HKUK13004U IKK Free subject-Transformative Feminisms, Gender, and Nordic Art in the Global Present

Volume 2022/2023
Content

Lucy Lippard stated in 1980 that feminism “questions all the precepts of art as we know it.” Feminism, according to Lippard, is “neither a style nor a movement” but “a value system, a revolutionary strategy, a way of life.” The course takes this expansive understanding of feminism as a starting point to elucidate and make meaning of contemporary Nordic art within a global context. The course will underscore feminism’s historical, theoretical, and activist facets, focusing on a transnational, situated, and intersectional approach to understand feminist practices in and around contemporary Nordic art. Understood in the broadest sense to include other normative-critical approaches such as postcolonialism, in this course feminism will be deployed as an emancipatory modality to deconstruct and contextualize the most important issues concerning contemporary art today, including migration, sexuality, race, ecology, and the move towards the digital—and how the Nordic cases interact with, correspond to, and challenge wider global patterns. The course will nevertheless provide a solid historical overview of feminism within the realm of art from 1970 onwards and develop students’ understanding of foundational and more recent feminist theory, as well as the ability to recognize and apply an activist approach to contemporary art. Nordic examples will make up the core of the course to provide students with a nuanced knowledge of the immediate art environment (we will visit local museums, art institutions, and practitioners). Nevertheless, with its intersectional and reflexive approach, the course will seek to convey the intergenerational, gender-fluid, heterogeneous, and transnational nature of feminist practices today by contextualizing them within a global framework

Students with no art history background will be asked to do some preliminary reading at the start of the semester.

 

The course alternates between lectures, discussions, group work, excursions to museums or other art institutions, student exercises, written assignments, and feedback.
  • Category
  • Hours
  • Lectures
  • 56
  • Preparation
  • 279
  • Guidance
  • 1
  • Exam
  • 84
  • Total
  • 420
Written
Oral
Individual
Peer feedback (Students give each other feedback)
Credit
15 ECTS
Type of assessment
Other
Censorship form
No external censorship
Criteria for exam assesment