The theme of the course given by art historian Christian Joschke will be: Art, rhythms, temporalities. The paradoxes of acceleration over two semesters.

We need to slow down! That’s the watchword against the headlong rush of an agonizingly productive world. But what kind of acceleration are we talking about? And why have artists been entrusted with the mission of producing and justifying deceleration under the auspices of a return to the spiritual or resonance with the living? Today, it’s imperative to understand how the visual and movement arts think about a critique of social time that goes beyond the tried-and-tested forms of anti-modernism. While certain avant-garde currents were in favor of acceleration in the name of emancipating men and women from tradition, they paradoxically revealed its limits, flaws and failures: accidents, interruptions, desynchronization, stasis and so on. We will therefore explore rhythms and temporalities in art through a history of contretemps, saccades and resistances to the amplification of movement, however marginal they may be in our societies. We will articulate the objects and methods of art history with concepts from the social sciences, in order to better raise the paradoxes of late modernity.

Course timetable Wednesdays from 4pm to 6pm

1st semester 04 October to 20 December 2023 (no course on 1st November)
2nd semester 22 January to 12 April 2024

Photo credit: Ali Arkady