Theory as Visual Practice,
Visual Practice as Theory

AH600

The developing paradisciplinary field of Visual Culture Studies holds out the promise of integrating theoretical speculation and creative production, critical analysis particularly with an eye to socio-political relevance, historical study and archival digging, and interventions in art practice. This course has been designed to think beyond the divisions that are often drawn between criticism, theoretical discourse, and art practice or studio discourse. To forge productive links between the roles of critic, theorist, historian, and artist we will explore what happens when we look at theory texts as artifacts and artifacts as theoretical articulations in visual form. The course will focus on the aesthetics of certain theoretical writings (that is, theory texts as artifacts) and the visual discourse of art works (that is, consider certain artifacts as theoretical articulations in visual form). We will look at the post–conceptual, anti–theory turn in art production of the mid to late 1990s and look back at the history of post–World War II conceptual art and the theory–based art production of the 1970s and 1980s. We will consider the varied work of current artists who do double duty as theorists and/or critics (e.g., Deborah Bright, Coco Fusco, Mary Kelly, Adrian Piper, Victor Burgin, Yve Lomax and Guillermo Gomez-Peña) as potential instigators for semester–end projects negotiating and transforming the border between theory, criticism, and art.