B1680 - Arts, Cultures and Politics in the Digital Age

Learning outcomes

The course will analyze the connections between artistic practices and political issues in relation with the development and expansion of digital technologies. The students will acquire a historical-political perspective on the evolution of digitization from the birth of the internet to platform capitalism through a visual approach drawing on the main artistic movements that reflected on new technologies.

Course contents

The course will be articulated into three parts.

First, we will frame a political genealogy of the digital technologies, highlighting the philosophical issues they pose. For this reason, a brief history of the evolution of internet until the burst of platform capitalism will be presented.

Then, we will focus on some of the main cultural paradigms about the technological innovation (Californian ideology, Transhumanism, Accelerationism, etc…) to analyse the way they frame the relationship between the digital and the human.

Finally, we will explore how artists embedded and renewed such paradigms in their practices and how art changed thanks to the introduction of digital tools (artificial intelligence, NFT, etc…).

Readings/Bibliography

N. Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, Polity Press, 2016.

J. Lingel, The Gentrification of Internet. How to reclaim our digital freedom, University of California Press, 2023

D. Quaranta, Beyond New Media Art, LINK editions, 2013

Teaching methods

During each classes, with the support of videos and images, the instructor will introduce a topic providing bibliographic and artistic references (available on Virtuale).

Two workshops will be organized with a curator and an art gallery.

Students will be required to elaborate a response' paper on the topics introduced and to present it during the course (about 1.500 words, highlighting the issues, main arguments, and personal comments).

Assessment methods

Students may choose between oral and written exam.

Oral exam will be based on the readings provided during the course. Students who are not attending classes are invited to get in contact with the instructor before the exam as they will be assigned with two extra readings (a monography and an article).

Written exam (around 4.000 words) – exclusively for those who attended the course – will be based on a theoretical (articulated into the sections: topic, arguments, conclusions) or curatorship project (articulated into the sections: concept, artists, installation setting) elaborated by the student and based on the topics discussed during the course. The project must be submitted at least 7 days before the date of the exam, then it will be discussed with the instructor.

Office hours

See the website of Maurilio Pirone