LVIS3208

Contrary to historical assumptions that associate art with illusion, journalistic analyses and displays of evidence have been popular practices within socially-engaged art since the rise of Institutional Critique in the late 1960s. And yet, the ever-present gap between reality and representation remains fraught, complicated further by the increasing veracity of mediating technologies and growing suspicion toward objective truth. Against the backdrop of a post-truth media environment, this course considers the political, epistemological, and aesthetic implications of evidentiary images, investigatory practices, and art that blurs the distinction between representation and reality.
By studying the work of Sarah Charlesworth, Harun Farocki, Andrea Fraser, Nan Goldin, Hans Haacke, Trevor Paglen, Sondra Perry, Laura Poitras, Walid Raad, Taryn Simon, Hito Steyerl, Martine Syms, and Jordan Wolfson, among others, we will ask: How does art navigate the complex relationship between a “fact” and its representation in an increasingly virtualized public realm? What happens to truth claims as they shift between journalistic, juridical, and aesthetic contexts? How do political positions regarding fake news and alternative facts come to bear on philosophical positions regarding empirical knowledge and critiques of certainty? Which spaces, bodies, and incidents evade representation and what accounts for their opacity or erasure? What are the ethics of looking and what does it mean to bear witness? Can artifice and fiction still speak truth to power? Readings include artist statements, art-worker testimonials, and critical theory by Hannah Arendt, Jean Baudrillard, Eduard Glissant, bell hooks, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Safiya Noble, and Rebecca Solnit, among others.