MANIFOLD DESTINY - tracing the erosion of canon in art

The seminar will engage with the question how the field of art has been affected by  contemporary digital communication and dissemination regimes. Since the production of and access to cultural and theoretical works in the field of art has changed with the digital transformation it seems necessary to ask what the repercussions of such a shift are from the perspective of the producer. According to the media theorist Felix Stalder, digital culture is characterized first of all by multiplication: more people produce more culture for more audiences. The sociopolitical structure of the historical domain of modern art on the other hand was characterized by limitation and delineation through specific gatekeepers, such as small avant-garde circles, institutions and later curators. What does it mean when these institutions, which owe their existence to the rise of the bourgeoisie slowly erode and are surpassed by a manifold of cultural islands each with their own set of political and aesthetical rules, run by producers who often are their own audience.

In this context we will also discuss the notion of the “post-digital” (Kim Cascone) and develop a critical perspective towards the “return to atoms” tendency in contemporary art. Issues such as these will be approached based on a close reading of texts by Peter Osborne, David Joselit, Limor Shifman, Byung Chul-Han as well as Olga Gurianova.  The reading is accompanied by a discussions of artworks and artistic practices from artists like Kenneth Goldsmith (ubuweb) over Übermorgen, Seth Price and others.

The seminar will be held in English.

Books:

Olga Goriunova (2011) Art Platforms and Cultural Production on the Internet, Routledge, London

Mel Alexenberg (2011) The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age
From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness, Intellect,  New York

Peter Osborne (2013) Anywhere or not at all, Philosophy of Contemporary Art, Verso, London

Limor Shifman (2014) Memes in Digital Culture, Mit Press, Cambridge Mass.

Byung-Chul Han (2005) Hyperkulturalität, Kultur und Globalisierung, Merve, Berlin.

David Joselit (2013) After Art,Princeton University Press, Princeton

Felix Stalder, Die Kultur des Digitalen, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, forthcoming