DIG Practice 1: Performing Digitality and the Realm of the Virtual in Contemporary Art 

Nummer und TypMFA-MFA-Pr00.20H.001 / Moduldurchführung
ModulPractice: 
VeranstalterDepartement Fine Arts
LeitungMarie-France Rafael, Doireann O'Malley, Nina Kerschbaumer
Anzahl Teilnehmendemaximal 11
ECTS21 Credits
VoraussetzungenCourse language: English

Active Participation
Reading in Preparation
Written exercises
Preparing short presentation
LehrformThis course will feature lectures, visiting artists, group and individual tutorials and demonstrations in order to expose students to a variety of themes, methods and applications within the field of contemporary art.
ZielgruppenMA Fine Arts students

Open for exchange students
InhalteWhat does it mean to think, to see, to act, to feel and to live through the digital? Many artists “use” digital technologies, but what could be an art, that would actually “thematize” – to cite the art historian and critic Claire Bishop ­and “reflect” on how digitalization alters our experiences and our very own existence itself i.e. how we experience and perform the digitalization of our existence. How to thematize and reflect in an artistic practice upon the transformations and changes that digitalization entails on social categories – class, gender, ethnicity, religion –, that (co-)determined identity-building. And what role to give to art and art production in our present time, that is more and more dominated and structured by the production, circulation, and consumption of endless amounts of images. But the question today is not so much only about producing new images, but rather about the question of how to use them in order to establish new aesthetic, social, and political circuits. The hypothesis (of this seminar) is that in times of digitalization – the effect of contemporary art needs to be understood increasingly via the terms of circulation, production, and consumption of images.
These images can be described in a variety of ways – as “poor images”, as well as body-images, or techno-bodies – but independently on that, what those images have in common, is the fact, that their becoming consumable images or a digital commodity is already inherent to them. So the main question might be: how can art resist in a certain way the contemporaneous socio-economic structures of power and ownership.
Can virtuality become a form of countering the hypervisibility and consumption of images? Positing that the creation of virtual spaces where the viewer is within a hyper space, could transcend the ubiquitous nature of images by becoming the image. Could this have the potential to enact the destabilization of the subject object model of viewing art and consuming images? When ‘experience’ is not an event, -performed by other bodies and spectatorship is the currency, to an experience where the viewer is an active participant, not only in the matrix of games and pornography but in a new (dis)embodied art form. Can this lead to socially engaged practice using virtual space to activate socio-political change within the virtual and social worlds?

In the first week we will focus on an introduction by the professors on their separate practices and the course description. The participants will also present their work in short introductions of 15-20 minutes. The course will offer extensive readings as well as practical writing exercises with the students focusing on dream analysis methodologies using digital writing or digital tools. At the end of the week (25th-27th of September) Marie-France Rafael will organize a workshop in collaboration with the Theater Neumarkt, titled “Performing Digitality”, together with Maurin Dietrich and Diamond Stingily (to be confirmed) questioning the production, circulation and consumption mode of contemporary art.
During the second week Doireann O’Malley will present the Prototypes series and organize a workshop exploring conceptions of Virtuality and the relation to visual representation and identity. Exploring the topics of pornography, gaming, violence, the military, escapism, sexuality, trans* embodiment and the psycho-analytic relations to live action role playing games.
The workshop will include a virtual reality presentation of a selection of artists work in VR including the artist’s current work, New Maps of Hyperspace_Test01, 2020.

About the teachers:

Doireann O’Malley, born Limerick, Ireland 1981. Holds an MFA from University of Ulster in Belfast, UK. Is currently participating on The Berlin Program for Artists and is a research fellow at Berliner Förderprogramm Künstlerische Forschung, 2020-2021. Recent exhibitions, talks and screenings include Urban Video Project at The Emerson Museum in Syracuse, NY. Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) BPA Talks, KW Berlin, DE. National Sculpture Factory/ Cork Film Festival, Cork, IE. Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, SE. Stadium Gallery, Berlin. Nordenhake Mexico City. Fondazione Adolfo Pini, Milan, IT. Rencontraires International, Forum des Archives, Paris & HKW Berlin, DESpaces in Between, Bozar, Brussels, BE. Mumok Kino Vienna. Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane, Dublin. Bobs Pogo Bar, Kunst Werke, Berlin. Berlin Art Prize, 2018. Wild, Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst, Oldenburg, DE
Prototypes, Produced by Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane, co-published by Sternberg Press and The Edith-Russ-Haus für Medienkunst with essays by Lou Drago, Caspar Heinemann and Joel Kuennen.

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).

Nina Kerschbaumer is a filmmaker and researcher. She is interested in fact and fiction narratives and the deconstruction of common storytelling methods. In her artistic work, she explores how the supposed distinction of private and public space and its visual representation affect concrete social and political decisions. Her research is directly linked to her practice as a Visual Artist, centered around mobile phone photography in social media, its production methods and implications.
Bibliographie / LiteraturReadings will include: Karen Barad, Claire Bishop, Judith Butler, Paul B. Preciado and Shoshana Zuboff among others.
A ‘course reader’ including all readings will be provided
to the students at least two weeks before the begining of the seminar.
Leistungsnachweis / TestatanforderungMandatory attendance (minimum 80%); active participation
TermineTime: 09:00 - 17:00 o'clock

CW 39: 21 / 22 / 23 / 24 / 25 September
CW 50: 07 / 08 / 09 / 10 / 11 December

Critiques:
CW 39: 23 September
CW 50: 10 December
Bewertungsformbestanden / nicht bestanden
Termine (13)