Installation/Participation

Overview

This module addresses questions of display, installation, reception and participation as they have taken shape in modern and contemporary art.

By looking back to earlier historical precedents we will examine the various conditions under which art works have been produced, disseminated and exhibited as objects in the modern period, and the ways in which these conditions have also been resisted or rejected. From the changing nature of the artist’s studio during the 1960s, to performance and the artwork as ‘ephemeral’, the module considers how artists have developed alternative ways of imagining and addressing art’s spaces and audiences on both a local and a global scale. The module will be structured around a series of episodes and case studies drawn from histories of modern and contemporary art since 1960.

Aims

By the end of the module, students should have acquired:

• Familiarity with a range of artistic and critical practices in modern and contemporary art since 1960.
• Knowledge of a range of theoretical and art historical texts and art works relating to questions of installation, participation, and display.
• The ability to think critically and carefully about the art studied from both a theoretical and historical perspective.

Reading

Preliminary Reading 

• C. Bishop, Installation Art: A Critical History, 2005

   

• J. Reiss, From Margin to Centre: The Spaces of Installation Art 1958-1993, 1999

   

• Y-A Bois, B. Buchloh, H. Foster, R. Krauss, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, 2005