DIG Pool 3: Art & Writing: Between Critical and Creative 

Nummer und TypMFA-MFA-Po00.20H.003 / Moduldurchführung
ModulPool: 
VeranstalterDepartement Fine Arts
LeitungMarie-France Rafael
Anzahl Teilnehmendemaximal 15
ECTS3 Credits
VoraussetzungenCourse language: English and German (two groups)

Active Participation
Reading in Preparation
Written exercises
Preparing short presentation
LehrformSeminar, guest lectures
ZielgruppenMA Fine Arts students
Open for exchange students
Recommended for graduating students
Lernziele / KompetenzenWorking with textual practices in English and German
InhalteIn this introductory course on experimental writing – between critical and creative – students will reflect on the practice of writing in the context of contemporary art.
Artists write. They write about art: about their own and the art of others. They write as an artistic practice. And they write within the realm of art as well as about other contexts. At the same time criticism become more expansive and searching under the influence of deconstruction, feminism, popular culture and theoretical movements around race, colonialism and sexuality; leading to an opening up of the modalities of critical writing to more experimentation and reflectiveness.
This course, itself experimental in nature, will offer extensive readings as well as practical writing exercises with the students, in order to lay grounds of possibility for their own critical and/or creative writing. Boundaries between genres, formats, and between “critical” and “creative” writing will be subject to a practical and theoretical exploration. Alongside chosen examples dealing with the question of authorship – autofiction and autotheory (Sophie Calle, Chris Krauss, Katy Acker, Maggie Nelson, Paul B. Preciado i. a.) – we will analyze questions of subjectivity and individuality in the realm of digitality – this also in the light of a “new black feminism” (Aria Dean, Legacy Russell i. a.). In addition to that, we will have a look at new modes of production and distribution that the internet has to offer (for example Tweets, Blogs, etc.) as well as significant platforms.
The goal of the seminar is to find an approach to writing (of critical-adjacent texts as artist’s statements), as well as to enrich a creative and conceptual art practice itsel.


About the teacher:

Marie-France Rafael, born in Munich in 1984, holds a PhD in Art History. She studied Art History and Film Studies in Berlin and Paris. From 2011 to 2015 she was a research associate at the Free University of Berlin and until 2019 at the Muthesius University Kiel, Department of Spatial Strategies/Curatorial Spaces. Her monograph, Reisen ins Imaginativ. Künstlerische Displays und Situationen (Cologne: Walther König, 2017), was recently published. Other publications include Ari Benjamin Meyers. Music on Display (Cologne: Walther König, 2016), and Pierre Huyghe. On Site (Cologne: Walther König, 2013).
Bibliographie / LiteraturA ‘course reader’ including all readings will be provided
to the students at least two weeks before the begining of the seminar.
Leistungsnachweis / TestatanforderungMandatory attendance (80%); active participation
TermineTime: 09:00 - 17:00 o'clock

CW 44: 26 / 27 / 28 / 29 / 30 October
Bewertungsformbestanden / nicht bestanden
Termine (5)