Course Schedule

Course Schedule

Start > Masterprogramm Education: Bildungswissenschaft - Educational Sciences (M.A.) -> Minor Kulturell-ästhetische Bildung -> Organizational Theory for the Arts

Lehrveranstaltungen

Art, Aesthetics and Organization (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Maximilian Schellmann

Inhalt: Art, Aesthetics and Organization Maximilian Schellmann Einzeltermin | Mi, 28.10.2020, 12:15-13:45 | online (Zoom) Einzeltermin | Mi, 04.11.2020, 12:15-13:45 | online (Zoom) Einzeltermin | Mi, 11.11.2020, 12:15-13:45 | online (Zoom) Einzeltermin | Mi, 18.11.2020, 12:15-13:45 | online (Zoom) Einzeltermin | Mi, 25.11.2020, 12:15-13:45 | online (Zoom) Einzeltermin | Mi, 02.12.2020, 12:15-13:45 | online (Zoom) Einzeltermin | Mi, 09.12.2020, 12:15-13:45 | online (Zoom) Einzeltermin | Mi, 16.12.2020, 12:15-13:45 | online (Zoom) Einzeltermin | Fr, 05.02.2021, 09:00 – 19:00 | C40.606 The seminar is dedicated to contemporary transformations of the forms and processes of cultural organization. With the rise of – or hype around – ‘creative industries’ and ‘cultural economy’, which as of 2014 represent 4.2% of EU’s total GDP (and growing), the processes of cultural production and consumption have moved into the spotlight. Innovation today seems predicated on the aesthetic labour of inventing new, or remixing existing forms, symbols, images, atmospheres, sounds and signs. In this spirit, ideas of artistic creativity and artistic practices are summoned to improve all walks of life and to effect socio-cultural change. For instance, urban realities are turning into aesthetic projects through the mass deployment of artistic techniques that mobilize and modulate the affective background of urban life. Another example is the ubiquity of digital media and their potential for cultural expression, which seems to confound the distinction between cultural production and consumption. Or note that never in modern times has there been as much art, and has art been as visible and present in society. These developments affect the processes of cultural organization. For one, many established cultural organizations such as museums, concert halls, and theatres feel the demand to become more ‘customer’- and market-oriented. Perhaps more strikingly, new models, forms and practices of cultural organizing emerge. Surveying the landscape of cultural organization, this seminar seeks to map and interrogate such new practices of organizing art and culture. It will zoom in on three particularly noteworthy manifestations: a) The ‘curatorial turn’ in today’s globalized art field as well as in the wider sphere of contemporary creative labour has spawned a new and increasingly significant persona and role model: the curator. On the front line of a battle for meaning under the conditions of uncertainty, writes sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, the curator has become scapegoat, animator, pusher, inspirer, brother, community maker, someone who makes people work and things happen, who inspires people with ideas, programmes and projects, and who gives them a sort of alphabet for reading what they see but cannot quite decide about. We can therefore speak of an expanded organizational practice of curating, which not only produces exhibitions but pervades today’s production of culture. b) Recently, and perhaps not unrelatedly, the US magazine ‘The Atlantic’ announced a new paradigm of cultural production: Creative entrepreneurship and the creative entrepreneur would have taken the place of art and artists. Lodged in the interstices of the cultural and the entrepreneurial, cultural entrepreneurship is presented as a new and flexible form of reconfiguring as well as inaugurating ways of producing culture. At the same time, the imperative to be creative and to think and behave entrepreneurially signals a late capitalist form of subjectivity that turns cultural workers into autonomous, self-regulating and increasingly precarious subjects. c) The contemporary visual and performative arts have themselves taken an ‘organizational turn’. Demonstrating a keen interest in the nature of sociality and social transformation, artistic production has turned to organization as a cultural form itself, as artistic material to be worked on and with. Mediating between social, economic and political processes, art has developed an ‘organizational intent’, writes the philosopher Peter Osborne. It performs organization. It engages in ‘relational aesthetics’, ‘participatory art’ or ‘community art’; it conducts ‘social work’; and it becomes ‘urban art’ that intervenes in the organization of urban life. The seminar is not limited to the figures of curator, culturepreneur and community maker, however. Other forms and practices of organizing art, aesthetics and culture might be detected and worth exploring. Seminar structure (indicative). Mi, 28.10.2020, 12:15-13:45 Introduction: What we’re up to Mi, 04.11.2020, 12:15-13:45 Sociological background (1): the new spirit of capitalism and the misadventure of critical thought (reading: Boltanski/Chiapello, 2007; Rancière, 2009) Mi, 11.11.2020, 12:15-13:45 Sociological background (2): the dispositive of creativity (readings: Reckwitz, 2014; Beyes 2016) Mi, 18.11.2020, 12:15-13:45 Mapping the field of cultural organizing / Identifying student projects Mi, 25.11.2020, 12:15-13:45 The case of ‘culturepreneurship’ (1): the rise of enterprise discourse (readings: Deresiewicz, 2015; Beyes, 2006) Mi, 02.12.2020, 12:15-13:45 The case of ‘culturepreneurship’ (2): culture and entrepreneurship? (readings: Lange, 2011; McRobbie, 2002; Beyes, 2015a) Mi, 09.12.2020, 12:15-13:45 The case of curating: Harald Szeemann (readings: Behnke, 2010; Derieux, 2007) Mi, 16.12.2020, 12:15-13:45 Art and entrepreneurship (readings: Beyes 2015b; Holt & Hjorth 2016) Fr, 05.02.2021, 09:00 – 19:00 Research Conference: New forms of organizing culture – Presentation of Student Projects Literature (indicative) Behnke, Christoph (2010) ‘The Curator as Arts Administrator? Comments on Harald Szeemann and the Exhibition “When Attitudes Become Form”’. The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society, 40(1): 27-42. Beyes, Timon (2015a) ‘Summoning art to save the city’. Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization, 15(1): 207-220. Beyes, Timon (2015b) ‘Fictions of the possible: art, the city and public entrepreneurship’. Journal of Management Inquiry, 24(4): 445-449. Beyes, Timon (2016) ‘Art, Aesthetics and Organization’. In Barbara Czarniawska (ed.), A Research Agenda for Management and Organization Studies. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Boltanski, Luc and Eve Chiapello (2007) The New Spirit of Capitalism. London: Verso. [Excerpts] Bourriaud, Nicholas (2002) Relational Aesthetics. Les presses du réel, Dijon-Quetigny. [Excerpts] Deresiewicz, William (2015) ‘The Death of the Artist—and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur’. The Atlantic, Jan/Feb 2015. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/01/the-death-ofthe- artist-and-the-birth-of-the-creative-entrepreneur/383497/ Derieux, Florence (ed.) (2007) Harald Szeemann: Individual Methodology. Zurich: jrp Ringier. [Excerpts] Lange, Bastian (2011) ‘Professionalization in space: Social-spatial strategies of culturepreneurs in Berlin’. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 23(3–4): 259–279. McRobbie, Angela (2002) ‘Clubs to Companies: Notes on the decline of political culture in speeded up creative worlds’. Cultural Studies, 16(4): 516-531. Rancière, Jacques. (2009). The Misadventure of Critical Thought; In: The Emancipated Spectator. London: Verso. Reckwitz, Andreas (2014) ‘Creativity as Dispositif’. In Hubert Knoblauch et al. (eds.), Culture, Communication and Creativity, Peter Lang. Steyeart, C. & Michels, C. (2018). Atmosphere. In: The Creativity Complex. [T.Beyes & J. Metelmann [Eds.]. Bielefeled: Transcript