Modes of Engagement: Critical Thinking and Making in the Arts

About this programme

The course is conceived as a critical exploration of the interplays of art with culture, society and life through engaged theory and philosophy, allowing and encouraging participants to take and develop a position regarding the role and potential(s) of art as a world-making practice. The course encourages students to formulate and develop a position in relation to the role and potential of art as a world-making practice. Theories and practices are not understood as things apart: the inseparability of thinking/making/feeling informs the conception, content and organization of the course. A pragmatic engagement with the here-and-now 'situatedness' of art practices is the core object of the course, and participants will be encouraged to think and share through their practices and experiences. **Module 1: Seminars and Active Participation, 4.5 ECTS credits: **The module comprises six seminar sessions involving close reading and discussion of texts, critical analysis and discussion of artworks and projects, and short writing/thinking experiments. These sessions are structured along the vectors defined by a series of 'matters of concern' that aim at capturing core, timely and urgent threads of/in contemporary art. These might include but will not be limited to the following: Art/Institution(s), Environment/Life, Situatedness/Movement, Material/Technicities, Body/Apparatus, Performative/Things, Affective/Coexistence, Love/Care, Fragility/Affinity. **Module 2: Critical, Reflective and Speculative Text, 3 ECTS credits: **The module comprises the student's independent development