Art, Design and the Public Domain Proseminar

This seminar is intended to serve as an important research, discussion and presentation forum, information resource and a critical laboratory for further development of GSD’s program in Art Design and the Public Domain.

The course will focus on informed review and discussion in contemporary transformative, analytical, critical, and interventional art and design practice that engages public spaces and lives of people in the cities.

Student interests and instructor suggestions will become a base for assigned readings, research, and presentation projects. Some seminar sessions will include appearances of invited artists, curators, and critics, as well as film screenings, and site visits.

In the course of readings, discussions, presentations and in the process of working on special public art project the students will be exposed to issues and notions of Public Domain, Public Space and Public Sphere, Parrhesia, Interventionist Art, Agonistic Democracy, Memorial and Monument, Traumatic Stress, Cultural Trauma, Public Testimony, Speech-Act, Pro-test, Site Specific and Audience Specific Art, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the Epic Theater, Derive, Detournement and Psychogeography, Performative, Interrogative, and Critical Design, the concepts of the Event, the Political, Strategy and Tactics, Nomadology, War Machine, and State Apparatus, Transitional Object, Good Enough Mother, Relational Aesthetics, Art as Responsive and Interactive Environment, Cultural Prosthetics and other.