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Material Creativities

  • Module code: GZ7004
  • Year: 2018/9
  • Level: 7
  • Credits: 30
  • Pre-requisites: None
  • Co-requisites: None

Summary

This module consists of an arts-based engagement with new materialist theory and practice. The module explores the concepts of diffraction and creativity through engaging with matter in diverse forms. The new materialist articulation and manipulation of matter will be explored from the perspective of literature, philosophy and the creative arts, through the combination of theoretical readings and practical projects. The module explores creativity and its function in critical through with afocus on questions of embodiment, materiality, space, borders and limits. The new materialist challenge to both the humanities and the sciences will be explored through reading the work of thinkers like Donna Haraway, Karen Barad, Rosi Braidotti and others. The module will combine theory with practice where the focus is on students' experience of creative practice in a range of interrelated contexts. Students will explore and combine a range of traditional and new technologies, and will be introduced to definitions, issues, cultural contexts and current research in new materialism. Students will be encouraged to make links between creative processes through translating concepts across a range of different artistic fields, expanding their own conceptual and procedural understanding of new materialism.

Aims

  • Introduce and assess a range of practice-based approaches to theories of embodiment and positionality central to questions of intersectional identity
  • Enable students to draw from a range of creative methods appropriate to their own concerns, and to explore the possibilities of practice-based research through critical self-reflection
  • Develop connections between students' own practical experiences and their research methodologies
  • Facilitate the sharing of research practices across interdisciplinary boundaries

Learning outcomes

On successful completion of the module, students will be able to:

  • Differentiate between underlying theoretical concepts and principles associated with embodied theory and practice
  • Critically evaluate and interpret these concepts within the context of a range of disciplines including the visual arts, music, experimental writing, new media/film and performing arts
  • Research, interpret and develop lines of argument in accordance with interrelated theories of practice-based theory and pedagogy
  • Perceive, explore, translate and express theoretical concepts materially across a range of media

Curriculum content

  • How can we define a ‘diffractive' methodology?
  • What intellectual climate has led to an emergence of practice-based methodologies in teaching and learning?
  • How can we render theoretical concepts materially?
  • What is the relationship between critical theory and arts practice?
  • How can we define a ‘transversal' practice?
  • What does it mean to ‘translate' a concept from one artistic discipline to another?
  • How do theory and practice intersect and can they be differentiated?
  • Are some critical fields more appropriate for a particular artistic medium than others?
  • What does it mean to say that a concept is ‘embodied'?
  • What role do gender and related intersectional identities play in questions of embodiment or materiality?

Teaching and learning strategy

The module will be delivered via a series of seminars based on core readings, in which dialogue between staff and students is facilitated, and in which students are encouraged to respond to one another. Discussion of conceptual issues related to the module's key questions will be combined with focus on the use of particular expressive forms. To facilitate this, guest speakers and team teaching from members of different disciplines and different schools will be employed, sometimes spanning the humanities and social sciences. This will provide opportunities for staff to model the interrogation of disciplinary boundaries and productive dialogue.

Breakdown of Teaching and Learning Hours

Definitive UNISTATS Category Indicative Description Hours
Scheduled learning and teaching Seminar Discussions and Practical Workshops Exhibition event 22 6
Guided independent study Assigned Reading, Writing and Exhibition Visits 272
Total (number of credits x 10) 300

Assessment strategy

The assessment of this course is by two elements: 1.) a creative project demonstrated through an exhibition, performance and/or screening of students' practical work which combines visual, performance, film and sound elements; 2.) a critical and conceptual journal. Students will be able to choose the combination of practices in which they base their final practical project, but the emphasis will be on the process and the combination of at least two different practical disciplines.  Projects will be assessed on their incorporation of themes and ideas related to the module, their originality, ambition, intellectual power, and their creative process. The journal will be expected to include applications, discussions and reflections on the set reading for the course.

Weighting:

Project        60%

Journal       40%

Mapping of Learning Outcomes to Assessment Strategy (Indicative)

Learning Outcome Assessment Strategy
Differentiate between underlying theoretical concepts and principles associated with embodied theory and practice Assessed formatively and summatively in journal writing, class discussion and practical assignments
Evaluate and interpret these within the context of a range of disciplines including the visual arts, music, experimental writing, new media/film and performing arts Assessed formatively and summatively in journal writing, class discussion and practical assignments
Research, interpret and develop lines of argument in accordance with interrelated theories of practice-based theory and pedagogy Assessed formatively and summatively in journal writing, class discussion and practical assignments
Perceive, explore, translate and express theoretical concepts materially across a range of media Assessed formatively and summatively in journal writing, class discussion and practical assignments

Elements of Assessment

Description of Assessment Definitive UNISTATS Categories Percentage
Coursework Project 60
Coursework Journal 40
Total (to equal 100%) 100%

Achieving a pass

It IS NOT a requirement that any major assessment category is passed separately in order to achieve an overall pass for the module.

Bibliography core texts

Braidotti, R. (2002) Metamorphoses: Towards a Materialist Theory of Becoming. Cambridge: Polity.

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F.(1980)  A Thousand Plateaus. London: Continuum.

Joy, Jenn (2014) The Choroegraphic. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Van der Tuin, I. and R. Dolphijn (2010). ‘The Transversality of New Materialism'.

Women: A Cultural Review 21.2: 153-71.

Bibliography recommended reading

Alaimo, S. and Hekman, S. (2008) Material Feminisms. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Barad, K. (2007) Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.

Byrne, David (2012) How Music Works. Edinburgh: Canongate.

Berger, John Ways of Seeing (1972) London: Penguin.

Coleman, R. (2009) The Becoming of Bodies: Girls, Images, Experience. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Coole, D. and Frost, S. (2010) New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency and Politics. Durham: Duke.

Braidotti, R. (1994) Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory . New York: Columbia University Press.

Gallop, J. (1988) Thinking Through the Body. Columbia University Press, New York.

Gatens, M. (1996) Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality. London: Routledge

Grosz, Elizabeth (2004) Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth. New York: Columbia University Press.

Deleuze, Gilles (1993) The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. London: Continuum.

Dolphijn, R., van der Tuin, I (eds) (2012) New Materialism: Interviews & Cartographies Michigan: Open Humanities Press

Haraway, D. (1997) Modest_Witness@Second_Millenium.FemaleMan_Meets_OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge.

Haraway, D. (2004) The Haraway Reader. London: Routledge

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1993)The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting ed. Michael B. Smith Northwestern University Press.

Van der Tuin, I. (2014) ‘Diffraction as a Methodology for Feminist Onto-Epistemology: On Encountering Chantal Chawaf and Posthuman Interpellation, Parallax 20 (3) pp. 231-244.

Whitehead, A. N. (1919) An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

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