A thematic project by Jan Verwoert (October 2007-June 2008)

How do images work? How do historical changes transform the conditions under which art is practiced? How can art change or affect the function and power of images? And how can art address the historical, social and political conditions it finds itself implicated in?

Questions such as these have been a central concern of many artists after the conceptual turn in the late 1960s. Their explorations have been framed by a new form of critical writing which seeks to describe what is at stake in art in the wider context of the critique of the power structures that shape our culture and society at large.

In the seminar some of the key concepts and concerns of this ongoing debate will be reconstructed and discussed with the aim to grasp the ideas that have spurred debate in the recent years – with the hope to identify some of the problems and blind spots in the models that have been proposed [to this end, I’ve thrown in some of my own attempts to read and deconstruct the canonical paradigms of recent criticism] – and finally in order to invent new concepts and terms for a critical art practice.