Dr. Baruch Gottlieb
in/translation Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and the Arts
Block seminar, English/Deutsch, 2 SWS, 2 ECTS
Saturday/Sunday, each 10-18 h, 25./26.1. and 8.2/9.2.2025, Hardenbergstr. 33, room 102

Registration on Moodle starts 14.10.2024 / Anmeldung auf Moodle beginnt am 14.10.2024:
https://moodle.udk-berlin.de/moodle/course/view.php?id=2440
Moodle Enrollment Key / Einschreibeschlüssel: spivak

GC Spivak is one of the most erudite and brilliant thinkers of our time. Her specialty is in translation in the space between languages and experience and between language utterance itself and the meaning we make together. Her theory opens up a vast space for the un-utterable, the mum, that which can only be implied or expressed indirectly.  In this seminar we will do close readings of Spivak’s Aesthetic theory and explore how to apply this to our artistic practices. We will examine our current pervasively colonial circumstance through her attention to double binds, which keep careful account about who gets to speak, who is heard, what is said and what comes across. We will grapple with Spivak’s original treatments of Marx, psychoanalysis and Greek Mythology and her creative oscillations between philosophy, political engagement and theory, literature and translation.
One objective in this seminar is to envisage a radically transdisciplinary curatorial approach coalescing artistic positions or modes, which can help us understand what is at stake in Spivak’s work, and apply her insights to our own creative practices.
Participants will be expected to do small readings for each meeting and to be open and interested in discussing ideas, which may trouble and challenge us. Participants will be expected to prototype responses to what Spivak’s work may be arousing within them, either individually or in small groups, and to present these at two instances during the seminar. Finally, we will examine how our reading of Spivak, externalized through art, can help us coalesce transdisciplinary approaches to addressing global and local urgencies from the personal to political.

Fulfilment criteria for ungraded accreditation: Regular attendance, participation in discussions and in-class activities, preparation and presentation of 2 related assignments.

Baruch Gottlieb, trained as a filmmaker at Concordia University Montreal, has a doctorate in digital aesthetics from the University of Arts Berlin. Author of "Gratitude for Technology" (ATROPOS 2009), "A Political Economy of the Smallest Things" (ATROPOS 2016),and Digital Materialism (Emerald 2018) he currently is Prof3Dual lecturer in political philosophy of digital art the Potsdam University of Applied Sciences, and regularly gives seminars in digital aesthetics and transdisciplinary methods at the University of Arts Berlin. He is a practicing artist, curator and educator with a strong social practice. Working at West Den Haag since 2017 he has developed a rich transdisciplinary curriculum including summer schools, reading and discussion circles and a wide range of experimental public events, developing new institutional methodologies for address complex challenges related to climate change, legacy and present of colonialism, structural injustice and rapid technological transformation, He practices engaged pedagogy, strongly influenced by bell hooks, Paolo Friere and Jacotot, with a focus on embodied thinking and situated knowledge. With disnovation.org he has developed widely touring art-science projects which address question of sustainability, particularly through a concentration on energy, photosynthesis and metabolism.