Instructor: John Rajchman
In this Seminar, we will explore the question of ‘globalization’ in the arts, and the new debates to which it has given rise, since 1989, or the dawn of the 21st century. It is open to qualified students in any discipline concerned with such questions. While it is focused on visual arts and arts institutions, it involves other ‘media’ — film, photography, public art, literature. In conjunction with exhibitions at the Guggenheim and the Met Breuer opening this Spring, we will pay special attention to contemporary art in China and Brazil, but the Seminar welcomes students with interests in other areas or geographies as well. It is intended as a kind of open laboratory and forum about the role that critical theory has played and may yet play in this field, still in the making. Thus the challenges to ‘Euro-centrism’ and the associated problem of ‘critical translation’ will be discussed in terms of the overriding question: what is ‘transnational citizenship’ today, what role might art and critical thought play in it?
