Theory: Art Theories: Art & Post-Human Photography (gLV) 

Angebot für

Nummer und TypBFA-BFA-Th.21H.011 / Moduldurchführung
ModulTheorie 
VeranstalterDepartement Fine Arts
LeitungFelix Stalder
Anzahl Teilnehmendemaximal 16
ECTS3 Credits
VoraussetzungenCourse language: English
ZielgruppenBA Fine Arts students
Open for exchange-students

Interested BA students of other study programmes can register from 30th August to 12th September 2021 by ClickEnroll; https://intern.zhdk.ch/?ClickEnroll

Interested MA students write an email between 01 to 19 September 2021 to: studium.dfa@zhdk.ch
We will inform you by e-mail in week 38 whether participation is possible. Applications before 01 September 2021 will not be accepted.
Lernziele / Kompetenzen• Learning about artistic approaches to develop a new type realism.
• Understanding theories of post-human photography
• Reflecting one’s own practices in relation to questions covered in the module
InhalteWestern visual language has long been modeled on the human experience. Images were created to represent the world as it was seen by a single person. Mechanical photography both strengthened this regime by producing vast amounts of images claiming to represent external reality, but it also began to undermined it by separating the capacity to make images from the human eye. In the 1920s, Russian avant-garde director Dsiga Vertov built a visual theory and aesthetics based on this separation and the potential of mechanization.

Today, digital image-making has further unsettled the relationship between images and human experience. Ubiquitous pre- and post-processing means that images are to a larger degree generated rather than recorded, often not addressed to humans, but used for automated processes. More over, contemporary realities have become so complex, abstract, and stretched out over time and space that the individual visual experience is less and less capable to make sense of it. After all, how much can documentary photography reveal about data-centers or climate change?

In this module, we are investigating visual theory and artistic approaches that, like Vertov 100 years ago, respond to these contemporary challenges by creating a new type “realism”, which the artist Paolo Cirio calls “evidentiary” – visual language able to account for the reality we are living in. We are, among others, focusing on works by Trevor Paglen, Suzanne Treister, Marc Lombardi, and Forensic Architecture.

Felix Stalder (*1968) is a professor in the BA Fine Arts. His work focuses on the intersections of cultural, political and technological dynamics, in particular on new modes of common-based production, control society, copyright and transformation of subjectivity. He not only works as an academic, but also as a cultural producer, being a moderator of the mailing list <nettime> and a member of the World Information Institute as well as the Technopolitics Working Group (both in Vienna). Among his recent publications are “The Digital Condition” (Polity Press, 2018), “Aesthetics of the Commons” (co-editor, Diaphanes, 2021), and “Digital Unconscious” (co-editor, Autonomedia, 2021), https://fs.zhdk.ch https://felix.openflows.com
Bibliographie / LiteraturWill be handed out during the course
Leistungsnachweis / TestatanforderungMandatory attendance (minimum 80%); active participation
TermineTime: 09:15 - 17:00 o'clock

CW 40: 04 / 05 / 06 / 07 / 08 October
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Termine (5)