HCRT-349: Social Critique

Part studio class, part academic seminar, Social Critique takes a sobering look at our present world. Crashing through the clichés and inspirational messaging of today's "change agents," the seminar section focuses on the social, political, and economic forces eroding democracy and consolidating oligarchic powers around the world. Topics include the parallels between the present and the Gilded Age; the anti-sociality of social media; the psychic conditions of post-futurity and neo-feudalism, and the neo-liberal global economy of precarity. The studio section of the class explores cases of critical art-making from the recent past. The cases range across media: performance art; art in public spaces and sculptural objects; body art; film/video/TV; social media; posters; graphics and multiples; architecture and furniture design, as well as painting and drawing. Students will be expected to write bi-weekly short papers in response to the assigned readings and artworks shared in class. Students will submit a final assignment, which can be either an art project or a research paper.