After successful completion of the course, students are able to understand contemporary art and architecture production as a means and expression of cultural, political and economic changes and to engage themselves in new approaches of experimental, critical spatial practice. Due to its orientation toward a combination of scholarly and artistic research, the Visual Culture module offers students a range of transdisciplinary competences - critical thinking, cooperation, experimental approaches, research-oriented project work, interpretation and adaptation skills – for independently engaging with the production/reception of art and architecture.
LIVING ON PLATFORMS
We are living in a time of crises, the contours of which have been starkly delineated by the COVID-19 pandemic: health crises, social crises, economic crises, political crises and, not least, education crises. Ever more aspects of our lives are being marked by the experience of crisis. And, in the absence of analogue alternatives, ever more aspects of our lives have become dependent on digital platforms. These parallels between technological regimentation and personal limitation demand of us not only critique but also alternatives that can provide scope for other possibilities. Such alternatives waken the memory of a long tradition of radical experimentation undertaken to give dominant technologies an open, social use, as seen, for example, in the independent radio station Radio Alice, whose broadcasts in the 1970s spawned new forms of political communication, or La Borde clinic, where Félix Guattari wrote important texts on the role of the institution and anti-authoritarian and de-territorialized spaces.
In view of the current restrictions associated with COVID-19, our aim in the Visual Culture module is to draw on the radical spirit of this experimentation and explore new formats of architectural knowledge production. In the face of the proliferating disciplinary strategies of crisis management, the module programme aims to create a forum in which a plurality of voices can find expression. Each Tuesday afternoon in a virtual salon (lectures, interviews, roundtable discussions, film afternoons, etc.), we will focus on one particular aspect of current “platform living” and inquire into the consequences of this new world: what materializes and what disappears, who profits and who loses, and what is the architecture of the structure that is emerging?
On these afternoons, different teachers of the module as well as invited guests will engage with the issues raised by our current situation. The envisioned topics to be addressed range from the tradition of the platform genre in art, literature and film to the question of how important a physical presence is for the recognition of basic human rights. These thematic afternoons will provide the point of departure for the weekly production of #episodes of a “visual essay”, which will draw on different architecture-related methods (sketches, analyses, descriptions, photo-collages, videos, models, etc.). The episodic character of these essays should allow us to sound out the often contradictory characteristics of “living of platforms”, and, by exploring the architecture of these new life worlds, sketch the outlines of possible fields of action.
The core Tuesday programme will be supplemented by a series of other formats based on need and feasibility, such as virtual hangouts, crit sessions and collective work at physical sites. In addition, those teaching the module will be available to help guide the development of projects and provide feedback. In the course of the programme, students will also be free to suggest further plug-ins for this learning structure. Working in groups is possible.
Core courses
Contemporary Culture
Art as Architectural Concept
Urban Visual Culture
Applied Cultural Theory
Regimes of the Visual (course held in English!)
Additional courses
Architectures of the Everyday
New Models of Culture and Art Production
Dates
Tue 5-7 pm
Online via Zoom: You are going to find the links to the individual Zoom dates on TUWEL
06.10.2020
Introduction
Peter Mörtenböck & Helge Mooshammer
13.10.2020
Platform City
Peter Mörtenböck & Helge Mooshammer
20.10.2020
Im Spiel-Raum der Nicht-Orte
Sigrid Hauser
27.10.2020
Queering Platforms
Peter Mörtenböck & Helge Mooshammer
Discussion with guests: Uwe Bresan (AIT) und Jørg Himmelreich (Archithese)
03.11.2020
Is it really love, or is it just unpaid work? Social Reproduction Theory in conversation with Platform Urbanism
Carmen Lael Hines
10.11.2020
Form und Argument
Robert Pfaller
17.11.2020
Im Stadt-Raum des Film-Bildes
Sigrid Hauser
24.11.2020
Data Publics
Peter Mörtenböck & Helge Mooshammer
Book launch and discussion with Benj Gerdes (Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm)
01.12.2020
‘Porous, penetrating, and penetrable’: Platforms as the queering of hetero-normative space(s)
Carmen Lael Hines
15.12.2020
Black Canvas Politics, Radical Re-Imaginings, and Existing on the ‘Edge’: Platforms as re-affirmed colonial practice or anti-colonial intervention
Carmen Lael Hines
12.01.2021
Spiel und Gesellschaft
Ernst Strouhal
19.01.2021
Final Presentation of Projects
All teaching on the course programme
All courses are open to incoming ERASMUS students!
For further information in English see the TISS pages of individual courses and the departmental homepage: https://visualculture.tuwien.ac.at
