This course focuses on post-1980’s art and art-related practices from around the world (installation, performance and web-art as well as film, drawing and painting). Our approach is from two broad perspectives. Under the category of ‘art activisms’ we consider practices that may be regarded as having an overt socio-political intent or agenda in terms of what they purportedly 'say' or 'do' – or 'encourage' viewer/participants to say or do. An example would be the 24-hour Marathon (London, Serpentine Gallery, 2006) initiated by architect Rem Koolhaas and curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, when they interviewed, non-stop, more than 70 people active in the London art scene. In the context of ‘art activisms’ we will explore contemporary debates concerning '(neo)conceptualism', 'institutional critique', the 'documentary turn' and 'relational aesthetics'. The category 'the Voices of Silence', on the other hand, signals contemporary work that appears to operate on more formal, material or resistant registers and may leave viewers with the feeling of having been made (temporarily) mute. Here, we will look at recent ‘silent’ film and video work by British artists Steve McQueen and Rosalind Nashashibi, as well as at new forms of abstraction and figuration in recent painting. Here, notions such as opacity, interruption, obstacle and the visceral will be important.
Teaching is by way of lectures and discussion. We will work closely with key visual case studies and, drawing on texts and statements by artists, art historians, theorists and curators, we will examine their broader art-historical contexts and theoretical implications. As a means of navigating and thinking about the diverse practices and ideas opened up on this course, we will also learn, and make use of, various concept- or mind-mapping techniques. Assessment takes the form of a mid-term and an end of term test and a short essay. In addition to a course reader, there are two basic texts: Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz (eds), Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings (California Studies in the History of Art, 1996) and Gill Perry and Paul Woods (eds), Themes in Contemporary Art (Yale, 2004). Estimated cost of materials: Less than $50. IV. 4.

Images: L: Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist, 24-hour Marathon, Serpentine Gallery, London, July 2006. R: Steve McQueen, still from Deadpan, 1997 16mm black and white film, video transfer, silent. 4min 30. © the artist, courtesy Anthony Reynolds Gallery, London and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.