Artistic Methodology, The Parasitical Turn

Instructor: Post Brothers Date & Time: Sundays June 6, 13, 20, 27, July 11, 18, 25, August 1 9:00 to 11:30 AM ET

Enroll – 375 USD

DESCRIPTION:This Seminar is inspired by the French philosopher Michel Serres’s book The Parasite, which defines the parasite through three commonly held perspectives of the term, as biological, social, and communicative (since “parasite” is also the French word for noise). Serres discusses the parasite as a vehicle for introducing ‘irritants’ to any given order, causing subtle changes that can be productive and cumulative. This 8 session Seminar will look at how artists have operated as “parasites” by intruding into spaces where they are not welcome, parodying and inverting certain roles/systems/formats/contexts, and redistributing resources from one space to the next. The figure of the parasite extends to artists a means of surveying, articulating, questioning, and contaminating relations. It is a tool to determine loopholes, complicities, and power positions within any given system. By invading channels of communication and interrupting social relations and the operations of institutions, one can extract surplus, introduce unexpected elements, and force the system to evolve and adapt. Through discussions with artists and thinkers, this seminar will examine a wide range of tactics for creative infiltration and will consider what these acts tell us about how systems work. In order to survive, the parasite becomes an expert in their host’s habits and a manipulator of its codes. Such efforts not only make visible a system’s internal criteria but also lay bare the parasitical interrelations within the system itself. These relationships are what parasites feed on; parasites exploit routines of exploitation, interfering with perceived balances and legitimacies by deferring the normal route. Moderated by Post Brothers, the sessions will address logics of exclusion and unequal exchange within the cultural field and within economic, biological, and sociopolitical structures, illuminating the hidden pacts of hospitality and property so as to question our dependencies and assumptions regarding how we act and work together. In addition, this seminar will consider how acts of resistance are often co-opted and implicated in the very structures they seek to undermine and will explore methods of survival and subversion in an increasingly flexible albeit precarious world.

June 6: Introductory Lecture by Post Brothers
June 13: Goldin+Senneby
June 20: Minerva Cuevas
June 27: Jill Magid
July 11: Christian Jankowski
July 18: Chris Evans
July 25: Janek Simon
August 1: Concluding Lecture by Post Brothers

IMAGE: Constant Dullaart, Jennifer in Paradise, 2013

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Enroll – 375 USD