Regime des Visuellen

Die Lehrveranstaltung „Regime des Visuellen“ setzt sich aus zwei miteinander verbundenen Blöcken zusammen, die von den beiden Lektorinnen im Zeitraum 21.-22. Oktober und 25.-26. November 2024 abgehalten werden. Aufbauend auf diese beiden Blöcke ist ein Projekt zu entwickeln.

Creating a system within a system is a profound means of deconstructing our reality. Imagine transforming a Molotov cocktail into a vase; if ‚fresh, shapely vegetables and ripe exotic fruits‘ emerged from it, they would disrupt the existing order, nurturing the seeds for a new paradigm to flourish.

TEIL1:
BODY POLITICS AND DIFFERENT FORMS OF RESISTANCE

Between Pleasure and Pleasing: Control and Power Dynamics of Sex-Art-Domestic Paradigm in Modern Precarity

Kola Aleksandra Sliwinska

The two-day workshop Body Politics and Different Forms of Resistance delves into how art practices and visual cultures can intersect with social change through alternative forms of resistance. They explicitly focus on sex work, art, and socially engaged practices within the expanded field of contemporary art and visual cultures.

The course starts by exploring the concept of precarity in both the art world and sex work, using critical reading to expose the gaps between our experiences of visual cultures and their economic realities. We will also explore performative writing as an effective and political tool for systemic change. The course materials draw from theories in porn studies, queer and feminist studies, art theory, and philosophy, alongside examinations of the capitalist economy. While the primary focus is on the intersection of art and sex work practices since the 1970s, students are encouraged to apply these theoretical insights to a broader range of case studies.

Mon 21 October
2:00 – 7.00 pm

„There is an ecology of bad ideas, just as there is an ecology of weeds.“ Gregory Bateson

We will explore modern precarities through the lens of capitalist realism, examining how hyper-commodification in today’s world might influence art and visual cultures. This session will introduce key theoretical concepts, delve into the term „precarity“ and its associated power dynamics, and explore the intersections between markets, art, ecology and culture. It will also showcase various forms of resistance through artistic practices and activism. Additionally, we will investigate socially engaged practices like the work at La Borde Clinic by Félix Guattari. Semi-utopian, non-hierarchical ways of being together were explored within psychotherapy, challenging and transforming traditional institutional structures to nursing structures that escape and dismantle the established norms, creating new possibilities and ways of thinking. This is a starting point to explore various practices, such as that of Lise Soskolne, artist and co-founder of Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) which advocates for artists to be compensated within institutional contexts. We’ll also look at the Artists Placement Group (APG) founded by John Latham and Barbara Steveni, Alicja Rogalska’s project with seasonal workers on Jersey Island, which aims to amplify their precarious voices and improve their employment and working conditions. We will delve into Michelle Williams Gamaker’s practice that proposes „Fictional Activism“ by reimagining marginalised film stars of colour as central characters, reclaiming their narratives in her works. She challenges the historical injustices and critiques and undermines the imperialist storytelling methods of mainstream films, using the medium of cinema to question and transform the industry’s practice.

Tue 22 October
2:00 – 7.00 pm

„Until now, sex work and the work of reproduction were considered to be disinterested, the origins of the supposed dignity of the female subject, who would feel completely degraded by the commodification of sexual services.“ Paul B. Preciado, Testo Junkie

I will see us delving into the intersection of precarious labour, specifically emphasising sexual work through art practices. This investigation is contextualised through the lenses of domestication, de- domestication of sex economies within the system of Capitalism and its derivatives, precarity, shame, power dynamics, and gender performativity. I propose a framework that may oscillate between ‚pleasure‘ and ‚pleasing‘ work, its social context, and ostracism. Through my investigation, we will aim to illuminate the intricate interplay between sex-art juxtaposition, politics and social power dynamics while examining contemporary artistic production’s potential to carve out spaces for genuine social engagement and transformation. This 2- hour session will include performative writing workshops and presentations of relevant art practices.

We will delve into Silvia Federici’s theoretical framework to explore the intersection of sex, art and art capitalism. This analysis examines the evolution of a historical context of the Industrial Revolution and the beginnings of Capitalism that changed the landscape of modern precarity of sex work. Precariat, in a class system of contemporary society, embodies a form of denial, a body artificially sustained, denying fundamental rights to have rights, as (after Hannah Arendt). In its symbolic status quo, precarity as a social state is ageless and genderless yet firmly attached to its class and social identity.

The examination of the „pharmacopornographic“ power, as proposed by P.B. Preciado, is rooted in the development of the birth control pill in post-Fordist society, where production lines transformed and impacted domestic life and its precarious conditions.

TEIL 2:
RE-EDUCATING INFRASTRUCTURES

Louisa Engel

Mon 25 November 2024
10:00 am – 4:00 pm

Meeting Point in the morning is the symposium ‘DRAWING OTHERWISE – Imagining architecture otherwise through visual realms’ at Akademie der Bildenden Künste Wien.
We will have a one hour lunch break.
From 4:00 pm, everyone is invited to attend the last session of the symposium at TU Wien and to join us for dinner there.

Tue 26 November
10:00 am – 4:00 pm

Meeting point in the morning is seminar room AC0440 at TU Wien.
We will have a one-hour lunch break.

To what extent can aesthetic practices change social and political infrastructures? As socially engaged practices, the arts are developing an ever greater interest in intervening in infrastructures through critical thinking and helping to shape them. At the same time, in this position they are also addressed in terms of cultural policy, for example to democratise social spaces or to prepare people for the labour market. In this context, infrastructures are no longer only thought of as the material conditions of social spaces, i.e. as streets, hospitals and schools, but also as the emotional and aesthetic structures that determine how we think and experience our life together. Informal practices and official policies intertwine in this way. Aesthetic practices, which are not only reduced to art practices but are seen as a ‘specific’ way of thinking, become an instrument for the management of social space for political and economic purposes. Do the arts then fulfil an educational role? In the seminar, we will explore the question of how funding structures explicitly influence an interweaving of culture and educational projects in order to intervene in the aesthetics of infrastructures. But can aesthetic education really contribute to changing infrastructures politically? How can infrastructures be appropriated through aesthetic thinking?

In the seminar, we will explore these questions both through theoretical discussions but also through practical examples in which we will have a closer look on entanglements of cultural policy decisions and informal aesthetic practices. The seminar will take place in dialogue with the symposium ‘DRAWING OTHERWISE – Imagining architecture otherwise through visual realms’, which will be held in parallel at the Academy of Fine Arts and will be attended as part of the seminar. The seminar literature will be available partly in German and partly in English. The seminar will also be held bilingually.

Regime des Visuellen
Univ.Lekt. Kola Aleksandra Sliwinska
Univ.Lekt. Louisa Engel

Montag, 21. Oktober 2024, 14:00-19:00 Uhr
Dienstag, 22. Oktober 2024, 14:00-19:00 Uhr
Montag, 25. November 2024, 10:00-16:00 Uhr
Dienstag, 26. November 2024, 10:00-16:00 Uhr

Ort: Seminarraum AC0440

Weitere Details in TISS