Art and media as a socio-political intervention

In recent years, the group Forensic-Architecture has initiated wide-ranging debates on several occasions through public research into topics that are relevant to daily politics. First and foremost, they succeeded in using digital methods to uncover misinformation and the motives behind it. The interplay of technology, art, and mass media plays a central role in this.

Such an approach is not entirely new. In very different forms, it can be traced back to European futurism. Images such as those about the killing of George Floyd or the interventions of the architect Gordon Matta Clark against the Vietnam War also had an enormous impact on the reception of art. At the same time, it must be noted that the interplay of art and politics in today's post-communist states had a completely different meaning than in Western discourse.

This seminar examines different forms of expression of politically coded art.

Using numerous examples, this seminar examines different forms of expression of politically coded art.

• Attendance, participation, and development of own ideas. Written answers to three general questions at the end of the course. This will be the basis for the grade.

• The aim is to learn to take a critical stance on contemporary art and its background and to present one's own ideas or concepts in the seminar. This can be a formulated question, possibly in connection with one's own work, based on research, or based on general theoretical, content-related considerations.

• No special previous knowledge is necessary, the general heading (code and representation) has institutional, formal reasons.

• In the course of the first meeting, the main topics, and the general roadmap are defined.

• Materials that facilitate engagement with thematically relevant artistic concepts, projects, and exhibitions will be made available through the base.