Unmanageability: pathless realities and approaches

Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 3 hours / session

Over the last 40 years, new managerial technologies in Western democratic societies have emerged to dominate our perceived and lived reality. Demands for autonomy and a creative life, which have been the touchstones for artistic endeavors, have been readily absorbed into management philosophies, becoming normative values for self-management and entrepreneurial innovation. Is this art's triumph or demise? Can we imagine other worlds beyond our managed reality and propose forms of living not yet captured by the rationality of network capitalism? We will explore the "creative" figure and how it can shape renewed critical expressions in fields such as technology, design, science, philosophy, etc. Taking managerialism (control) as a backdrop, we will examine how manifestations of art can access ungoverned courses of life.

Combining workshop and seminar, the form of the class will itself become a platform for testing new possible pedagogical approaches through the co-creation of self-emancipatory tools and techniques inspired by a wide scope of cultural theorists, sociologists, educators and philosophers such as Luc Boltanski, Michel Foucault, Michel de Certeau, Alan Watts, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Paulo Freire, Jacques Ranciere, John Dewey, amongst others.

This course emphasizes creative and corporeal practices supplemented by rigorous critical discourse. Discussions will be generative of actionable practices and creative material productions specific to the various disciplines / media of the participant. Throughout the semester, participants will develop a project that involves delineating an emancipatory practice and its possible material productions and repercussions (i.e., text, architecture, video, design, painting, sculpture, web design, typography etc.)

MIT students were required to obtain permission of the instructors.

Weekly classes are comprised of two sections with a short break in each. The first section will concentrate on individual presentations, exercises, group critiques, studio visits, workshops, and screenings. The second section will be for seminar discussion on the week's topic and assigned readings, guest lecturers, and class trips.

Final class grades for this course will be self-evaluated provided that students attend all classes and complete all assignments to be eligible to evaluate overall performance. Please consider the following when thinking about the grade you believe you deserve:

Academic Apparatus: Classroom

Guest: Manuel Cirauqui, Assistant Curator at Dia Art Foundation

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