PHILOSOPHY FOR ARTISTS

New York City NY

20 February, 2023

Description

PHILOSOPHY FOR ARTISTS 8-week course via Zoom $600 Course Description: ON APPEARING TO BE DIFFICULT: ANOMALY - LIMINALITY - OPACITY This 8-week (online) session introduces (some) ideas in aesthetic education in the context of judgments of personhood (or the lack thereof) as theorized near contemporary art. Against the tyranny of ‘bad’ nihilism, in this course we will reflect on how racializing judgments thwart freedom. I agree with Adrian Piper that we are engaged in harmful forms of self-delusion when we practice xenophobic judging as a feature of pseudo-rational self-preservation—for example in our stereotypical judgments of racialized others. However, I think that the explanation of the implications—namely the call to refute racial categorizations altogether such as outlined by Piper over the last several decades and most recently in her article “Caste in Stone: Why Classifying Artists by Race is not just a “Social Construct’ ” (reflecting on the findings of the 2022 Burns-Halperin report)—requires further elucidation since modern and contemporary theories of aesthetic judgment have traditionally been taught far from theories of political judgment. We will survey how the ideas of anomaly and opacity signpost thinking in the analytic and euro-continental branches of philosophy, respectively. We will reflect on our own experiences of liminality, art, and structures of power to discuss questions of beauty, justice, and freedom (deferred). My hope is to enhance our understanding of the historical development, formation, and inheritance(s) of ideas at the crux of aesthetics and ethics to broaden critical contemporary perspectives on the history of art, art institutions, and art markets. PHILOSOPHY FOR ARTISTS: ON APPEARING TO BE DIFFICULT: ANOMALY - LIMINALITY - OPACITY (SPRING 2023) - $600 FEB 20 – APRIL 10 MONDAYS 7-9 EST EMAIL TO REGISTER