Course 2: Featured Parts, Features - on the Turbulent Media of the Present
by Esther Leslie
2 – 7 August, 2021
2 ECTS
Application deadline: July 16, 2021.
Course Description
This course confronts materials - fogs, foams, froths, particulated air, muds, ether, crystals, liquids - ones that have always been around but which accrue new significances. These are materials bound into new technological environments - ones shaped by and in relation to cloud computing, touchscreens, CGI animation, Networks of Things, sub-perceptual visualising systems. Between these matters and these technologies is the human, but that is a fantasy - the human is shot through- made of and with - these matters and these technologies. In the context of the matter, from which emanates ideological and poetic significance, and the technologies, which are also idealist constructions, it is possible to produce an environment - unlike the hostile environment that seeps across the world, a toxically political atmosphere - an environment in which political aesthetics can seize the stage in the interests of critical analysis.
Biography
Esther Leslie is Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of London. Her books include various studies and translations of Walter Benjamin, as well as Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant Garde (Verso, 2002); Synthetic Worlds: Nature, Art and the Chemical Industry (Reaktion, 2005); Derelicts: Thought Worms from the Wreckage (Unkant, 2014), Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form (Reaktion, 2016) and Deeper in the Pyramid (with Melanie Jackson: Banner Repeater, 2018). Future work includes research for an exhibition at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art on the chemical industries of the North East of England and the poetic and political significance of butter in Ireland for the Limerick Biennale 2020.
Participation
10 participants will be selected to participate in this course. Eligible participants must read the Terms information, fill out the application form, upload the required documents and submit the application form. Incomplete applications will not be considered.
Scholarships are available for participants from Kosovo.
A limited number of scholarships that cover the participation fee are available for international participants.