The purpose of the Thematic Field is to serve as theoretical and artistic fundament for the Master Programme. The Thematic Field can have a focus on theoretical, discursive as well as aesthetic matters and should alter for each Master Programme. The Thematic Field will be decided upon by a five member Advisory Board and will be announced in November the previous year. The Board should consist of one student representative, member of teaching staff, two external experts and Institute Leader. The Thematic Field will always be found within the framework of the Academy`s profile and key values (see profile).
The purpose of the Thematic Field is to serve as a basis for selecting a group of students that is highly motivated for the Master Programme, and that together can achieve an advanced level in research, theory and artistic approach. Lessons on Thematic field (SAK-3000) is taught during all four semesters of the study and students have to complete compulsory working requirement every semester to be eligible to continue. The Thematic Field builds the common discursive frame of the Master Programme and the course functions as a platform for reading, discussion and analysis and the aim is to investigate the relationship between aesthetics, theory and science.
(Examples of Thematic Fields could be Human Ecology, Nature and Morality, Arctic Landscape and Urbanity.)
SUSTAINABILITY/CAPITALISM/ART
1st Thematic Field – Master in Contemporary Art 2012 – 2013
The first Thematic Field of the MA program takes as its starting point the core topic of the profile of the Art Academy and opens up for an investigation of the complex and disputed relation between art, society and the notion of sustainability.
The notion of sustainability is build around the idea that it is worthwhile and feasible to organize a balance between human kinds` global production and consumption on Earth, and the natural and artificial capacity to regenerate or recycle it’s resources. This imagined balance would be a source in itself to relax the relation between the global human industrial ecology and the ecosystem. In this perspective sustainability provides the potential for long-term maintenance, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions. However, the very concept of balance could also be seen as problematic in this relation when it is based on a much too simple and idealistic image of nature as such. The question could be: What exact status and function does the human species have as part of the ecosystem, when this includes the capacity to destroy its own roots?
From being a marginalised counter-cultural habitat, Ecology has stepped up and into the mainstream, becoming a key feature of today’s epistemological and ideological landscapes. The reason is not only a popularization or pop appeal (ecology finally became a sexy issue) but because sustainability interfaces with economics through the social and ecological consequences of economic activity. It is now directly linked to the development of Capitalism and its modes of production as such.
As a form of cultural production, Modern Art in general and Visual Art in particular is first and furthermost identified with forms of excess, exhaustion, negation, subversion and destruction rather than with a harmonious and balanced development. From Avant-garde movements to Punk we are dealing with forms of being NON-operational and of no earthly use: Live Fast, Die Young! Avant-garde movements such as Dada, Situationists, Punk or Fluxus were in its core, not only very critical and in opposition to the modern capitalist way of life, but also radical in their way of overthrowing the historical heritage and celebrating the speed of modern times. Taking into account that Modern Art lived on through a constant self-revolution and that we now live in a post modern age where art production is as diversified as the global political landscape that tends to a multi-polar world order, we can now state that art could sustain because it was part of the capitalist development that also paradoxically sustains by constant self-revolution and distraction of the past. What Marx and Engels already said in the Communist manifesto about the logic of capitalism: “All that is solid melts into air.”, is incarnated in Modern Art.
Questions to be asked today: In a Post Modern time, what role can art play in the societal/economical dynamics if the Modernist idea of utopian development has to be overthrown? How will the dynamics of Modernism and Capitalism transform by the current challenges from the Globe’s ecological conditions? And what does it mean for artistic production that Ecology has become a key feature of today’s epistemological and ideological landscapes?
Master in Contemporary Art 2012-2013 will provide a context of research, practice and artistic-theoretical development along the complex lines of interconnections of the concept of sustainability, the development and theory of economy/capitalism and art. This will not be undertaken with an ideological fixation, however by deepening the discourse on these matters and focus on the development of new artistic and activist forms.