This graduate seminar explores the opening out of art to space, time, and embodiment in the past half century, primarily in the Euro-American context. Is art an object or a process? Is it "material" or "trace"? Shifts in art practice over the past 50 years, particularly in art world centers in Europe and the US, and more recently in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, have profoundly challenged Enlightenment to modern conceptions of art (in aesthetics, defined as object, more or less static in meaning and value over time). Material Traces seeks to explore the history of this change, developing a new model for understanding the trend towards art as a situational, durational exchange of subjects and objects in space and over time. In order to explore this shift, we will read a range of sources from philosophies of time and space, cultural studies, art history, film theory, architectural / urban theory, and artists’ writings and look at a range of art practices from early performance art to painting (as a performative tracing of human action) to works addressing space and embodiment such as Minimalism, installation, and relational performance.
View complete course outline: ARTH661A2010 [.pdf]