Galindo, Santiago Sierra, Felix Gonzalez Torres, Mona Hatoum, Hayley Newman
. As well as the title essay, I will propose texts by David Harvey, Nina Power, ...
Your name Laura González Course Title The personal is political Description With the title statement (taken from Carol Hanisch's seminal paper published in Notes from the Second Year: Women’s Liberation in 1970) as a starting point, this course explores how personal characteristics can become political statements in artistic practice. This workshop will enable the student to find strategies to shift between the subjective and the general, exploring the issues of gender, and class and, if appropriate, also race, disability, sexual orientation, age, or religious belief. We will also discuss issues around equality, difference and fairness. Questions around ethics and political activism will be examined, as well as more general campaigning, economic and guerrilla actions. Artists to be explored include Guillermo Gomez-Peña, Guerrilla Girls, Martha Rosler, Jeremy Deller, Regina José Galindo, Santiago Sierra, Felix Gonzalez Torres, Mona Hatoum, Hayley Newman. As well as the title essay, I will propose texts by David Harvey, Nina Power, Guillermo Gomez-Peña, and Claire Bishop. Students will be asked to produce one finished work exploring a single characteristic and taking the title of the course as its motivation. The proposition will be for the work created to invite the audience into action. Course goals The course will aim to help students articulate, with a dialectical materialist methodology, arguments in relation to protected characteristics such as gender, age, class, disability, race, or belief, and others, more invisible ones, such as class or mental health, expressing them in verbal and visual form. It will also help them develop a methodology of activism, where the audience is impelled to move to action, rather than consume art. Detailed day-by-day content (day 1-5) Day 1: Gender Reading: Carol Hanish, The Personal is political, http://www.carolhanisch.org/CHwritings/PersonalisPol.pdf [5 pages] Nina Power, One Dimensional Woman, Zero Books, 2009, [69 pages] * Mind/body warm up: Body scan * Topics to be discussed include: Introduction to the seminar, feminisms, the title statement: is the personal really political? How? * Artists considered may include: Hayley Newman, Regina Jose Galindo, Jo Spence * Studio work discussion: Definition of issues
Day 2: Class and Dialectical Materialism Reading: David Harvey, ‘What is to be done? And who is going to do it?’, in The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 215–262 [48 pages] * Mind/body warm up: Contemplation * Topics to be discussed include: Dialectical Materialism, Marx and political economy, Social responsibility, environmental cultures, Art and economics, labour
* Artists considered may include: Artists participating in the recent exhibition ‘Economy’ (Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow; Stills Gallery, Edinburgh): http://www.economyexhibition.net/ including Tracey Emin, Andrea Fraser, Martha Rosler, Johan Grimonprez, Dani Marti, and Hito Steyerl. * Studio work discussion: Work in progress I Day 3: Where do you stand? Reading: Eleanor Bowen and Laura González, ‘Between Laughter and Crying’. In Madness Women and the Power of Art’, edited by Frances Davies and Laura González, Oxford, Interdisciplinary Press, 2013. [23 pages] * Mind/body warm up: Body Scan * Topics to be discussed include: Positioning, the inverted bouquet, labelling, mental health, What ideas are you forming? Where are you coming from? What do you want from me? Dangerous ideas. Belief, race, age and sexual orientation. Manifestos, banners * Artists considered may include: Felix González-Torres, Marina Abramovic, Tim Etchells, John Cage and Merce Cunningham, Duchamp, Via Negativa, Fischli and Weiss * Studio work discussion: Work in progress II
Day 4: Artificial Hells Reading: Claire Bishop, ‘The Social Turn’, in Artificial Hells: participatory art and the politics of spectatorship, London: Verso, 2012, pp. 11–40. [30 pages] * Mind/body warm up: Contemplation * Topics to be discussed include: Socially Engaged Art as a practice, participatory art as political * Artists considered may include: Jeremy Deller, Tania Bruguera, Tino Sehgal, Tomas Hirschhorn * Studio work discussion: View final pieces Day 5: The call to action Reading: Gómez-Peña, Guillermo, ‘Crosscontamination: The performance activism and oppositional art of La Pocha Nostra’, in Ethno-techno: writings on performance, activism and pedagogy, ed. by Elaine Peña, New York and London: Routledge, 2005, pp. 77–94. [18 pages] * Mind/body warm up: Body Scan * Topics to be discussed include: Activism, art as pedagogy * Artists considered may include: Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Mona Hatoum, Santiago Sierra, Guerrilla Girls * Studio work discussion: Iron out issues and curate
Required readings/materials. Students greatly appreciate PDFs and weblinks. Students are asked to investigate the work of the artists named in the day-by-day schedule above and think of additional artists or practitioners to share in the sessions as related to the topics. All the required readings will be uploaded as PDFs on the course site. Carol Hanish, The Personal is political, http://www.carolhanisch.org/CHwritings/PersonalisPol.pdf [5 pages] Nina Power, One Dimensional Woman, Zero Books, 2009, [69 pages]
David Harvey, ‘What is to be done? And who is going to do it?’, in The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 215–262 [48 pages] Eleanor Bowen and Laura González, ‘Between Laughter and Crying’. In Madness Women and the Power of Art’, edited by Frances Davies and Laura González, Oxford, Interdisciplinary Press, 2013. [23 pages]
Claire Bishop, ‘The Social Turn’, in Artificial Hells: participatory art and the politics of spectatorship, London: Verso, 2012, pp. 11–40. [30 pages] Gómez-Peña, Guillermo, ‘Crosscontamination: The performance activism and oppositional art of La Pocha Nostra’, in Ethno-techno: writings on performance, activism and pedagogy, ed. by Elaine Peña, New York and London: Routledge, 2005, pp. 77–94. [18 pages]
Suggested readings/materials The list below refers to additional resources beyond the seminar (and the required readings above) for students who want to gain more depth of knowledge in relation to the topics discussed. The reading of these materials will not be required as part of the sessions. Atkins, Kim (ed), Self and Subjectivity, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005 Bentien, Claudia, Skin: On the Cultural Border Between Self and World, New York: Columbia University Press, 2004 Bermúdez, José Luis, Anthony Marcel and Naomi Eilan, The Body and the Self, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998 Bishop, Claire, Artificial Hells: participatory art and the politics of spectatorship, London: Verso, 2012 Calle, Sophie, Take Care of Yourself, Paris: Actes Sud, 2007 Crawford, Anwyn, ‘Permanent daylight: Women, body image and capitalism’, Overland 200, 2012 https://overland.org.au/previous-issues/issue-200/feature-anwyn-crawford/ [Accessed 20.02.13] Davies, Frances and Laura González, Madness Women and the Power of Art’, edited by Frances Davies and Laura González, Oxford, Interdisciplinary Press, 2013. Dimitrakaki, Angela, ‘Labour, Ethics, Sex and Capital: On the Biopolitical Production in Contemporary Art’, n.paradoxa 28, 2011, 5–15 Economy [exhibition] http://www.economyexhibition.net/ [Accessed 20.02.13] Eisenstein, Hester, Feminism Seduced, Paradigm, 2009 Federici, Silvia, ‘Wages Against Housework’, 1974 ———, ‘Precarious Labour: A Feminist Viewpoint’, Variant 37, 2010, 23-26
Gómez-Peña, Guillermo and Elaine Peña, Ethno-Techno: writings on performance, activism and pedagogy, New York: Routledge, 2005 Grosz, Elisabeth, Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism, Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 1994 Hanisch Carol, ‘The Personal is Political’, in Notes from the Second Year: Women’s Liberation in 1970, http://www.carolhanisch.org/CHwritings/PersonalisPol.pdf [Accessed 20.02.13] Harvey, David, The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010 Heddon, Deirdre; Carl Lavery and Phil Smith, ed. by Roberta Mock, Walking, writing and performance: autobiographical texts, Bristol: Intellect Books, 2009 Historical Materialism 2012 (plenary videos of Federici & Weeks):http://www.youtube.com/user/Histomat2012?feature=watch [Accessed 20.02.13] Jones, Amelia, Self/Image, Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2006 ———, Body Art: Performing the Subject. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998 Jones, Amelia and Andrew Stephenson (eds), Performing the Body/Performing the Text. London and New York: Routledge, 1999 Kelly, Mary, Imaging Desire, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998 ———, Post-partum Document, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999 Leder, Drew, The Absent Body, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990 Pelias, Ronald J, Writing performance: poeticizing the researcher's body, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999 Power, Nina, One Dimensional Woman, Zero Books, 2009 Rosenthal, Stephanie et al, Pipilotti Rist: Eyeball Massage, London: Hayward Gallery Publishing, 2011 Ruido, Maria, ‘Just Do It! Bodies and Images of Women in the New Division of Labor’, http://caringlabor.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/maria-ruido-just-do-it-bodies-and-images-ofwomen-in-the-new-division-of-labor/ [Accessed 20.02.13] Spence, Jo, Putting Myself in the Picture: a political, personal, and photographic autobiography, London: Camden Press, 1986 Kathi Weeks, ‘Hours for What We Will: Work, Family, and the Movement for Shorter Hours’, Feminist Studies 35, 2009, 101–127 Weiss, Gail, Body Images: Embodiment as Intercorporeality, London: Routledge, 1998 Zizek, Slavoj, Living at the End of Times, London: Verso, 2010 ———, Less than Nothing: Hegel and the shadow Of Dialectical Materialism, London: Verso, 2012
———, The year of dreaming dangerously, London: Verso, 2012 Materials to bring to the course Students should wear loose, and/or stretchy clothing that allows freedom of movement. They should bring: – Notebook/journal for thoughts, impressions, drawings, and general assignment notes – Personal archeology: Prior to the course students are encouraged to gather a handful of objects related to their personal mythologies and iconography, including: Props: Interesting-looking objects, love objects, figurines, ritual artifacts, which are important to their symbolic universe and aesthetics. Costumes: Ethnic, military, fetish, artist-made, wearable art, fabrics, etc. Accessories: Wigs, hats, masks, interesting jewelry, shoes, make-up, etc. NOTE: Please do not bring any item that would cause stress to its owner if in any way harmed. – Supplies useful for exercises: rope, tape, etc. – Small, immediate recording devices such as mobile phones with sound and video recording, and photographic facilities (any or all). Special equipment and other needs for your class A data projector, a whiteboard (if available) and movable furniture.
