Postcolonial Remix: Museal Urbanism and Artistic Networks (ARCH 6409, ARTH 6409, COML 6409, SHUM 6409)
Mondays, 7–9:30 p.m.
Course Instructor: Timothy Murray (comparative literature and English)
How has museal culture responded to the postcolonial challenges of urbanism? The course will consider the impact of postcolonial conditions of urbanism on artistic networks and museum architectonics. Of concern will be the paradox of the architectural return of the monumental museum within the context of the appropriation and contestation of colonial legacies of collecting and designing, as well as the influence of “the network” of digital and medial design on global artistic flow and push back. From recycled art and architecture to networked hubs and urban pop-ups, the context of a postcolonial remix demands attentiveness to networks of artistic practice, architectural adaptability, and conceptual response.
We will capitalize on recent architectural and artistic happenings in New York City, Beijing, Seoul, Tokyo, and Taipei to establish a dialogue between East/West articulations of the global art market and its postcolonial remix. In addition to labs on digital design and new media art, we will begin by profiting from materials in the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art and Cornell University Library on three prominent architects of Cornell cultural buildings to reflect on the paradigms of their recent monuments of museum design in Asia: I. M. Pei (Johnson Museum), James Sterling (Schwartz Center), and Rem Koolhaas (Milstein Hall). This will provide a cultural context for remixing these models within the museal explosion of urban artistic networks, from recycled colonial spaces, gallery pop-ups, and online archives to performative and networked collaborations with the artistic residue of transnational flow, from economy and ecology to migration and occupation. Theoretical readings will range from Walter Benjamin, Jacques Derrida, Michel de Certeau, Douglas Crimp, Rosalind Krauss, and Andreas Huyssen to Rey Chow, Manuel Castells, Gayatri Chavravorty Spivak, Trinh T. Minh-ha, Paul Miller (DJ Spooky), and Naoki Sakai.