Art, Critique, Power

This lecture and seminar based course explores the
question of art's power in contemporary and
historical (Modern) societal contexts. Art's power
can be correlated to its ability to effect social
change, to construct new possibilities for life,
as well as to destabilize and destroy existing
forms of power. Analyzing and discussing the modes
of critique that have been developed through
artistic practice and which have been claimed to
define and deliver the power of art within the
political, we examine the tenability of critique
as it has been claimed in contemporary cultural
definitions and materially in artworks from
avant-gardist antagonisms, (negative) dialectics,
embodiment, irony, pragmatism, nihilism and new
realisms.