Aesthetics and Politics of Touch

Catalog description

The course will consider the aesthetics and politics of touch in dialogue with critical, artistic experimentation. Emphasizing interactivity and immersion in art and theory, the course will discuss renewed critical emphasis on the legacy of phenomenology (from Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, and Deleuze to affect theory) in dialogue with recent writings on global critical race and sexual theory (Glissant, Spillers, Mbembe, Ganguly, Lalu, Moten, Cardenas). Designed as an archive-based course, students will be invited to shape the second part of the syllabus around works featured in the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art and in the 2022 CCA Biennial on Futurities, Uncertain with the aim of staging a final text/exhibit/performance based on conceptual approaches to touch.