Keywords. A vocabulary for contemporary artistic culture
Course in contemporary art and culture
Each fall, the Museum offers a course in contemporary art and culture that sets out to give participants the conceptual tools necessary to debate the contemporary artistic practices encompassed in the Museum's collection and covering the latter half of the twentieth century.
This year the course has one difference. Instead of presenting a program revolving around a monographic theme, it will make a first-time contribution towards an update of the cultural-artistic lexicon of the twentieth century. The program hopes to propose new definitions of central concepts, as well as to offer a historical reading of the trajectory of such concepts throughout the twentieth century, and provide a prospective support that may help lay the groundwork for the emerging culture.
In 1976, Raymond Williams published his book Keywords, an attempt to propose a vocabulary adapted to the culture and society that arose in the second half of the twentieth century, following the interruption produced by the Second World War and the collapse of distinctions between academic and popular culture. In Williams's opinion, the book was a response to the need to update a worn-out language that was no longer able to make reality comprehensible. It was necessary to find a new common vocabulary, to reach a mutual agreement about the meaning and relevance of certain fundamental terms. But it was also necessary to formulate a far-reaching cultural project for the age through this lexicon, which would eliminate the categorical differences between the artistic and the social: it would be built precisely on overcoming them. In other words, it would set out from the intersection of the fields of the arts and the social sciences. This seemed the only possible way to structure a cultural project aimed at social transformation. The hypotheses put forward by Raymond Williams still seem fully valid today, and his work has been a source of inspiration for this course.
The program is presented as a new chapter in a long-term series. The sessions are intended as attempts to define key words, though the way each group approaches such definition may vary. Each session will consist of a presentation and rebuttal made by different guest speakers.
All sessions will be led and moderated by a guest from the local context.
Enrolled students who attend a minimum of 7 sessions are entitled to an attendance certificate issued by the Institut de Ciències de l'Educació, Universitat de Barcelona.
Programme
Mondays from 13 October to 1 December 2008, at 7pm
Avançament del programa
October 13
Lucy Lippard
Conceptualism. An immaterial art?
Presentation and reply: Maria Ruido
October 27
Angela McRobbie
The culture industry. Is aesthetic education no longer the driving force in art's public life?
Presentation and reply: Mari Paz Balibrea
November 3
Édouard Glissant
Due to Mr. Glissant's health problems, the event programmed for this date has been cancelled. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Relation. A post-identity, postcolonial poetics?
Presentation and reply: Ignacio Echevarría
November 4
Yve Alain Bois
Due to Mr. Bois' health problems, the event programmed for this date has been cancelled. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Formalism (and its discontents)
Presentation and reply: Carles Guerra
November 10
Arlindo Machado
The cinematic apparatus. Does cinema look at us?
Presentation and reply: Eugeni Bonet
November 17
Neil Smith
Gentrification. Are museums merely agents of real estate capital?
Presentation and reply: Maria Montaner
November 24
Tony Bennett
Museums, the genesis of the modern public sphere
Presentation and reply: Jesús Carrillo
December 1
Rosi Braidotti
Subjectivity. How can we think in nomadic terms?
Presentation and reply: Raúl Sánchez
December 16
Édouard Glissant
New date!!!
Relation. A post-identity, postcolonial poetics?
Presentation and reply: Ignacio Echevarría
PARTICIPANTS
Mari Paz Balibrea
Lecturer in Spanish Cultural Studies at Birbeck College, University of London.
Tony Bennett
Professor of Sociology and director of the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change at the University of Manchester.
Yve Alain Bois
Professor of Art History at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.
Eugeni Bonet
Artist, curator and writer in the fields of film, video and digital media. Associate Professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Universitat de Barcelona.
Rosi Braidotti
Professor of Gender Studies at the Humanities Arts Faculty, Utrecht University. Scientific Director at the Netherlands Research School of Women's Studies.
Jesús Carrillo
Head of Cultural Programs at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid.
Ignacio Echevarría
Literary critic and editor.
Édouard Glissant
Writer, poet and literary critic.
Lucy Lippard
Writer, activist and curator.
Arlindo Machado
Doctor in Communications, Professor in the department of Film, Radio and TV at San Pablo University.
Angela McRobbie
Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths University, London.
Josep Maria Montaner
Doctor in architecture, Professor of Architectural Composition and director of the 21st Century Housing Lab Masters program at the Barcelona School of Architecture.
Maria Ruido
Artist and lecturer at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Universitat de Barcelona.
Raúl Sánchez
Activist, essayist and translator. Member of the Universidad Nómada.
Neil Smith
Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at the City University of New York (CUNY).
[Program subject to last-minute changes]
Tel. 93 481 46 81
