A survey from Marx to Barad

Wk 1 | 13 Sept | Motivations for the Seminar

Why a seminar on media and materiality, now?

Read: Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History” (1940/74)

Case study: Parker, Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991)

Wk 2 | 20 Sept | Machines + Fabrication

Where are work, labour, and action?

Read: Marx, from Notebook M (1857) and the Fragment on Machines (1858); Arendt, from The Human Condition (1958)

Case study: Molleindustria (2003-)

Wk 3 | 27 Sept | Style + Estrangement

Why rhythms rather than images or artifacts?

Read: Simmel, from The Philosophy of Money (1900/78); Shklovsky, “Art as Device” (1917)

Case study: Boym, 16-Second Art (n.d.)

Wk 4 | 4 Oct | Visibility + Textuality

From act to field? From expression to network?

Read: Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind” (1961/93); Barthes, “From Work to Text” (1971/77)

Case study: Grigar and Moulthrop, Pathfinders (2013-)

Wk 5 | 11 Oct | Description + Practice

Whether and how to untie the knots?

Read: Foucault, from The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969/72); Williams, from Television (1975)

Case study: Maire, The Memory Cone (2010)

Wk 6 | 18 Oct | Eros + Power

Suppressed or shared experiences? Through which mechanisms?

Read: Cixous, “The Laugh of the Medusa” (1975/76); Lorde, “Uses of the Erotic” (1978/84) and “The Mater’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” (1979/81)

Case study: cárdenas, “Shifting Futures” (2015)

Due: Portfolio (first three response papers)

Wk 7 | 25 Oct | Bodies + Boundaries

Inner and outer worlds, but for whom?

Read: Kristeva, from Powers of Horror (1982); Butler, from Gender Trouble (1990)

Case study: Bachzetsis, Private (2016)

Wk 8 | 1 Nov | Breaks + Textures

What makes a cut or affords a feeling?

Read: Moten, from In the Break (2003); Sedgwick, from Touching Feeling (2003)

Case study: Scott, Untitled (1991)

Wk 9 | 8 Nov | Memory + Indexicality

How does ephemerality endure? How do media point?

Read: Chun, “Did Somebody Say New Media?” (2006) and “The Enduring Ephemeral” (2008); Doane, “The Indexical and the Concept of Medium Specificity” (2007)

Case study: Dean, As Yet Untitled (1992-95)

Wk 10 | 15 Nov | Things + Things

Is there such a thing as unmediated things?

Read: Grosz, “The Thing” (2001); Brown, “Thing Theory” (2001); Appadurai, “The Thing Itself” (2006)

Case study: Arakawa and Gins, Procedural Architecture (1994-2008)

Wk 11 | 22 Nov | Systems + Differences

What’s between layers and sequences?

Read: Debray, from Media Manifestos (1994/96); Krauss, from A Voyage on the North Sea (1999)

Case study: Lee, Transformers: The Premake (2014)

Wk 12 | 29 Nov | Situations + Entanglements

How are matter and discourse also agency?

Read: Haraway, “Situated Knowledges” (1988); Barad, “Posthumanist Performativity” (2003)

Due: Portfolio (three more response papers)

The final portfolio (seven response papers plus a brief statement) is due by 19 December.