Collisions Explain Everything

Open to Art School BFA4.
This course may be open to students at other year
levels, and in other Schools, by Permission of
Instructor.

"[The] body itself...is both biological and
psychical. This understanding of the body as a
hinge or threshold between nature and culture
makes the limitations of a genetic, or purely
anatomical or physiological, account of bodies
explicit." - Elizabeth Grosz. This will be an
idiosyncratic survey class in which we undertake
close readings of articles both foundational and
contemporary in critical/ artistic discourse on
embodiment, bodies, and sensibility. One focus
will be on the body as explored in recent affect
theory (i.e., the ongoing-ness or "bloom" of a
processual materialism); we will also touch upon
issues of labor, incarceration, perception, image
making and circulation, performance,
surveillance, optimism, virtuality, "other-ized"
bodies, and intersubjectivity. Readings may
include work by Eve Sedgwick, Brian Massumi,
Judith Butler, Fred Moten, Merleau-Ponty, Lauren
Berlant, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Michelle Alexander,
Sylvan Tomkins, Hito Steyerl, Donna Haraway, and
Beatriz Preciado. Throughout the semester we will
relate these readings to art historical and
contemporary art practices, as well as our own.
Students may benefit from having taken my class
"Beyond the Binary" but are not required to have
done so.