Political/Personal
• Form/Matter
• Culture/Nature

Art’s problem spaces help us to think about how these dualisms might be challenged, destabilised or questioned. It is important that these problem spaces can be shared between viewers and gallery visitors, artists, critics and students in this seminar. Problem spaces are good things. Viewers of art often feel they need to solve the "puzzle" of art, to find meaning; this may be pleasurable and provides motivation and purpose. But there are also opportunities to be open minded about different possible answers. This exercises our creative thought. While art presents problem spaces it does not impose an answer or solution to a problem.

Art also has a close relationship with non-rational thought, subconscious complexities, imagination, emotions, affects and sensations — all of which influence our concepts and how we might combine them. These ‘felt’ and very much embodied aspects to the art experience are addressed and often structured by artistic practice. This may also have political and ethical dimensions, both in terms of freedom of movement and freedom of thought.

It could be said that art is a vision of life as it might be. It may present us with some interesting challenges and counterfactuals concerning this vision. It often helps to produce aspects of spontaneity or improvisation rather than premeditated rules. 

As the French artist Jean Dubuffet said:

"[…] the only flowers I like are wild flowers. Orderly gardens make me nervous…I feel a sharp curiosity for everything that does not emanate from man, in which man has not intervened…wild places, wild animals…and for my interest in worlds very different from that of man…As for human beings, it is also their wildness that I am fond of…I am not a great believer in the laws concerning the nature of art. As soon as such a law is proclaimed I immediately experience an intense desire to infringe it."

Artworks can help to produce feelings of being "in the moment", providing immersive qualities that work against the formulae of visual culture and the dogmas of cultural institutions. Sometimes it emerges at its highest reaches when rational procedures and measurements have been exhausted.

Outcomes

On this course, students will:

• Acquire an in-depth knowledge of contemporary art in a global context
• Acquire high-level research skills involved in image analysis and literature reviews
• Gain a deeper understanding of concepts and technical terms current in curatorial practice, art writing, journalism and art criticism; they will learn how to apply these concepts to their own writing and visual analysis
• Learn how to present and sustain cogent arguments and complex analysis with visuals
• Students will become familiar with techniques that support critical thought and divergent thinking in problem-solving.
• The course facilitates novel solutions through negotiation and teambuilding: key aspects of leadership and intellectual development.
• Outside of contemporary art, the course teaches students to situate artistic practice and images in social, cultural, political and psychological contexts.

 Key theorists

Henri Bergson, Sigmund Freud, Georges Bataille, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Henri Lefebvre, Judith Butler, Rosalind Krauss, Anton Ehrenzweig, Michael Fried, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Jacques Rancière, Jane Bennett.

Artists

Robert Smithson, Robert Morris, Hans Haacke, Marina Abramovic, Matthew Barney, Mona Hatoum, Rachel Whiteread, Tracy Emin, Andre Serrano, Thomas Hirschhorn Damien Hirst, Cindy Sherman, Catherine Opie, Jeff Wall, Thomas Struth, Wangechi Mutu, Olafur Eliasson, Lisa Reihana, Dane Mitchell, Simon Denny, Luke Willis Thompson, Francis Uprichard, Billy Apple, Hito Steyerl, Bernadette Corporation, Amalia Ulman, Frances Stark and many more.

Workload and deadlines for submission of coursework:           

The University of Auckland's expectation is that students spend 10 hours per week on a 15-point course, including time in class and personal study. Students should manage their academic workload and other commitments accordingly. Deadlines for coursework are set by course convenors and will be advertised in course material. You should submit your work on time. In extreme circumstances, such as illness, you may seek an extension but you may be required to provide supporting information before the assignment is due. Late assignments without a pre-approved extension may be penalised by loss of marks – check course information for details.