Spring 2021

AHIS 225: Art Now

Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11:00 -12:15

Instructor: Rayya Badran

Email: rb88@aub.edu.lb

Office hours: By appointment

Course Description:

Art Now looks at contemporary art as it is being produced, diffused and

consumed in the present, while questioning precisely what constitutes the
present we live in - historically, politically and ideologically. What are the
historical, aesthetic and cultural trajectories that shape the present and how are
these trajectories manifested in artistic practices?

The goal of the course is to define and introduce contemporary art through key
issues, problematics, debates, and terms instigating ‘’now’’. It offers both a
critical reflection of the world around us through art and a critical reflection of
contemporary art through current cultural, social and political questions.

Class structure:

The first seventy-five minutes of every session is a lecture class. The lectures
will focus heavily on analysis of specific works and comparative analyses to
further the concerns at hand. We will learn to describe, discuss and
contextualize artworks as a means to further investigate concepts from the
course.

The second seventy-five minutes are divided in two parts:

- Fifty five minutes dedicated to discussing the assigned reading*
- Twenty to twenty five minute presentation every week by a group of two
to three students on the assigned artist. (Groups will be formed and
subjects assigned Week 1)

Your own curiosity, cultural activity and additional readings are ABSOLUTELY
necessary to a dynamic course atmosphere, of discussion and sharing of
information.

*The assigned readings vary between 10 to 35 pages. Analytical reading is

absolutely mandatory, students should be able to demonstrate an
understanding of the texts and discuss the assigned material in class.
Course Requirements and Grading:

In this class, I apply Criterion Referenced Grading (measure student

performance against a fixed set of predetermined criteria or learning standards)

1- Weekly Presentations—— 25%

(Groups of two to three students will be constituted and subjects distributed
Week 1)
Each working group will prepare a presentation of twenty to twenty five minutes
based on their research of a specific theme or subject after which we will
discuss it with the entire class. The presentation MUST take into account the
relevant themes, concepts or ideas covered in the readings we discussed in
class. The format of these presentations is open and I will give you further
instructions in class.

2- Analysis on an artwork —— 20% (800 words)

Students are asked to select one artwork by an artist that we covered in the
course and write a 800-word paper in which they describe and interpret the
content and form of the artwork. Guidelines will be shared on Moodle and
discussed in class.

3- Mid-term essay—— 25% (800 words)

Submission of a written mid-term essay related to the themes, concepts or
questions posited by the exhibition or artists.

4- Final paper——30% (1500-2000 words)

This final paper should reflect in theoretical terms on the subject through the
theories and readings covered by the course.

PLAGIARISM WILL RESULT WITH AN F GRADE.

Crucial points:

• You are required to take notes of concepts, artist names, artwork titles,
dates etc. There will also be a copy of the syllabus on moodle. Please
refer to it frequently.

• The class material will be on Moodle, replicating the weekly breakdown

of the class structure. Please check your e-mails regularly for news and
 additional articles that I will be sharing.

• Any issue (health, family, academic, or personal) must be brought up

with me ahead of time and with necessary paperwork. I am at your
disposal to talk and discuss and find solutions to your problems with
regard to class material and assignments, however, you must be
proactive and address the issues ahead of deadlines and not after.

• This is not an easy class. We will be covering challenging yet

compelling material that will necessitate a dynamic, rigorous and open
mindset.

University policies

a. Academic Integrity:
Please refer to AUB Student Code of Conduct: http://www.aub.edu.lb/
pnp/generaluniversitypolicies/Documents/StudentCodeConduct/
StudentCodeConduct.pdf , in particular section 1.1, which concerns
academic misconduct including cheating, plagiarism, in-class disruption,
and dishonesty. Please be aware that misconduct is vigorously
prosecuted and that AUB has a zero tolerance policy. Course policy is
that credible evidence of cheating will result in course failure.

b. Recommended Accessibility Statement to Acknowledge the Unique

Learning Needs of Students with Disabilities:
AUB strives to make learning experiences as accessible as possible. If
you anticipate or experience academic barriers due to a disability
(including mental health, chronic or temporary medical conditions),
please inform me immediately so that we can privately discuss options. In
order to help establish reasonable accommodations and facilitate a
smooth accommodations process, you are encouraged to contact the
Accessible Education Office: accessibility@aub.edu.lb; +961-1-350000,
x3246; West Hall, 314.
c. Non-Discrimination
AUB is committed to facilitating a campus free of all forms of
discrimination including sex/gender-based harassment prohibited by Title
IX. The University’s non-discrimination policy applies to, and protects, all
students, faculty, and staff. If you think you have experienced
discrimination or harassment, including sexual misconduct, we
encourage you to tell someone promptly. If you speak to a faculty or staff
member about an issue such as harassment, sexual violence, or
discrimination, the information will be kept as private as possible,
however, faculty and designated staff are required to bring it to the
attention of the University’s Title IX Coordinator. Faculty can refer you to
fully confidential resources, and you can find information and contacts at
www.aub.edu.lb/titleix . To report an incident, contact the University's Title
IX Coordinator Trudi Hodges at 01-350000 ext. 2514, or
titleix@aub.edu.lb . An anonymous report may be submitted online via
EthicsPoint at www.aub.ethicspoint.com
Course Outline

Week 1: January 28: Course Introduction

We will start by addressing your questions and going over expectations and
guidelines. We will look at some images as well as do a sample reading in class,
so as to get a sense of the kind of reading and attention to detail that is
expected of you for the class. Constitution of groups for the weekly
presentations will also take place this week.

------------------------

Week 2: February 2-4: After modernism

We will look at modernism and postmodernism, ideas of high and low culture, as
well as notions of production and autonomy.



Assigned Reading:

Walter Benjamin. “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological

Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media,” Harrison, Charles, and Paul
Wood. 2003. Art in theory, 1900-2000: an anthology of changing ideas. Malden,
MA: Blackwell Pub, pp. 520 - 27

Benjamin Buchloh. “The Social History of Art: Models and Concept” in Art Since
1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, edited by Hal Foster,
Rosalind Krauss, Yve- Alain Bois, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh. London: Thames
and Hudson, 2004.

David Hopkins, The Politics of Modernism: Abstract Expressionism and the

European Informel in After Modern Art 1945-2000, pp 5-36

Further reading:
Thomas Crow. Modernism and Mass Culture in Visual Art. Yale University Press,
New Haven. 1996. P 3-37
+ Raymond Williams. When was Modernism? P 23-27

Group presentation: Louise Bourgeois

------------------------

Week 3: February 9-11: Contemporary art and contemporaneity

This session will present some of the key concepts associated with
contemporary art and the ways in which it translates the present.

Assigned Reading:

Arthur C.Danto. Introduction: Modern, Postmodern, Contemporary. After the End

of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History. Princeton University Press,
1997. P 2-19.

Further reading:
Hans Belting. The End of the History of Art. University of Chicago Press. 1983.
Preface 1-26.

Group presentation: Sol Lewitt

------------------------

Week 4: February 16-18: Contemporary arts: Medium overview and

vocabulary

This session will introduce some of the main mediums, forms and concepts
associated with contemporary art.

Assigned Reading:
Stephen Wright. Toward a lexicon of Usership. Van Abbemuseum. 2014

Terms: Assisted readymades and prototypes

Hacking
Reciprocal Readymades

+ Listen to interviews with Marcel Duchamp and Hermann Nitsch (29 minutes)
http://www.tate.org.uk/audio-arts/volume-2/number-4

Group presentation: Marcel Duchamp/ The readymade

------------------------
Week 5: February 23-25: Contemporary Art in Lebanon, a historical
overview

This session will offer an overview of the Lebanese contemporary art scene
through artists’ practices and a discussion around the recurring themes and their
relation with the Lebanese context. Narrative and non-narrative practices will be
critically defined.

Assigned Readings:

Hannah Feldman and Akram Zaatari, Fragments from a Conversation Already

Passed. Art Journal N.66. Summer 2007, pp. 48-67

Kaelen Wilson-Goldie: “On the politics of art and space in Beirut”,

http://universes-in-universe.org/eng/nafas/articles/2009/kaelen_wilson_goldie

Sarah Rogers. Out of History. Postwar Art in Beirut. Art Journal N.66. Summer
2007. P
9-20

Group presentation: Paola Yacoub

------------------------

Week 6: March 2-4: The social turn

This session will present contemporary art projects that are socially engaged or
that operate on alternative modes of production, temporality and relation with
present contexts.

Assigned Reading:

Nicolas Bourriaud. From Relational Aesthetics. 1998. Chapter one.

Claire Bishop. The Social turn collaboration and its discontents. Artforum
February 2006. P 178-183

Group presentation: Rikrit Tiravanija

------------------------
Week 7: March 9-11: Public realms

This session will present the different forms in which contemporary art can
tackle (or take place in) physical, symbolic or virtual public spaces. In addition, it
will look into the ideological and aesthetic boundaries of public art in relation to
urban development. Concrete examples of realized projects in Lebanon will be
analyzed.

Malcolm Miles. Art, Space and the City. Public Art and Urban Futures.
Routledge. 1997. pp 3 - 24

Miwon Kwon, “The Genealogy of Site-Specificity”,  One place after another:  site-specific
art and locational identity. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2002, pp. 10-31

Group presentation: Agnes Denes

------------------------

Week 8: March 16-18: Waves of institutional critique

This session will look at the different forms of institutional critique through
contemporary art projects while observing paradoxically how these practices
have become ’institutionalized’.

Assigned Reading:

Benjamin H.D Buchloh. From the Aesthetics of Administration to the Critique of

Institutions. October, Vol. 55. (Winter, 1990), pp. 105-143

Andrea Fraser. From the Critique of Institutions to an Institution of Critique.

Artforum
September 2005. P 278-283

Hannah Black, Ciarán Finlayson, and Tobi Haslett, The Tear Gas Biennial,
Artforum, July 17, 2019

Group presentation: Marcel Broodthaers

------------------------
Week 9: March 23-25 : Art in times of political and health crises

This session’s goal is to critically look at the way artists, curators and institutions
have maneuvered contexts in crisis (particularly in the region) and raise political,
ethical and aesthetic questions about the relations between art and political
urgency.

Negar Azimi. Good Intentions. Frieze magazine, 2011, London.

Kaelen Wilson Goldie. On Rupture. How artists and curators have responded to
upheaval in the Arab world, from 1967 to the present day. http://
www.campagnepremiere.com/data/Frieze_Wilson-Goldie.pdf

Additional readings TBA

Group presentation: Banu Cennetoğlu

------------------------

Week 11: March 30- April 1 : Scientific inquiries

This session will present art practices using natural or scientific tools and
methods in order to represent the common world through new ‘’perspectives’’.
The presentation will focus on artistic explorations of natural phenomena and
science through the making of images.

Assigned Reading:
Multiple Authors. On the Transaction Costs of Transdisciplinary Research
Settings 
https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/12219/12220

+ TBA

Group presentation: Marguerite Humeau

------------------------
Week 12: April 6-8: Art in the age of Internet and digital platforms

This session will look into the definitions of Internet and post-Internet art; explore
the forms, aesthetics and political ambitions of this genre. We will look at
different practices and artists to analyze artworks, their reception and the current
issues post-internet can or cannot address.

Assigned reading:

Michael Connor. Post Internet: What it is and what it was. P. 56-64

Hito Steyerl. Too Much World: Is the Internet Dead? http://www.e-flux.com/

journal/49/60004/too-much-world-is-the-internet-dead/

Group presentation: Cécile B. Evans

------------------------

Week 13: April 13-15: Looking forward to the future: science-fiction and
accelerationist aesthetics

This session will look at contemporary practices reflecting upon the here and
now through a projection to the future. Science fiction, anachronisms and new
media will be amongst the discussed tools. Looking into the future as a mode of
translating dystopian or utopian imaginaries and opening up spaces for
speculation based on the problematic of now will be discussed.

Assigned viewing: TBA

Assigned reading:

Scott Smith. Ethnic Futurism in the Gulf. http://thesigers.com/analysis/

2013/7/31/ethnic-futurism-in-the-gulf.html

Sophia Al Maria. Sci-Fi Wahabi . http://scifiwahabi.blogspot.com/

+ https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/interviews/sophia-al-maria-erika-
balsom-gulf-futurism-sad-sacks-julia-stoschek-interview-1202683264/

Group presentation: Cao Fei

———————

Week 14: April 20-22: The sonic terrain

These sessions will center on readings and works that focus on and question
the medium of sound in contemporary art.

Assigned readings:

Licht, Alan, Sound Art: Origins, development and ambiguities, Organised Sound
14.1 (2009): 3–10, Cambridge University Press.

Mombaça, Jota . ‘Can you sound like two thousand?’. The Contemporary
Journal 3 (May 2020). [https://thecontemporaryjournal.org/issues/sonic-
continuum/can-you-sound-like-two-thousands]

Group presentation: Lawrence Abu Hamdan

Week 15: April 27: Wrap up session

Some useful resources:

Contemporary Art Web Resources

- E-flux: www.eflux.com
- Ashkal Alwan: www.ashkalalwan.org/ (subscribe to the AA newsletter)
- Nafas: universes-in-universe.org/eng/nafas
- Ubuweb: www.ubuweb.com
- Arte East: www.arteeast.org/
- Ibraaz: ibraaz.org
- AMCA: http://www.amcainternational.org/
- Art Agenda: www.art-agenda.com/exhibitions_bydate.php

Contemporary Art Magazines

- Frieze Magazine: www.frieze.com
- Bidoun: www.bidoun.com
- Artforum: www.artforum.com
- Aprior: www.aprior.org
- Afterall: www.afterall.org
- Naked Punch: www.nakedpunch.com
- Cabinet Magazine: www.cabinetmagazine.org
- Manifesta Journal: http://www.manifestajournal.org/
- Portal 9: http://portal9journal.org/

Cultural/ Art Theory

- academia.edu
- Aaaarg: http://aaaarg.org/
- Kein.org: www.kein.org/
- Copenhagen free university: http://www.copenhagenfreeuniversity.dk/
library.html\

Audiovisual material:

Documenta V, curated by Harald Szeemann, Kassel 1969, film by Jef Cornelis,

JRP Ringier

13th Biennale of Paris, 1985, film by Jef Cornelis, JRP Rengier

Global Art Forum Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/artdubai/videos

Art Basel Conversations: https://www.artbasel.com/basel/the-show#9182

A s h k a l A l w a n C h a n n e l : h t t p s : / / w w w. y o u t u b e . c o m / c h a n n e l /
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