This semester’s ‘Art and Public’ course envelops in close relation to the MA research project ‘The Recondite Archive: In Search of a Form that Speaks’ (co-convened by Prof. Majaca and Prof. Tomic), which looks into the little known case of the publicly inaccessible Graz’s University hospital archive from the WWII. The related course Politics of Exposure: Common Research, Public Investigation will provide a methodological background for the MA research project.
The course will envelop through lectures and propositions introduced by the course convener and occasionally in dialogue with the invited guests – artists, curators, architects and thinkers, as well as through readings and visual materials as basis for class discussions. These divergent resources, experiences and methodological case studies will serve as the inspirational references and knowledge pool translating into the MA research project.
Based on the analysis of artistic, spatial, curatorial and militant forms of research and learning, and while focusing on diverse methodologies, we will form our own unique research approach. We will work with forms of material and immaterial remainders, as well as institutional, extra-institutional and non-normative memory and attempt to turn our research on the Graz medical archive can be turned into an open and communized procedure of ‘con-figuring’ a public investigation.