Who decides what is ART?

Code	Completion	Credits	Range	Language Instruction	Semester
311MART	Z	2	2D	English	summer

Subject guarantor:

Jitka HEJTMANOVÁ

Name of lecturer(s):

Jitka HEJTMANOVÁ

Learning outcomes of the course unit:

The aim of the workshop is to make students to be aware of photographer's situation in postmodernism and digital era.

Nowadays everyone got a camera and is a photographer. Traditional photographers aren't much respected in contemporary art world. Most often photographer is perceived as craftsman, „naive“ documentarist or amateur - snapshot maker. In the huge photographic smog, the one who use existing photographs and play the role of curator is an artist.

Mode of study:

Seminar.

February 13 - February 14, 2015 (Fri + Sat)

Prerequisites and co-requisites:

In advance think about the theme for your image selection and presentation. Bring your own laptops.

Recommended optional programme components:

None

Course contents:

Lucturer: Ivars Gravlejs

„Decisive moment“ is not the production of image but the selection.

To practice time based presentation and interpretation of appropriated visual material.

To discus the role and situation of „photographer“ in art context.

Recommended or required reading:

Art Power (2008) by Boris Groys

Chapter: From Image to Image File?and Back: Art in the Age of Digitalization

http://www.altx.com/remix/Groys.pdf

Fotomuseum Winterthur blog „Still Searching“

http://blog.fotomuseum.ch/2014/11/iii-photography-versus-contemporary-art-the-case-of-the-lecture-performance/

http://blog.fotomuseum.ch/2014/11/i-photographers-versus-artists-a-colonial-story/

by Ekaterina Degot (2014)

Planned learning activities and teaching methods:

The workshop is divided in 3 stages.

1. „Curatorial practice“ - each student will have to select photographs from internet (at least 50 images). The selection can be based on theme, story or concept. (You can not use own photos!!!)

2. „Lecture performance“ - presentation of selected photographs accompanied by the students?s comments (length approx. 10 minutes)

3. „Documentation“ - the students will have to combine presented photographs with the audio recording from their presentation. Later as a video file to upload on internet. (length of video approx. 5 - 10 minutes)

Assessment methods and criteria:

100 % attendance + realization of documentation

Course web page:

Note:

Ivars Gravlejs graduated FAMU in 2007 where he studied photography. Typical of him are photographs and videos often created in other contexts and for different purposes thus they hadn?t been intended as art. The artist appears at the contemporary art scene as a bitter ironist who turns specific exhibition themes and established concepts upside down which plainly demonstrates their ridiculousness or feebleness of their original constructs.

http://www.ivarsgravlejs.com/

Boris Groys is an art critic, media theorist, and philosopher. He is currently a Global Distinguished Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University and Senior Research Fellow at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design in Karlsruhe, Germany. He has been a professor of Aesthetics, Art History, and Media Theory at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design/Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe and an internationally acclaimed Professor at a number of universities in the United States and Europe, including the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California and the Courtauld Institute of Art London.

Ekaterina Degot is an art writer and curator, artistic director at the Academy of Arts of the World, Cologne, and professor at the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography. Her present curatorial projects include: Report to an Academy: A Non-Academic Symposium, Performative or Otherwise, Pluriversale I, Cologne, 2014 (with David Riff); What Did the Artist Mean by That?, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 2014 (with Yuri Albert), Monday Begins on Saturday, First Bergen Assembly, Bergen, Norway, 2013 (with David Riff).

Schedule for winter semester 2014/2015:

The schedule has not yet been prepared

Schedule for summer semester 2014/2015:

Date	Day	Time	Tutor	Location	Notes	No. of paralel
13.02.2015		09:30–17:30	HEJTMANOVÁ J.	Učebna 3 Lažanský palác	In English. CAS/PHOTO/FAMU International students preferably	paralelka 1
14.02.2015		09:30–17:30	HEJTMANOVÁ J.	Učebna 3 Lažanský palác		paralelka 1

The subject is a part of the following study plans:

Photography CZ - Bachelor (optional subject)
Photography CZ - Master (optional subject)
Photography EN - Bachelor (optional subject)
Photography EN - Master (optional subject)
Cinema and Digital Media - Screenwriting-2014 (qualification subject, optional subject)
Cinema and Digital Media - Directing (qualification subject, optional subject)