This module is inactive in the selected year. The information shown below is for the academic year that the module was last running in, prior to the year selected.

2015/16 Undergraduate Module Catalogue

ARTF3066 Critical and Curatorial Challenges in Contemporary Art: The Documenta Exhibitions 1992-2012

20 creditsClass Size: 18

Module manager: Griselda Pollock
Email: g.f.s.pollock@leeds.ac.uk

Taught: Semester 2 (Jan to Jun) View Timetable

Year running 2015/16

Pre-requisite qualifications

Level 2 BA Fine Art, History of Art, Cultural Studies, Art History and Museum Studies, Joint Honours

This module is not approved as a discovery module

Module summary

As a snapshot taken every five years of the state and the potential of contemporary art, the documenta temporary exhibition held for 100 days in Kassel Germany is one of the most influential of contemporary exhibitions. Since 1992 the exhibition has registered the impact of major historical events and re-orientations of Europevis-a-vis the world. With one exception, each of the directors of the five documentas since 1992 has framed his/her projects with a profound sense of the engagements between contemporary art and pressing historical and cultural questions. Critics have varied wildly in their assessments of these projects. This module uses the prism of a detailed study of five documenta exhibtions projects to explore the critical face of art since 1989 and the aesthetic face of history since 1989 using critical methods to read the exhibition as text in the context of debates about globalization, feminism and the politics and ethics of curatorial practices.

Objectives

In the modern era, the temporary exhibition is one of the major forms through which knowledge, as well as appraisal, of art contemporary with the exhibition is produced. As an event, an exhibition is experienced and remembered by those who visit. What they experience is scripted by the selectors’ concepts for the show and the selection of work included. Yet any show is open to unanticipated readings. The exhibition has, however, a historicizing afterlife through formal critical writing that places the event in cultural memory and through the catalogue or other publications that become the monument to the event and also its long-term historical form. Since the middle of the twentieth century one exhibition, documenta, a temporary non-selling exhibition lasting 100 days begun by Arnold Bode in 1955 as an attempt to reconnect the broken thread of modern art in Germany shattered by Nazism’s expulsion of modern art as ‘degenerate’ in the 1937-8, has become one of the most significant and influential sites for a quinquennial review of current art, increasingly gaining its place as the most important temporary exhibition even amidst the proleration of biennials worldwide. Conceived in the context of the massive historical trauma of Nazism and the Holocaust, addressing the significance of art in the face of such a history and its aftermath, the documenta exhibitions can be studied as important indices of the critical relation between the artworld and its changing artistic forms and debates and contemporary histories studied through the device of authorial curatorship, critical response and the temporary exhibition as an extended form of cultural practice and theoretical intervention.
This module has three major objectives:
•To undertake a detailed study of five documenta exhibitions since 1992 in relation to the major landmarks of historical change since 1989: the end of the Cold War, the reunification of the two Germanies, the postcolonial critique and transformation and European expansion through the integration of Eastern Europe and its place in the era of globalization.
How can history be approached through art?
•To map and to explore critically through the study of key projects and works in five documenta exhibitions since 1992 the shifting priorities and debates in contemporary artistic practice.
What can such an exhibitionary focus reveal about the history of contemporary art or the end of the history of art?
• To approach theoretically and critically curatorial and exhibitionary practice as sites of research, debate, intervention and critical thinking while contending with the dominant commercialization of the sphere of contemporary art.
Can curation be a critical and a political practice?
In addition this module aims to create an interdisciplinary space for fine artists, art historians, cultural studies and museum studies students to read contemporary culture through the art exhibition and to examine this institutional site where artistic practice, historical shifts and critical thought conjoin.

Learning outcomes
-art historical knowledge of the history of the last five documenta exhibitions in historical and critical context
-historical knowledge of the major transformations in European history since 1945 as refracted through the prism of artistic, curatorial and critical representations
- critical knowledge through the analysis of the temporary exhibition as format, practice, event and monument
- detailed understanding of curatorial case studies
- use of archives as research tools
- knowledge of museological theory, critical debates in curatorial theory and practice
- development of methods for analysing the exhibition as cultural text
- postcolonial, feminist and queer methods for developing critical readings in contemporary art

Skills outcomes
.

Syllabus

Draft Syllabus
1. Brief History and background and some contexts and questions for the module
2.The temporary exhibition and the Biennale and the Bienialization of Culture
3Setting the five Documentas 1989-2003 in historical and theoretical context
4. Documenta IX: the first Documenta after re-unificaton and the events of 1989
5. Documenta X: Poetics/Politics The End of the Twentieth Century
6. Reading Week
7. Documenta XI: History, politics, art and the post-colonial remapping of the world through four platforms.
8.Documenta XII: The Feminist Documenta
9. Documenta XIII: art as research
10. As Above
11. Reviewing the module

Teaching methods

Delivery type	Number	Length hours	Student hours
Seminar	10	2.00	20.00
Private study hours			180.00
Total Contact hours			20.00
Total hours (100hr per 10 credits)			200.00

Private study

The students will be expected to undertake weekly reading tasks for the seminars and to prepare presentations for the seminars. They will be expected to undertake research for an essay and for the weekly creation of their portfolio. They will also prepare the final version of the portfolio with introduction and conclusion.

Opportunities for Formative Feedback

Student progress will be monitored by their class participation and presentations. The essay enables us to assess their generic and subject specific skills in research and written presentation. Classroom feedback on oral skills, presentation skills and participation will be given. The portfolio enables students to monitor and assess their own progress through the module and appraise it at the end.

Methods of assessment

Coursework

Assessment type	Notes	% of formal assessment
Essay	3000 word essay	50.00
Portfolio	3000 word portfolio	50.00
Total percentage (Assessment Coursework)		100.00

Normally resits will be assessed by the same methodology as the first attempt, unless otherwise stated

Reading list

The reading list is available from the Library website

Last updated: 24/04/2015

Disclaimer

Browse Other Catalogues

• Undergraduate module catalogue
• Taught Postgraduate module catalogue
• Undergraduate programme catalogue
• Taught Postgraduate programme catalogue

Errors, omissions, failed links etc should be notified to the Catalogue Team.PROD