Decolonisation

Decolonisation

discuss decolonising strategies as modes of disruption. 

Climate Change

Climate Change

consider artistic responses to global warming

Diaspora

Diaspora 

consider  responses to displacement and forced migration, exile, war and trauma.

Relational Aesthetics and Participatory Art

Relational Aesthetics and Participatory Art

Consider the rise of relational aesthetics and participatory practices in the 1990s and 2000s as precursors to contemporary activist initiatives.

The Art of Resistance

The Art of Resistance

explore the notion of 'resistance' through addressing social, historical, cultural and political issues affecting Indigenous people globally. Explore ways in which Indigenous artists use art as a form of resistance; using their practice as a tool to advocate for these issues.

Consider
Frontier wars (Lecture): Introduction into the frontier wars and artist responses.
Key artists: Judy Watson (Names of Places), Fiona Foley. 

Stolen generations (Lecture): Artists remembering the stolen generations.
Key artists: Julie Dowling, Tony Albert, Bindi Cole. 

The art of the Manifesto (Lecture): Exploring manifesto's. What are they and how to write them. 

Always was Always will be... (Lecture): Exploring land rights, native tile including the freedom rides.
Key Artists: Richard Bell, Vernon Ah Kee, Brenda Croft, Mervyn Bishop. 

Assimilation (Lecture): Assimilation and the politics of skin: exploring the Andrew Bolt case and other discussions around Aboriginal skin colour and authenticity and artistic responses.
Key Artists: Bindi Cole, Megan Cope, Bianca Beetson, Archie Moore. 

The art of Protest (Lecture): Exploring the history of Posters and T-shirts in Activism around the world.

Taking it to the streets (Lecture): Exploring the role of performance art and activism from around the world.
Key artists: Anthony Fernando, Richard Bell, Pussy Riot, Pussy Beanie movement, Coco Fusco, Yoko Ono. 

Cultural Sovereignty (Lecture): What is is Cultural Sovereignty? How can we assert our cultural Sovereignty? unpacking the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and how can we use it to inform our practice? 

Occupied (Lecture): Looking at the occupied movement and artist that respond to notions of the Occupied movement. This also links to the Sovereignty movement in Australia.

Thinking Globally (Lecture): Thinking globally, creative activism that spans the globe such as Black lives matter, Me too, the ice bucket challenge, the woman march against Trump. 


Reconcillation (Lecture): Reconciliation or wreck the silly nation? What does it really mean to reconcile? How can we move forward together as a nation? 

Memory and Trauma

Memory and Trauma

How might we begin to think and represent traumatic events? What is the relationship between trauma, memory and mourning? Examine the representation of trauma and memory across a range of mediums including film, photography and visual art. Topics examined include: the limits of representation, authenticity, post-memory, affect and reparative aesthetics. Students will be introduced to theories of memory and trauma drawn from art history, feminist theory, history, literature, postcolonial studies and psychoanalysis.

Representation: Looking at You, Me and the Selfie

Images of ourselves and others saturate our experiences of contemporary life. In Tinder pics, advertisements and Police mugshots, we automatically and unintentionally read signifiers of race, class, gender and sexuality. Yet how, and why, do we interpret these? This course engages with examples of representation drawn from the diverse fields of art, photography, popular culture (film, television and video games), news media and social media to enable students to critically assess images of their own and others' making. Drawing on theories of looking, with attention to the gaze and the construct of the Other, students will explore self-portraiture and representation in the age of the selfie.

The Society of the Spectacle (Seminar): In 1967, Guy Debord penned The Society of the Spectacle, opening the text with this first, prescient, thesis: "In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation". This seminar unpacks Debord's ideas before expanding into the questions: What are the implications of living in a society governed by images? What are the legacies of Debord's ideas? What role can image-makers play in perpetuating or disrupting the spectacle? 

Semiotics (Seminar): This seminar introduces semiotics - the science or theory of signs - pioneered by Swiss linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure and American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. After drawing out two key principles of semiotics: 1. that language (and images) construct rather than reflect the world; and 2. that distinctions are often made through binary oppositions. Discussions will focus on the implications of these principles in visual culture. 

The Male Gaze (Seminar): The feminist film critic, Laura Mulvey, coined the term 'male gaze' in her 1975 essay "Visual pleasure and narrative cinema". This seminar explains Mulvey's concept of the male gaze with attention to Mulvey's focus on who is doing the making, the framing and the looking. Discussions will focus on examples from visual culture that repeat, refuse or complicate the male gaze before turning to bell hooks' important critique of Mulvey via her racialised theory of the Oppositional Gaze. 

Heterocentric Visions and other Recurring Tropes (Seminar): This seminar deploys student-led discussion to investigate the relationships between overused cliches (especially as they relate to race, gender, sexuality, class and ability) and issues of invisibility/lack of representation. Student will bring pre-selected examples to class for a speed-dating style discussion. 

Coded Messages and Resistant Readings (Seminar): This seminar explores polysemy in visual culture, that is, the potential for different audiences to read multiple, even conflicting, meanings in a text according to coded messages and resistant readings. 

Female s(h)eroes: Counter-Representation (Seminar): In 1993, Australia's first Cyberfeminist art collective - VNS Matrix - refused to represent their female s(h)hero All New Gen, opting instead to imagine her as a powerful, feminine, mist. In this seminar, we'll discuss counter-representational strategies including redeploying existing images and inserting new bodies into old narratives.
Screening: Soda_Jerk, Terror Nullius, 2018. 

Anger and Repair (Seminar): In her book, Reparative Aesthetics, Susan Best articulates the possibility for political art to eschew its critical tendency in order to provide a method for healing. In this seminar, we'll explore the emotional affect of visual culture. 

Selfies, Self-Portraiture and Self-Representation (Seminar): African-American abolitionist, Frederick Douglas, was the most photographed man in the 1800s. He recognised in photography the potential to author a more accurate image of African Americans. In this seminar, we'll encounter an extraordinary suite of artists, activists and image-makers who have similarly turned the camera on themselves, and their surroundings.
Screening: Caroline Garcia, Imperial Reminiscence, 2018 

Masquerade (Seminar): Cindy Sherman famously photographs herself over and over, not as a form of self-portraiture but as a form of masquerade. Her repetitions expose images as a construct and identity as performance. With attention to Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, in this seminar, we'll discuss image-makers who perform for the camera, often without us knowing. 


Ethical Conundrums and Contemporary Debates (Seminar): In this final seminar, we will explore some of the ethical quandaries and contemporary debates raised by this course. Students will lead discussion on debates that divide opinion yet offer fruitful engagement. These may include: #yourfaveisproblematic: fandom in the age of critique, representing violence and desire in the age of #metoo, when is it unethical to take a selfie? What should/shouldn't be censored online? How/can Capitalism and Intersectional ethics coexist? etc

Art & Consumer Culture

Art & Consumer Culture

Jean Baudrillard’s assertion that postmodern consumer society is saturated with aesthetics to the point where art is no longer possible and that postmodern consumption should be understood as the consumption of signs. In order to illustrate these ideas the lecture will focus on artists who have celebrated the commodification of art, have fetishised the everyday and have established themselves as celebrity brands.

1. Jean Baudrillard The Object Value System: Consumption practices are based on ‘symbolic exchange’ value – that is an object’s value is related to its sign value (what it means socially, personally, individually to the consumer)

2. For Baudrillard the density, seemless, all encompassing extent of the production of images in society means that the distinction between reality and image has become effaced and everyday life has become aestheticised and so ‘art is everywhere’ - this creates a synthetic environment of desire for the consumer product

3. Artists including Jeff Koons, Sylvie Fleury and Haim Steinbach have used ready-made consumer objects as a vehicle to explore ‘commodity fetishism’ (displaced value of the product)

4. Artists including Damien Hirst and Takashi Murakami have harnessed the power of the celebrity system to expand their reach outside the world of art into the wider world of commerce and popular culture.

5. Luxury brands have employed the ‘cultural capital’ (power and social standing achieved through cultural knowledge and concepts of taste) associated with art to symbolically improve the status of the product and the consumer

Art Games

Art Games

Serious Games and Art Games are video games that promote alternative experiences in a video game environment. Serious games are used for everything from education to pain therapy to military recruiting. Art games blur the boundaries of gaming and art and don’t tend to follow the conventions of competitive or task-based gaming.

Bio-art

Bio-art 

Bio-art references work that utilises biotechnologies and biological systems in the context of art practice.

Cybernetics

Cybernetics


Cybernetics, cyborgs, transhumanisms and posthumanisms all focus on the connections and transactions (and power dynamics) that exist between biological forms and electronic/digital forms.

New Media

New Media

Focuses on concepts of New Media and Postmedia. We will discuss the relationships between technology, art and power. The lecture will cover a number of specialised terms and concepts associated with New Media and Postmedia including cybernetics, cyborg, parahumanism/transhumanism/posthumanism and bricolage. The lecture will then look specifically at controversial bio-art projects and at the serious game and art game genres of video games.

1. Although New Media has been conventionally understood as an art practice that utilises electronic technologies, it can be more broadly thought of as inclusive of interdisciplinary practices that combine forms of art, design, electronics and digital technologies.

2. Postmedia references a process and a circumstance in which traditional disciplines, values and histories have collapsed into a single mediatised sphere. It no longer is relevant to distinguish between different ‘types’ of media. All art (and cultural practice) is now postmedia. (This doesn’t mean ‘after media’ as if media has ceased to exist.)

3. Cybernetics, cyborgs, transhumanisms and posthumanisms all focus on the connections and transactions (and power dynamics) that exist between biological forms and electronic/digital forms.
4. Bricolage is a term derived from the French word for ‘tinkering’. It has been used in art practice to reference works that are ‘cobbled together’ from whatever is ‘at hand’.

5. Bio-art references work that utilises biotechnologies and biological systems in the context of art practice.

6. Serious Games and Art Games are video games that promote alternative experiences in a video game environment. Serious games are used for everything from education to pain therapy to military recruiting. Art games blur the boundaries of gaming and art and don’t tend to follow the conventions of competitive or task-based gaming. Several powerful cultural institutions, most notably MoMA, have started collecting video games as examples of New Media.

Postcolonialism in theory and practice

Postcolonialism in theory and practice

focuses on concepts of Postcolonialism. Key terminology of postcolonial studies will be introduced: the Other, alterity, subaltern, Orientalism, globalisation, diaspora, mimicry, and hybridity. Postcolonial studies is a discipline that contends with the consequences of colonial and imperial power structures, specifically the relationships between the colonisers and the colonised in which issues of hegemony are paramount. By surveying key writers in postcolonial studies — Said, Fanon, Spivak, Bhabha — and works by artists that engage specifically with colonial and postcolonial discourses — Moffatt, Bell, Shonibare— this lecture will give a broad overview of the terms and concerns of postcolonialism in contemporary art practice.

1. The Other: a philosophical concept, the Other is an individual (or collective concept) that exists outside of the centre/norm; or an ‘alien’ self that is incoherent to the self. Alterity is the quality of Otherness. The subaltern: a marginalised individual or collective that exists without agency.

2. Frantz Fanon’s work in the Caribbean, France and Algeria is considered seminal for postcolonial studies. Fanon advocates for ‘total liberation’ from the rule and influence of the coloniser, and he advocates violent revolution. His theories of the coloniser/colonised relationship remain prevalent.

3. Edward Said’s book Orientalism is also a foundational text in postcolonial studies. It describes the process by which the West Others the non-West. The West (Occident: Europe/America) constructs, romanticises, stereotypes, and dominates the East (Orient: the non-West).
   
4. Diaspora: from the Greek word for ‘scatter’, diaspora refers to the migration and/or dispersion of people from their homelands. Historically, diasporic migrations have often been violent and forced.

5. Homi K. Bhabha’s concepts of mimicry, hybridity and the third space: Mimicry refers to a method of subverting assimilation and the influence of the coloniser through the ‘mis-imitation’ of colonial power. Hybridity and the ‘third space’ refer to cultural exchanges and transactions that create new spaces and possibilities for discourse beyond old essentialist colonial binaries. Most importantly these hybridised spaces blur and defy boundaries and colonial categorisations.

6. Broadly, postcolonial studies is also concerned with counter-hegemonic and anti-imperial structures and possibilities. Hegemony: an imperial domination maintained through cultural constructs of ‘natural power’; maintaining the status quo; and the power of institutions and bureaucracies (education, law, religion, consumerism, etc).

Hyper-realism and the fiction of the real

Hyper-realism and the fiction of the real

‘Realism’ can be understood as both a movement in art (which began in France in the 1850s) and more broadly, as a style of representation. In its broadest application, realism refers to works that show ‘reality’, that is, what is believed to exist. This conception of reality rests upon the idea that what is real is discovered through the senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell) and as independent of representation (in art and literature and theatre etc.) So realism as expressed through the arts can be said to support that experience of reality and to reinforce it.

Realism has a strong connection to ‘truth’ and the art historical idea of ‘truth to nature’. Typically, realist art addresses everyday subjects and readily observable situations. It is grounded in the idea of the faithful representation (that shows things as they are) and committed to the idea of an objective reality. The popularity of 19^th Century Realism coincided with the invention of photography and its claim to ever more precise and objective representation as enabled by the camera.

While realism as a style of representation has persisted across the arts to the present day, there have been major challenges to the idea of reality that it relies upon, and consequently in the art that addresses that concept. This is particularly pronounced in art from the 1990s when the widespread application of computers in image making came about. These new image technologies disrupted earlier conceptions of the real and faith in images based in realism. Not surprisingly, photography and screen-based art has had a major role to play in this reassessment of realism. The paired concepts of simulacra and simulation, as developed by theorist Jean Baudrillard, have been influential in shaping debates around these issues. Baudrillard argues that we have moved from the representation of reality to its simulation, to the hyper-real, something beyond and outside of reality.

1. Realism as a 19^th C movement in art committed to objectivity over emotion, a major disruption in art at the time

2. Realism as a style of representation connected to ‘truth’, truth to nature, objectivity

3. Realism typically addresses familiar, everyday scenes but also harsh truths

4. 20^th C image technology sees a major challenge to concepts of the real that question the possibility of reality

5. Photography and screen-based art central to exploration of objectivity and realism

6. Hyperrealism exceeds the realism of photo realism and refuses simple relations between images and what they represent

7. Sculpture takes camera-computer based technologies into even more pronounced hyperrealism and increasingly complex questions of what is real and what is simulated

Gender Theory.

Gender Theory.

Discuss how Gender theory differentiates between sex and gender and consider some terms of gender theory, such as patriarchy, heteronormativity, and queer. Discuss alongside feminism those of broader definitions of gender identities. Visual representations of gendered identities as shown in films, music videos, art, photography and design practices will be looked at critically. The aim is in doing so is to demonstrate how gender is constructed and represented in relation to the shifts that have occurred in response to feminism.

1. SEX and GENDER need to be distinguished from one another in Gender Theory. SEX is understood to be a natural or biological feature (based on male and female genitalia and chromosomal differences). GENDER, is the cultural or learned significance of sex. Gender is the social and cultural roles, personality traits and behaviours that are seen to be socially acceptable for men and women in relation to concepts of masculinity and femininity.
2. Gender Theorist Judith Butler states that “Gender norms operate by requiring the embodiment of certain ideals of femininity and masculinity, ones which are almost always related to the idealization of the heterosexual bond” (Critically Queer, p. 22). The splitting of gender binaries in visual culture, social, cultural and political spheres produces two distinct genders and is exclusive of gender variations. These binaries normalises this dual model, after which it becomes naturalised. This is known as heternormativity.
3. The development of feminism has seen the development of several eras: First wave feminism (late 19^th century until early 20^th century), Second Wave feminism (mid 1960s until 1980), Third wave feminism 1980s until late 1990s, Post-Feminism 2000-current.
4. Gender theory and gender politics have directly benefited from the advances made by feminists and feminism. Today there is a broadening of the ideas of gender to include LBGTQI (Lesbian, Bi, Gay, Transgender, Queer and Intersex). This group is often spoken about under the umbrella term ‘Queer Theory’.
5. Queer artists embrace the subversive possibilities of challenging the hegemony of heterosexuality. The aim is to activate a new set of values, and discourses that allow for such a space to be defined, expressed or explored.

The Body ‘identity politics

The Body

While the body has been a central concept to art and design practices for millennia, it is in the postmodern period (roughly 1960 - 1990s-2000) that artists and designers have turned a spotlight on the body to express issues relating to identity, especially identity defined in terms of race, ethnicity, gender or sexuality. Much of this effort has been undertaken in order to validate and empower groups who have historically been underrepresented not only in the mainstream art world, but the world in general. In this process we use the term identity politics, which refers to the beliefs and activities of practitioners who target racism, sexism and other forms of prejudice and draw attention to issues of cultural diversity, social rights and economic parity.

1. Identity is formed within a complex matrix of many variables, including gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class, religion, community and nation.

2. Broad generalised or stereotyped interpretations of group identity can be counterproductive and are called essentialism. This term is used when “claims about a group’s identity are based on the notion that the shared qualities are natural or based on biology” (Robertson & McDaniel 2010, p. 46). Notions of diversity contrast with essentialism. Diversity accounts for the complex variables (class, religion, gender, ethnicity etc.) within any group that contribute to the construction of our identity.

3. Factors influencing societal changes in the way we view ourselves include: social political scientific changes including rapid technological change, victories for feminist and civil rights causes, the rising world influence of societies beyond Europe and the Unites States, globalisation of economic systems, ever-increasing speed of information transfer, and the influence of feminist, postmodern and postcolonial theories on a range of intellectual and cultural arenas.

4. There has been a deep implicit connection between art and identity throughout the Western tradition of art history. The Portrait and self-portrait are two genres that demonstrate this enduring tradition.
   
5. Art practices of the 1960s and 1970s that used the body as material to contest/critique/understand issues relating to identity came to be known as Body Art. This was particularly strong in Performance Art of the 1960s and 1970s.

6. What we know of our bodies ‘nature’ is available to us only through the various ideologies that help construct our understanding of the world and our place in it

1. Chris Burden TV Hi-jack 1972

1. Ai WeiWei Study in Perspective – Tiananmen Square, 1995-2003, Gelatin Silver Print.

Michiko Nitta and Michael Burton The Algaculture Symbiosis Suit, 2010-

Oppositions

Oppositions

 Oppositions to ponder… Oppositional ways of ordering phenomena can result in ‘difference’ being perceived in a judgmental way that forms hierarchical cultural values based on black and white distinctions. And what about the ‘grey’ areas – the merging of the ‘either’ ‘ors’?
EITHER OR
culture nature
 conscious unconscious
willful instinct
mind body
 analytical irrational
 reason emotion
clear obscure
science arts
 light dark
good evil
spirit matter
exposed enclosed
exterior interior
 masculine feminine

Virtue	Latin	Gloss	Sin	Latin
Chastity	Castitas	Purity, abstinence	Lust	Luxuria
Temperance	Temperantia	Humanity, equanimity	Gluttony	Gula
Charity	Caritas	Will, benevolence, generosity, sacrifice	Greed	Avaritia
Diligence	Industria	Persistence, effortfulness, ethics	Sloth	Acedia
Patience	Patientia	Forgiveness, mercy	Wrath	Ira
Kindness	Humanitas	Satisfaction, compassion	Envy	Invidia
Humility	Humilitas	Bravery, modesty, reverence	Pride	Superbia

Change

Change 

Examine how one thinks of change in viewing the practice of Western Contemporary Art? Are many artists conscious of change, or are they content to just let things flow? How much does an artist accommodate, alter, convert, and modify an idea/ideas through process and change? What about improvements, development, refinement, rearrangement, transformation or transition? What part does change, chance, and/or nature play in the process of creativity–or are they deleted completely in the final process? What of a predetermined, decisive end of process? And then there are other terms to ponder, such as: willful, decide, specific end result, product control, plan, permanent.

Permanent/Permanence -Time and Temporality

Permanent/Permanence – Time and Temporality 

Can “anything” be permanent? Or is everything in transition?
 Permanent – lasting or tending to last indefinitely; remaining unchanged; enduring. (opposite of temporary – temporal; or pertaining to time. Pertaining to or concerned with the present life or this world; worldly). Is there any phenomenon in existence that does not change? If not, a paradigm (the set of all forms containing a particular element) that presents permanence as reality is in opposition to Nature. The culture’s representations reflect a belief that it can be distinguished from Nature. It follows that a cultural paradigm that does not acknowledge Chance sees itself able to control Nature thorough understanding of and harnessing natural forces.

iscusses an important strain in global visual cultures: the notion of time that is not necessarily linear or chronological and the impact this has on global communities. 

Who am I ?

Who am I  ?

“What am I referring to when I say the word 'I'? This little word, which is somehow the easiest to use in our daily lives, has become the focus of the most intense - and at times the most obscure – debate.... Where does my sense of self come from? Was it made for me, or did it arise spontaneously ? How is it conditioned by the media I consume, the society I inhabit , the politics I suffer and the desires that inspire me? When I use the word 'I' am I using it in the same way as you, when you use it? Am I a different 'I' when I present myself in different ways to my boss, my family, my friends, social security, someone I am in love with or a stranger in the street? Do I really know myself? ... The 'I' is thus a meeting point between the most formal and highly abstract concepts and the most immadiate and intense emotions ... This focus on the self as the centre of both of lived experience and of discernible meaning has become on of the – if not the- difining issue of modern and postmodern cultures” (Rochelle Summerfield , identity project 2012)

Create an artwork that discusses who YOU are