BUT… IS THIS ART? 2010
For the second year running, the CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo is offering the But… Is This Art? introductory course on contemporary art. The course will be broken down into 2-hour sessions , with a half-hour discussion on the key themes in current art.
The death of the author, the crisis of the subject, the decline of the great narratives and the formation of art as a critical space are some of the themes that will be addressed by contemporary art experts and CA2M educators over the course of the 11 sessions.
At the beginning of the 1970s the category "art" underwent such a radical change that since then anything can be described as art. Modernity (and its entire aesthetic system with it) came to an unequivocal end. Postmodernity and its new parameters of thought seem to have provided a reasonably appropriate platform from which to take this step. Simply learning to look at artists’ proposals in a different way is an insufficient aim for this course. Beginning to think about these proposals is a more attractive objective: thinking about them from the perspectives of philosophy, politics, aesthetics and personal experience in order to discuss some of the paradigms which, like the death of the author and the crisis of the subject, have been crucial to most of the works and conducts we shall be exploring.
WED 3 MAR
COURSE PRESENTATION
Yayo Aznar. Course director. Lecturer in Art History. Faculty of Geography and History. UNED (National Distance Learning University).
BATTERY OF QUESTIONS. INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSEVictoria Gil-Delgado. CA2M educator.
At this first contact we will use questions to explore contemporary art, examining our role as spectators.
WED 10 MAR
ART CIRCA ‘68: THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR
Joaquín Martínez Pino. Assistant Lecturer in Art History. Faculty of Geography and
History. UNED (National Distance Learning University).
General introduction to the death of the author based on the text by R. Barthes. The death of the author implies the birth of the spectator. The new role of the spectator and the new roles of the artist.
WED 17 MAR
APPROPRIATIONIST ATTITUDES
Carlos Granados. CA2M educator and artist.
A look at some of the projects that include appropriationism. We will discuss the attitudes and methods of appropriationist practices: quotes, samples, inclusion, interpretation, variation, transformation, hybridisation, alteration, deviation, transgression, mutation, etc.
WED 24 MAR
WITNESSES OF THEMSELVES, HISTORIANS OF OTHERS
Miguel Ángel García. Part-time Lecturer in Art History. Faculty of Geography and History. UCM (Complutense University, Madrid).
Since as far back as the Renaissance, artists have played the dual role of witness and historian. Nowadays, there are attempts to reinstate these categories from different viewpoints, adopting a critical discourse on certain occasions and a merely sanctimonious discourse on others. In relation to this situation that has dogged modernity from the outset, we will ask one key question: witness to which event, historian of which processes?
WED 7 APR
DEAD, A THOUSAND TIMES DEAD
Jordi Claramonte. Lecturer in Contemporary Aesthetics. Faculty of Philosophy. UNED (National Distance Learning University). The author is not dead – he is alive and more of a nuisance than ever – and nor is the spectator in a valid position to curse it – being lacking in all authority to do so. Furthermore, not even the critics and art teachers have a clue which way the wind is blowing. Can we find out?
WED 14 APR
FROM PARTICIPATION TO COLLABORATION
Pablo Martínez. Head of education and public activities at the CA2M. In this session we will examine some of the artistic practices that draw on spectator participation and the development of collaborative pieces to create new ways of confronting and relating to the sensible world. We look in particular at the practices which do not need to reinforce a non-existent social tie or resort to direct action in order to generate new relational methods.
WED 21 APR
FROM CONCEPTUAL ART TO CONTEXTUAL ART
Jordi Claramonte. Lecturer in Contemporary Aesthetics. Faculty of Philosophy. UNED (National Distance Learning University). We will explore the concepts of military tactics, strategies and operations as ways of understanding some of the fundamental changes that have occurred in artistic and social practices since the mid-20th century. New art will propose new forms of operating and will either articulate these socially and politically or – more probably – will continue to fool around for centuries to come.
WED 28 APR
POETICS AND POLITICS, FOREVER FRIENDS?
Yayo Aznar. Course director. Lecturer in Art History. Faculty of Geography and History. UNED (National Distance Learning University). Politics and poetics: the Benjamin/Adorno debate. Benjamin’s reflections on the reproducible work of art. Adorno’s autonomous art and its critical capacity. Different politics and different arts since May ’68. Towards a new definition of aesthetics. Susan Buck-Morss’s aesthetics and anaesthetics, and Rancière’s aesthetic alliance.
WED 5 MAY
DE-FOCUSING TO SEE
Miguel Ángel García. Part-time Lecturer in Art History. Faculty of Geography and History. UCM (Complutense University, Madrid). That which we call art, not without a certain prestige, has been structured for many centuries as a focused structure. In other words, as something that is seen and should be seen clearly, without any optical aberrations or visual residues. In the west, sight has functioned in the fashion of a well-oiled machine, that neither tires nor breaks down. From Velázquez to Monet and situationism, we will address the physiological drifts that the eye is always so pleased to engage in.
WED 12 MAYBUT WE ARE MANY OTHERS: FOOLS
Yayo Aznar. Course director. Lecturer in Art History. Faculty of Geography and History. UNED (National Distance Learning University). The “others” in us. Foucault’s reflections on the subject and power. The construction of madness through its representation. The crisis of a definition: Tony Oursler, Frances Torres, Juan Muñoz…
WED 19 MAY
AND THIS IS ARCHITECTURE?
Jesús López. Assistant Lecturer in Art History. Faculty of Geography and History. UNED (National Distance Learning University).
Where do people go at weekends? In fact, thousands of people flock to shopping centres and sports complexes. And yet, if you look at architecture magazines or the great books on the subject, you will find that these spaces are non-existent for critics and historians. Although almost a century has passed since concepts such as beauty were banished from the visual arts and now any object is worthy of being admitted to the plastic discourse, this has not occurred in architecture. Fortunately, people build cities without listening to the critics, and we will revisit them aided by revived situationist texts.
DIRECTED BY YAYO AZNAR