Lecturer: Michael Lee
Seminar Topic: Politics of Memory
Contact: michaelleehonghwee@gmail.com
Class hours: Monday, 2-6pm
Location: B309, Winstedt Campus
Synopsis:
This course will investigate the interconnections between space and memory, through the works of artists and scholars in the context of international contemporary art. By focusing on urban and architectural spaces as sites of modern living and passing, development and conservation, recollection and forgetting, hope and loss, this course will uncover the numerous situations in which the city attempts to improve on the past while being constantly haunted by it.
Both the politics and poetics of space are of relevance in this context, especially the establishment and contestation of who has the say in what gets remembered, conserved, represented, experienced and imagined. Included for discussion are the phenomena of memory loss and mnemonics (especially those employing a spatial framework), haunting and the uncanny in the context of home, memorials and memorabilia, archives and libraries. Given that the past can at best be recalled in fragments, a key point in this course is the intrinsic relationship between urban memory and fiction, as manifest in fictional cities, imaginary buildings, constructed ruins and abandoned utopias.
Investigating the contexts of memory in philosophy, visual culture and cultural politics, this course also surveys a host of conditions and implications of contemporary artists who explore sites as related to a bygone time, especially those dealing with history as embedded in a place and its material and social conditions. Particular aesthetic strategies—including re-enactment and psycho-geography, repetition and revision, miniaturisation and monumentality—and their implications will also be examined.
Seminar Topic: Politics of Memory
Contact: michaelleehonghwee@gmail.com
Class hours: Monday, 2-6pm
Location: B309, Winstedt Campus
Synopsis:
This course will investigate the interconnections between space and memory, through the works of artists and scholars in the context of international contemporary art. By focusing on urban and architectural spaces as sites of modern living and passing, development and conservation, recollection and forgetting, hope and loss, this course will uncover the numerous situations in which the city attempts to improve on the past while being constantly haunted by it.
Both the politics and poetics of space are of relevance in this context, especially the establishment and contestation of who has the say in what gets remembered, conserved, represented, experienced and imagined. Included for discussion are the phenomena of memory loss and mnemonics (especially those employing a spatial framework), haunting and the uncanny in the context of home, memorials and memorabilia, archives and libraries. Given that the past can at best be recalled in fragments, a key point in this course is the intrinsic relationship between urban memory and fiction, as manifest in fictional cities, imaginary buildings, constructed ruins and abandoned utopias.
Investigating the contexts of memory in philosophy, visual culture and cultural politics, this course also surveys a host of conditions and implications of contemporary artists who explore sites as related to a bygone time, especially those dealing with history as embedded in a place and its material and social conditions. Particular aesthetic strategies—including re-enactment and psycho-geography, repetition and revision, miniaturisation and monumentality—and their implications will also be examined.