Students will be introduced to the logic of technological, artistic, social and economic conditions that construe the relationship between labor and art. The course envelops through seminars, workshops, guest lectures, readings, screenings and research trips.
Guest Lecturers of this Seminar
Branislav Dimitrijević
Capitalist ‘Thing' and Socialist 'Thing' – Duchamp's Readymades and Tatlin's Constructions
Seemingly within the same historical sequence (1915/1920) Marcel Duchamp exhibited his readymades in the US and Vladimir Tatlin his constructed counter-reliefs in Russia. Both gestures should be considered as groundbreaking for the shift of the modern artistic paradigm yet they disclose two fundamentally opposed social and epistemological approaches to this paradigm shift. In the lecture we shall compare these two approaches as indicators of different understandings of ownership, production and social consequences of radical art.
Dejan Sretenović
Duchamp, or Sudden Death of the Author
What is the essental Duchamp’s gesture? To make art without making art object. This gesture opened a completely new era in understanding the basic tenets of fine arts production: originality, authenticity, individual expression, taste and, above all, authorship. Having in mind the significance of „the Duchamp effect“ in 20th century art, we could say that art history could be divided into two basic periods: before and after Duchamp. The lecture deals with ideological, political and aesthetical aspects of Duchamp’s gesture, with special focus on the questioning of the humanist notion of Author.
Jelena Vesić
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Can one make a work of art that is not a work of art?
"Can one make a work of art that is not a work of art?" – Marcel Duchamp asked himself before purchasing the Bottle dryer from the Parisian department store Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville in 1914 and naming it “the sculpture already made (ready-made)”. This lecture will look into narcissistic and sophist implications of Duchamps question from within the logic of exhibiting or placement of the object X into the exhibition context (the gallery space). How exactly the exhibition space, or white cube as its architectonic signifyier, produces art from both what is art and what is non-art? How it transforms the everyday objects and mass produced goods into the auratic piece of art, into the work of the spirit?