Pool 3: Art & Experimental Writing 

Experimental Writing – Between Critical and Creative
Nummer und TypMFA-MFA-Po00.21H.003 / Moduldurchführung
ModulPool: 
VeranstalterDepartement Fine Arts
LeitungMarie-France Rafael
Anzahl Teilnehmendemaximal 12
ECTS3 Credits
VoraussetzungenCourse language: English
LehrformSeminar
ZielgruppenMA Fine Arts students
Open for exchange students
Lernziele / Kompetenzen• Working with textual practices
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, Maggie Nelson, Paul B. Preciado i. a.) – we will analyze questions of subjectivity and individuality – this also in the light of a “contemporary black feminism” (Saidiya Hartman, Grada Kilomba i. a.). In addition to that, we will have Travis Jeppesen as a guest (among others).
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 itself.

About the teacher:

Marie-France Rafael, 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 Brice Dellsperger. On Gender Perfromance (Berlin: Floating Opery Press), Ari Benjamin Meyers. Music on Display (Cologne: Walther König, 2016), and Pierre Huyghe. On Site (Cologne: Walther König, 2013).
Bibliographie / LiteraturWill be handed out during the course.
Leistungsnachweis / TestatanforderungMandatory attendance (minimum 80%); active participation
TermineTime: 09:00 - 17:00 o'clock

CW 46: 15 / 16 / 17 / 18 / 19 November
Bewertungsformbestanden / nicht bestanden
Termine (5)