THE
PUBLIC
SCHOOL
TELIC ARTS EXCHANGE

For Rancière, any experience involves/evokes a (re-)configuration of the "visible" and the "sensible," an order of possible actions/enactments, and possible situations. In other words, the "distribution of the sensible" (Rancière) defines a "system" that opens up the ability -- if not the possibility of the possible -- to perceive the existence of something held in common ("the common of the community") and the torsions ("dissagreements") that apportion places and parts within, as well as around, it. Thus, this theoritcal position(ing) entails that there is both a politics immanent to artistic praxes and that there exists no political configuration which is not always-already founded on a decision regarding the visibility of its pieces and spatio-temporal possiblities and multiplications. Thus, in this proposed class, which will be held, I hope, during the College Art Association's annual meeting, which takes place in February 2010, I would like to explore the politics, possiblities, and potenialites of Rancière's "distribution of the sensible," "politics of aesthetics," and "political disagreement" -- as well as the differences and similaties (in-)between "art," "aesthetics," and "politics."  In a sense, explore the architecture of Rancière's theoretical thought(s), and how it is played out and can be played out in art and architecture (and even beyond to the everyday).

in this experimental writing course, we will explore the boundaries of believability, authenticity, and the recently discovered notion of truthiness using forms like listmaking, found texts, and unreliable narrators to get at a more reliable approximation of truth. we will read texts that explore lying, integrity, and irrelevance while creating others that don't.

On 7 August, 2009 at 7:00PM, The Public School will screen "Derrida" (the un-documentary).  This screening is in relation to the class on "Messianic Time" (currently being held during the month of August, 2009 on Saturdays) After the screening we will have a brief discussion of the documentary.  Of particular interest is Derrida's deconstruction of the documentary, deconstruction (in a nutshell), futurity (l'avenir) vs. the future (le futur), love, and (auto)biography.

The film quotes (by Derrida) are on to http://a.aaaarg.org/ (Derrida, Jacques "Film Quotes")

An interesting clip on l'avenir from the "documentary" is on Youtube:

As ever, Robert

This reading/discussion group will explore Deleuze and Guattari's theories on "the" nomad, nomadism, and nomadology -- which all are articulated in their important text _A Thousand Plateaus_. We will explore it as a possibility for living an "alternative" existence in our current "control society" -- so a modality of an aesthetics of existence. And, we will explore how it relates to theories on diaspora. We will also look at how it has been critiqued -- for example by Spivak who argues this is but one example of "white men using the lives of others for their own thinking", and how art historian Miwon Kwon is ambivalent about "nomadism" (in her text _One Place After Another_ [MIT Press] and her essay in _October_ with the same title), and what this may mean for critical theory, artists, art, and art history.

This reading/discussion group will take place once, and it will be related to another class titled "Vagabondism" (to be posted). If you have any questions, comments and/or suggestions, then post them here or email Robert Summers at robtsum (at) gmail dot com

Guattari’s Chaosophy: Texts and Interviews 1972–1977 by Guattari (Author), Sylvère Lotringer (Editor), François Dosse (Introduction)

This class, think tank, reading and discussion group (which, ideally would have more than one teacher / facilitator) will read through the new Semiote(e) text, by Guattari, Chaosophy: Texts and Interviews 1972–1977, which will dovetail in nicely with the Marx class, the Deleuze class, the series of classes by the JOAAP, and the “Relational Aesthetics and Its Philosophy” classes

Here is a synopisis of the book, which will be formed into “three class-sicles”: Chaosophy is an introduction to Guattari's groundbreaking theories of "schizo-analysis": a process meant to replace Freudian interpretation with a more pragmatic, experimental, and collective approach rooted in reality. Unlike Freud, who utilized neuroses as his working model, Guattari adopted the model of schizophrenia—which he believed to be an extreme mental state induced by the capitalist system itself, and one that enforces neurosis as a way of maintaining normality. Guattari's “post-Marxist” vision of capitalism provides a new definition not only of mental illness, but also of the micropolitical means for its subversion.

Chaosophy includes Guattari's writings and interviews on the cinema (such as “Cinema Fou” and “The Poor Man's Couch”), a group of texts on his collaborative work with Gilles Deleuze (including the appendix to the second edition of Anti-Oedipus, not available in the English edition), and his infamous texts on “homosexuality” (“Letter to the Tribunal” addressing the French government's censorship of the special “gay” issue of Recherches that Guattari himself edited, which earned him a monetrary fine for publishing, according to the French government, “a detailed exposition of depravity and sexual deviations … the libidinous exhibition of a minority of perverts”). This expanded edition features a new introduction, which the first class will reckon with and discuss, by François Dosse (author of a new biography of Guattari and Deleuze), along with a range of added essays—which will the read over the course of the three(3) classes—including “The Plane of Consistency,” “Machinic Propositions,” and “Gangs in New York,” all of these nearly doubling the contents of the original edition, and which we will reckon with accordingly—but only in the hopes of thinking how “Guattari” and be deployed in the (intertwining aesthetic, economic, and political realms).