Course Syllabus

The syllabuses on both this page and the NTU online course information are synchronized.

Course Information

Item Content
Course title Contemporary Art and Multiple Coexistence
Semester 114-2
Designated for DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES
Instructor CHUN-YEN CHEN
Curriculum No. FL 3319
Curriculum Id No. 102 37120
Class
Credit 3
Full/Half Yr. Half
Required/Elective Required
Time Friday 2,3,4(9:10~12:10)
Place 新403
Remarks The course is conducted in English。

 

Course Syllabus

Item Content
Course Description ※READ ME FIRST※ 1. Policy on generative AI: You are welcome to use it in other classes on campus, but not in this one! Before AGI is here, this instructor believes that the task of the humanities is to help students think independently. To that end, it is absolutely forbidden to ask generative AI to compile bibliographies or summarize any course material for you. You are to sign a pledge at the beginning of the semester; if you don't agree, please don't take the course. 2. Three national holidays fall on Friday, the day of our class meeting, so please note that there won't be much leeway for you to skip class. And homework is expected for one of the holidays. Visits to art exhibitions and attendance at talks are also part of the course plan. 3. The first week of the semester is a holiday. For the first class meeting, on March 6, please prepare in advance the required reading, which can be found in the Announcements section of this website. **** Course Agenda: Through the lens of contemporary art, this course aims to introduce students to some of the most important critical concepts in current conversations on the human condition, including the posthuman, the transhuman, the more-than-human, the Anthropocene, and man-machine assemblages. We will read selections of writings by leading philosophers, anthropologists, social thinkers, and new media scholars and flesh out our understanding of their theories by looking at exemplary contemporary art projects. The goal is to examine how these thinkers and artists respond to the crisis of humanity today, not least the urgency or difficulty of coexistence of various kinds in the face of climate change, capitalist exploitation, nuclear threat, and challenges posed by machine intelligence.
Course Objective 1) To learn different lines of argument that constitute present-day discussion of the predicament of human life, and to debate the imperative—or fallacy—of a non-anthropocentric perspective in today’s world 2) To acquire literacy in contemporary art and appreciate its relevance for critiquing problematic practices in the real world and for testing out inspirational worldviews 3) To hone skills of analysis and argumentation 4) To become interested in interdisciplinary studies
Course Requirement 1. Regular attendance, incl. visit to one art exhibition and attendance at one talk. Unexcused absence from three weeks will result in zero point on the “preparation, attendance, class participation” part of the final grade. Unexcused absence from five weeks means a failing grade for the semester. 2. Preparation and class participation. 3. Discussion facilitation. On your own or pairing up with a classmate, prepare discussion questions on the assigned reading of the week. Each person must sign up for one session during the semester. 4. Midterm exam. In-class written exam on required readings of Weeks 2-11. 5. Final project. In a group of 2-3 people, write a prospectus for an art project. Imagine that you are to collaborate with an artist to create a project that reflects on one important issue confronting us today, and you are responsible for laying out the “theoretical” part. Length requirement (for the entire assignment): for 2 people, 1,200 words; for 3 people, 1,800 words. More guidelines will be provided in class. Due by June 19. NOTE: Cheating on exams, plagiarism on any assignment or violation of the rule regarding generative AI will result in a failing grade.
Expected weekly study hours before and/or after class Before class: 2-3 hours.
References Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “The Seventh History and Theory Lecture: Anthropocene Time.” History and Theory 57.1 (2018): 5-32. Haraway, Donna J. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. By Haraway. London: Routledge, 1991. 149-81. ---. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2016. Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1999. Ingold, Tim. The Life of Lines. Abingdon: Routledge, 2015. ---. Lines. 2007. Abingdon: Routledge, 2015. Keating, Thomas P., and Nina Williams. “Geophilosophies: Towards Another Sense of the Earth.” Subjectivity 15 (2022): 93-108. Latour, Bruno. Facing Gaia: Eight Lectures on the New Climatic Regime. Trans. Catherine Porter. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2017. ---. “‘We Don’t Seem to Live on the Same Planet’: A Fictional Planetarium.” Walker Art Center: Designs for Different Futures. Walker Art Center, 8 Mar. 2021. Web. 22 Jan. 2022. Wilde, Niels. “Anthropocene Horcruxes: Toward a Theory of Distributed Identities.” SubStance 51.2 (2022): 73-89. Wolfe, Cary. Art and Posthumanism: Essays, Encounters, Conversations. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2022. ---. What Is Posthumanism? Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2010. Zalasiewicz, Jan, et al. “The Anthropocene: Comparing Its Meaning in Geology (Chronostratigraphy) with Conceptual Approaches Arising in Other Disciplines.” Earth’s Future 9.3 (2021): n. pag. Web. Accessed 27 Mar. 2022. ---. “Scale and Diversity of the Physical Technosphere: A Geological Perspective.” The Anthropocene Review 4.1 (2017): 9-22.
Designated Reading Required Readings (incl. web sources): Bates, Tarsh. “S(c)en(t)sory Foraging: The Eros of Olfaction in Multi-species Metabolisms.” Webinar. The Eco- and Bioart Lab. Linköping University, 30 Oct. 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIsqfsIaBwU Braidotti, Rosi. The Posthuman. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2013. Feral Atlas: The More-Than-Human Anthropocene. Curated and edited by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing et al. Stanford U, 2021. https://feralatlas.org/ Gan, Elaine. “Interdisciplinarity: Experiments for More-Than-Human Worlding.” Lecture, Institute of Contemporary Arts, NYU Shanghai, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDLYVN-CWGQ Haraway, Donna. “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin.” Environmental Humanities 6 (2015): 159-65. Hayles, N. Katherine. “Cognitive Assemblages: Technical Agency and Human Interactions.” Critical Inquiry 43.1 (2016): 32-55. ---. “The Cognitive Nonconscious: Enlarging the Mind of the Humanities.” Critical Inquiry 42.4 (2016): 783-808. Keating, Thomas P. “Deep Futures, Radioactivity, and the Arts.” Webinar. The Eco- and Bioart Lab. Linköping University, 24 Jan. 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hfy9YUwF__g Keating, Thomas P., and Anna Storm. “Nuclear Memory: Archival, Aesthetic, Speculative.” Progress in Environmental Geography 2.1-2 (2023): 97-117. Latour, Bruno. “From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik: Or How to Make Things Public.” Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy. Ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 2005. 1-33. Sorgner, Stefan Lorenz. “Nietzsche, the Overman, and Transhumanism.” Journal of Evolution and Technology 20.1 (2009): 29-42. Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2015. Zalasiewicz, Jan, et al. “The Anthropocene: A New Epoch of Geological Time?” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 369.1938 (2011): 835-841. **Artists to be studied include but are not limited to the following: Ahtila, Eija-Liisa. Beesley, Philip. Eliasson, Olafur. Huyghe, Pierre. Ikeda, Ryoji (池田亮司). Labay, Eyong (林介文). MacDonald, Fiona. Perraud, Stéphane, and Aram Kebabdjian. Pestel, Michael. Stelarc.

 

Progress

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Makeup Class Information

NO Date Start Time End Time Location or Method

 

Grading

NO Item Pc Explanations for the conditions
1 preparation, attendance, class participation 20%
2 discussion facilitation 10%
3 midterm exam 40%
4 final project 30%

 

Adjustment methods for students

Adjustment method
Teaching methods
Assignment submission methods
Exam methods
Others Negotiated by both teachers and students

 

Office Hour

NO Day Start time End time
Remarks By appointment (normally Tuesday afternoon and Thursday afternoon).