CS 640R

Art As Method

Aesthetic objects such as visual art, performance, installation, dance, and sound aim to provoke an intervention into our ways of knowing and being in relation to ourselves and the wider world. Moving beyond a consideration of art as representation, this course considers the status of the aesthetic as a method: a way of encountering experience and making new knowledge. Drawing on psychoanalytic theories of creativity and aesthetic case studies, the course explores the creative gesture as a method for interpreting the difficult dilemmas of living, while opening the capacity for new forms of thought, experience, and relationality. Together we consider how the material qualities of aesthetic objects reckon with relations of power while sustaining the interpretive potential of unknowability. Students will also explore research-creation as a cultural studies/communication studies methodology.