Seminars to support your study
Tap into the spinal rap. Theory Spine.
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Are you are an undergraduate student
needing more
credit to complete your
degree? Do you
have a feeling for theory?
You can attend the Theory
Spine seminars ('spinal
rap') and complete assessment tasks with a
designated member of the theory staff to gain a
theory credit. Please contact Kathleen Connellan
for further information.
'Spinal rap' seminar program 2009
Links to readings, presentations and other files are staff and student access only.
| Time and venue | Facilitator | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| 25 March,
H2-16
1 April, K3-25 |
Kathleen Connellan | Power and its metaphors
|
| 13
May, H2-16 20 May, H2-16 |
Sean Pickersgill | More and always real
|
| 10
June, H2-16 17 June, H5-02 |
Jim Moss | A brief history of verisimilitude in
western art and visual culture
|
| 5
August, H5-02 12 August, K3-25 |
James Curry |
Fold, crease, seam: the
corner and continuity
|
| 2
September, GK5-15 9 September, K3-25 |
Pam Zeplin | Theory at the bottom of
the world
|
| 30
September, TBC 7 October, GK 5-15 |
Cancelled | Tender and true: the place, the hour, the element (writing performance theory) |
|
28 October, GK5-24 4 November, GK 5-15 |
Robert Crocker | Threads
-
textile history in the history of design
|
Seminar synopses
Power and its metaphors
Power comes in many forms, some more visible than others. I will try to make invisible power visible in this seminar. The presentation will look specifically at how the disciplines of art, architecture and design engage with power. Symbols and metaphors of power will be addressed under the following headings:
- Form
- Space
- People.
All three of these blend together in the underpinning theory of power relations.
More and always real
I will present multiple views of 'reality' and expound upon the various accompanying theories of representation. More and the always real puts forward the idea that the digital and technological experience of the world and its formations offers alternative analytical standpoints for art, architecture and design.
A brief history of verisimilitude in western art and visual culture
European visual art since the renaissance has largely involved the production of various realisms. Even in the realm of 20th century modernism, pictorial representations continued irrespective of the spate of formalist abstraction. Realism is, however, a very broad and problematic area and is not the particular focus of this talk; rather, the talk will concern itself with what I have called verisimilitude, a particular kind of realism that has been manifest at various times in the production of European visual culture. Since its emergence in 14th century Flanders, verisimilitude has evolved to become 'more real than the real', the touchstone of the digital age.
Fold, crease, seam: the corner and continuity
The desire for continuity of architectural surfaces, coupled with advancements in digital fabrication and software have seen the emergence of various strategies for treating architectural corners. Using the architectural writings of Colin Rowe this lecture will discuss the corner as locus of desire, investment and repetition through a materialist reading of the surface. Using a selection of case studies the discussion aims to point towards a genealogical framework pertaining to present day discussions of building envelopes and surface whilst suggesting a theoretical foundation for the understanding of how it effects and affects the subject.
Theory at the bottom of the world
How does geography affect theory? Situated in the global south, why have Australian artists and theorists positioned themselves so strongly within 'western' models of discourse? Is this uncritical alignment with ideas emerging from trans-Atlantic metropolitan centres, ie the global north, just a problem of provincialism? How may 'south-south vectors of knowledge' (Murray 2009) challenge ways of thinking outside a conventional north-south axis? What happens if we leap sideways?
Tender and true: the place, the hour, the element (writing performance theory)
Territory is (made by, or exhausted by) movement - a movement that undoes, unde(r)signs, yet is active like chance and carnival. Territory arising over and over by force - enduring without purpose (and useless). A space for the shaman...
Threads - textile history in the history of design
The design, manufacture and sale of textiles is a neglected early example of globalisation in design, manufacturing technology and mass consumption. In the early eighteenth century patterns from Europe were made up in India and China for European markets, and in turn Indian and Chinese patterns became fashionable and were reproduced by European textile and wallpaper manufacturers. Designs were continuously copied, adapted and reinvented across the Atlantic and Pacific for a growing European and American middle class. This endless loop of adaptation and reinvention is still with us today, and can act as a useful corrective to design history's tendency to mythologise a tradition of design innovation and technical accomplishment.
Reading and thinking through difference
What part does gender play in making and analysing art? The answer occupies a complex and shifting terrain.With modernism, to introduce gender was to contaminate art: for modernism was blind to the representation of sexual difference. Art was perceived as un-gendered, universal and whole or else if gendered feminine it was minor, marginal and lacking (which is to say it wasn't really Art at all!). Postmodernism ushered in multiple voices and a deconstuctive reading practice that privileged differences of gender, colour, sexuality or identity. The aim of reading women's art for difference, however, was not to essentialize or 'other' it, but to reveal the construction of female subjectivity, its negotiations with the dominant culture and the leaking through of desire. Reading for difference, whether of a modernist past or a postmodern present remains an important strategy: for what may be unreadable from the position of sameness, when read from the point of view of difference becomes 'rich in possibilities for those desiring to decipher inscriptions of the feminine as dissidence, difference and heterogeneity' (Pollock 1996, 75).
Pollock, G 1996, 'Inscriptions in the Feminine', M Catherine de Zegher (ed), Inside the visible: an elliptical traverse of 20th century art in, of, and from the feminine, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, 65-87.