BiographyDecter has taught and lectured at a wide range
of national and international museums, arts organizations, colleges and universities over the past twenty-five years. Currently,
he is a graduate faculty member in the School of Visual Art’s M.A. Curatorial Practice program in New York. Decter has also
taught at The Cooper Union, the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago,
New York University, UCLA, Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and Bennington College. From 2007 to 2011, he was Director
of the Master of Public Art Studies Program at the USC’s Roski School in Los Angeles, where he founded the M.A. Art and Curatorial
Practices in the Public Sphere program. Decter has organized and participated in numerous international conferences, and recently
co-chaired a seminar at the European Forum Alpbach, Austria, entitled,
Art as Enlightenment in Post-Enlightenment Times? Decter has organized exhibitions at PS1, The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, Apex Art, the Museum
of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Kunsthalle Vienna, and the Santa Monica Museum of Art. His exhibitions have been reviewed
by
The New York Times,
Artforum,
The Village Voice,
Art Monthly,
The Los Angeles Times,
Art News,
Der Standard,
Le Monde, and elsewhere.
In his book,
Art Is a Problem: Selected
Criticism, Essays, Interviews and Curatorial Projects (1986-2012), published by JRP|Ringier, Decter examines contemporary
art in relation to its various ideological, public, discursive, and social contexts (
http://www.artbook.com/9783037641958.html).
The book encompasses seven chapters:
Institutional Critique® and its Discontents;
Aporia (art as politics, the
politics of art);
Everything is Social; Convoluted Cities;
The (Un)De-definition of Art;
What do
we want from exhibitions?;
On the Curatorial Road. The volume comprises a range of texts originally commissioned
by important museums and arts organizations, writings published in magazines and journals such as
Artforum,
Afterall,
Mousse,
The Exhibitionist, Rhizome, Texte zur Kunst, and
Flash Art, and essays produced on the
occasion of his curatorial projects.
Decter is the co-author of the book,
Exhibition as Social Intervention:
‘Culture in Action’ 1993, volume 5 of Afterall Books (London)
Exhibition Histories series (
http://www.artbook.com/9783863354480.html).
His essay, ‘Art and the Cultural Contradictions of Urban Regeneration, Social Justice and Sustainability: Transforma
Projects and Prospect.1 in Post-Katrina New Orleans,’ is included in the book,
Public Servants: Art and the Crisis of
the Common Good, published by the MIT Press/New Museum (
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/public-servants).
SeminarWhat, indeed, is going on? What have become of politics in the age of the
distraction-experience
economy? What has become of the arts in the age of the distraction-experience economy? What do we want from the arts
and other forms of cultural production in these times of political and social upheaval? How to be human today? Can we design
a
better humanity, and a
better politics? Or, are we
biological anachronisms
in an emergent bot and AI world? We seem to be at an inflection point wherein the tenuous fabric that holds together liberal
democracy – an incomplete project emblematic of the
contradictions of the Enlightenment – may be tearing
itself apart, perhaps giving way to illiberalism, right wing populism,
ultra-nationalism, increased episodes
of
public racism, neo-nihilism, and
crypto-fascism. Are we entering a period of
post-democratic
democracy? In this
transdisciplinary seminar, we will endeavor to think such questions in terms
of our contradictions as human beings in a world that seems increasingly post-humanist, if not post-human. We will consider
examples from art, media, social media, cinema, technology, architecture, music, urbanism and other sources to reconsider
how our complex agencies, our fluid identities and genders, navigate contemporary uncertainty. What do we expect from the
arts and other forms of cultural production in times of increased ideological polarization, political fragmentation, racial,
ethnic and religious tensions, and global refugee and immigration crises? Can the arts build new coalitions and solidarities
to resist the breakdown of civil, democratic society? Or is art emblematic of the conflicts, antagonisms, and contradictions
of broader society? Is contradiction art’s power? Can artists and other cultural producers repair social injustices, and work
ethically on behalf of civil and human rights? Are these art’s responsibilities? So how do we live together, civilly, with
our differences? How do we avoid reproducing the very conditions that we seek to critique? When we question authority and
power, do we also question our own authority and power? How do we want to be governed in relation to how we may want to govern
ourselves? How can we speak of ethics without at the same time taking responsibility for our own ethics? Is it our job to
be responsibly irresponsible, and pragmatically unpragmatic? Are we at once empowered and disempowered on social media? Have
we Selfied ourselves into post-selfhood oblivion? Can we Tweet our way to emancipation? Can we design an app to save the world…
from ourselves? Or has the anthropocene crisis already rendered such questions mute?
Please register under
info@uni-ak.ac.at
Dates24.04.2017 - 10:15 bis 11:45 | Seminarraum 8 (HS 4)
25.04.2017 - 10:15 bis 11:45 | Seminarraum 2 (SR B)
26.04.2017
- 15:30 bis 17:00 | Seminarraum 8 (HS 4)
27.04.2017 - 12:00 bis 13:30 | Seminarraum 8 (HS 4)
28.04.2017 - 13:44
bis 15:14 | Seminarraum 8 (HS 4)
02.05.2017 - 18:45 bis 20:15 | Seminarraum 8 (HS 4)
03.05.2017 - 14:30 bis 16:00
| Seminarraum 8 (HS 4)
04.05.2017 - 15:30 bis 17:00 | Seminarraum 8 (HS 4)
05.05.2017 - 17:15 bis 18:45 | Seminarraum
8 (HS 4)
08.05.2017 - 10:15 bis 11:45 | Seminarraum 8 (HS 4)
10.05.2017 - 14:30 bis 16:00 | Seminarraum 8 (HS 4)
11.05.2017 - 11:45 bis 13:15 | Seminarraum 8 (HS 4)
12.05.2017 - 13:45 bis 15:15 | Seminarraum 8 (HS 4)
15.05.2017
- 10:15 bis 11:45 | Seminarraum 8 (HS 4)
16.05.2017 - 18:45 bis 20:15 | Seminarraum 8 (HS 4)
