Class Contemporary Art

The course is grounded in the assumption that the contemporary arts constitute a plural field of practices, objects, and experiences that challenge the boundaries traditionally established between artistic disciplines, techniques, media, and forms of knowledge. Rather than approaching artistic contemporaneity as a linear succession of movements or styles, the course examines it as a historical, aesthetic, and technological problem, addressing issues such as the crisis of the classical categories of art, the transformations of the artistic object, and its relations with the body, space, machines, and ecology. Through the analysis of key moments, artists, authors, and artworks, the course seeks to understand the ways in which the contemporary arts continuously redefine their own limits and critically engage with the cultural, technological, and environmental transformations of the present.

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1. Introduction: the plurality of contemporary arts as a problem The notion of Contemporary and the priority of the «Actual» The hypothesis of the end of art: the crisis of mimesis and the linear perspective of History   2. Objects Duchamp's rupture: the creative act, the ready-made and the the infra-mince Collecting, appropriation, the archive and the post-production culture   3. Body Fluxus, body art, happenings and performances The biologization of the arts   4. Space The Installation as a new art space From land-art to network arts   5. Machines Cyber Arts: control, interactivity and intelligent environments From new media art to software as avant-garde: case studies of net.art and glitch art   6. Ecology The Earth as an object and the aesthetics of systems Materialities, atmospheres and climatologies in the Anthropocene era Archaeologies of the future and post-human perspectives on art

The course adopts Research-Based Learning (RBL) and Project-Based Learning (ProjectBL) methodologies, drawing on case study analysis, guided research into contemporary artistic practices, and the organisation of study visits and open classes with invited artists. These activities promote situated and interdisciplinary learning, articulating the course contents with the direct experience of the spaces, artworks, and practices of the contemporary arts.

Baudelaire, C. (1860). O Pintor da Vida Moderna, Vega, 2013 Bishop, C. (2012). Artificial Hells: Participartory Art and the Politics of the Spectatorship, Verso. Broeckmann, A. (2016). Machine Art in the Twentieth Century, The MIT Press Danto, A. C. (1997). After the end of art: Contemporary art and the pale of history, Princeton University Press Duchamp, M. (1989). The Writings of Marcel Duchamp. Ed. M. Sanouillet E. Peterson, Grande Central Publishing Foster, H. (1996). The Return of the Real: The Avant-Garde at the End of the Century, The M.I.T. Press Greenberg, C. (1961). Art and Culture: Critical Essays, Beacon Press Krauss, R. et al. (2011). Art since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, Thames & Hudson Menkman, R. (2011). The Glitch Moment(um), Institute of Network Cultures  Popper, F. (1993). Art of the Electronic Age, Thames and Hudson Smithson, R. (1972). The Spiral Jetty, James Cohan Gallery