ART 160: MULTICULTURAL AND GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
fall 2008
This course explores strategies for art-making in the postcolonial, global era. It is an investigation of contemporary visual culture and creativity as a model of hybridity, a way to examine colonial and immigration histories, and the means to explore other topics such as transnationalism, cosmopolitanism and globalization.
This is a hybrid course—primarily studio, but also in part driven by seminar discussion of texts and images presented, as well as field trips and visiting artist presentations. It will focus on discussion and projects that dismantle essentialist notions of culture, and engender more opportunities to draw connections across (perceived) difference.
How do post-colonial histories and contemporary global relationships inform an artistic/creative voice What is this creative voice saying? How do historically under-represented/marginalized artists navigate/negotiate their place within various communities (mainstream, art, cultural)?
The seminar portion focuses on the work of visual artists worldwide, and their diverse strategies for narrating and illustrating notions of imperialism, colonialism, globalization, and diaspora and their impacts on migration, class, otherness, and identity.
Studio projects are informed by student responses to discussion and readings through the lenses of post-colonialism, immigration history, and contemporary globalization and transnationalism. They will engage with notions of center/margin, identity formation, resistance and other forms of protest, and will likely examine multiple modes of, and strategies for, representation.
In the second half of the course, larger projects will emerge through the themes: these may also turn out to be collaborative and multidisciplinary, perhaps performatiive or installation-based, as the needs of the class begin to dictate its direction.