Global Arts MA – (M.A.)

Contents

The course is made up of a two strand, 5-week core course and two 15-week special subjects.
The 5-week core course is divided into two complementary strands. Strand A lays a foundation in postcolonial theory and introduces students to the writings of Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Gayatry Spivak, bel hooks, Trinh T. Minh-Ha and others. Strand B strengthens your understanding of the critical framework of the course by considering major international exhibitions that have shifted the terms of the debate: “Primitivism in 20th Century Art”, “The Short Century”, “Documenta XI”, “Migration Project Cologne” and the “Istanbul Biennale 2009.”
Special subjectsSpecial subjects are 15-week, in-depth taught courses based on the current research interests of staff. They enable you to focus on an aspect of contemporary art, cultural theory or contemporary thought that particularly interests you. Not all special subjects will be available each year.
Compulsory special subject: GeographiesThis course engages with an expanded notion of the geographic, specifically the shift from classical postcolonial geography to issues of cartography. Drawing on key theoretical texts and the works of spatial practitioners (contemporary artists, architects, curators, activists and others in the fields of the humanities), it explores such issues as urbanity, globalisation, mobility, conflict, migration and human rights.
Additional special subjects: Conflict and Negotiations as Spatial PracticesThe course offers readings of contemporary political issues as relations in space. We will engage with a number of thinkers including Michel Foucault, Hannah Arendt, Achille Mbembe, Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Ranciere, Chantal Mouffe, Bruno Latour, Manuel Delanda, and develop spatial conceptions alongside their theoretical and political positions. Key concepts explored include ‘space/event’, flows, bio-politics, crisis, resistance, the figure of the refugee and its emergent geography of extra-territoriality.
AffiliationsWho are we? How do we affiliate ourselves? How are art, space and time conceived in this respect? By drawing on selected examples of Sub-Saharan African philosophy, art and culture, this course radically challenges dominant western universalist responses to these questions. Authors studied include Emmanuel Eze, Valentin Mudimbe, Kwasi Wiredu, Paulin Hountondji, Mogobe Ramose, and Patrick Chamoiseau. The material explored on this course also includes films, artworks, and poetry from Sub-Saharan Africa.
Transforming Critical Practices (laboratory course)This course offers an experimental environment to explore different ways of integrating and critically transforming the experience of the MA programme into one’s own practice of research, writing, curating, artistic and cultural work. We work in small groups and develop a variety of projects that allow us to engage with a wider audience and to communicate our concerns in a dialogic process of working with peers.
Transcultural MemoryThis course focuses on questions of memory, placing particular emphasis on the encounter of different histories and remembrances between and across cultures. Drawing on a variety of art works, exhibitions, films, literary texts and theoretical models (eg Halbwachs, Levinas, Du Bois, Caruth, Hirsch and Rothberg) the course explores spaces in which memories neither compete with nor erase each other, but interact in productive and unforeseen ways.
Dissonant Images and Questions of EvidenceDrawing on the histories and theories of political film-making from around the world, this course asks how artistic experimentation with the documentary form relates to, and produces new constitutions of the evidential, the political and ultimately the judicial. Can creative documentary practice productively address situations of crisis and emergency or anticipate new forms of thinking democracy and human rights after their apparent failure as models for justice? Case studies span practices from the Soviet Avant Garde, Latin American Third Cinema, revolutionary cinema from African and south Asian contexts, and cinematic instances of socio-political change within Europe and North America post-WWII.