REGIMES OF THE VISUAL

WHOSE IS THE CAPITAL, ANYWAY?
Cycles of Building Capital and Undoing Capitalism

The course Whose is the Capital, Anyway? will focus on different critical theoretical discussions and representations of the concept of building capital in art, architecture, visual culture and urban space. The main question from the title will be complemented by the questions about different existing concepts of access to common wealth and capital and about the problems with its distribution and redistribution.

The seminars and workshops will address the current contradictions of the cycles in capitalism and will look at the resistances to the dominant capitalist mode of production and reproduction in relevant historic and recent activist movements. Different sessions will offer a space for cross-disciplinary enquiry that will start from various theoretical and critical traditions (e.g. Frankfurt critical theory, post-Marxist, postcolonial, Italian autonomists, etc.) that positioned themselves counter the dominant capitalist mode of production of capital and the reproduction of human labour. Each of the individual sessions will use some of the basic Marxist concepts (e.g. use and exchange value, surplus, property, base and superstructure, et.) that are topical for understanding the contradictions between the means, forces, relations and modes of production, building, distributing and redistributing of the capital. Ultimately the main aim will be to unravel the complexities and contradictions of the general division between material and symbolic, immaterial capital and its different kinds: aspirational, socio-cultural, linguistic, navigational, familial and resistant capital and how they relate with financial and cognitive capitalism. The inner contradictions of reproduction and distribution of capital in communist, capitalist, transitional economic models and the resistant activist movements towards globalisation, unequal development, “accumulation with dispossession”, exploitation of human reproduction and gender inequality, anti-Semitic and other racial stereotypes related to imperialism, will be discussed through looking at different theoretical texts, art works, documentaries and feature films. The seminar discussions will also try to encompass the potentials of the historic and more recent attempts for alternative economies and modes of production and reproduction of common cultural wealth and community capital and to provoke the students to explore the potentials of the social resistant movements for undoing capitalism.

Regimes of the Visual
Univ. Lekt. Dr. Suzana Milevska
Univ. Lekt. Doz.Mag. Eduard Freudmann

Mondays, 10:00-14:00
Start: 13 October 2014
Location: Seminarraum 2, Karlsgasse 11

For further details please see link below