BA Art History and French

This course unit focuses on new forms of creative practices in the French and Francophone world today.  In a world where everything is increasingly digitalized, sampled and shared, how do French and Francophone artists respond to this changing environment? Taking stock of the new challenges offered by digital platforms and the Internet, this unit examines how French and Francophone artists increasingly copy, reuse, reframe everyday objects, forms of writing and media. Faced with the unlimited amount of materials available today artists repurpose what already exists to create new artistic forms and challenge traditional ideas about art and language, fiction and ‘high art’. Spam letters and newspapers are turned into fiction, stock image banks into films, user generated contents and company patents into choreographies, courtroom testimonies into graphs. By incorporating these materials into new genres and media (texts, films, music, choreography, digital practices), artists offer new ways of thinking about mass information, identity, popular culture and politics. For example, we will analyse artistic forms of plagiarism and we will discuss key concepts like ‘story-telling’.

• To know and recognize the most stimulating art forms of 20th and 21st century French and Francophone cultures and understand their cultural and political meaning.  

• To reflect critically on the notions of ‘repurposing’, ‘activism’ and ‘appropriation’, and the values of cross-media practices.  

• To analyse a range of materials and to situate them in a clear historical and intellectual context, using an interdisciplinary methodology;  

• To understand and use appropriate concepts for the analysis of these works (critical theory, media theory, production, reception, etc).  

Some of the lectures for this unit will be delivered online.

• To know major experimental practices of 20th and 21st c. French and Francophone cultures and understand their meaning and implications; 

• To analyse works across various art forms in an interdisciplinary manner;  

• To understand and use appropriate concepts for the analysis of these works (critical theory, media theory, production, reception, etc).  

• To define and manipulate concepts and methodologies mainly drawn from media theory;  

• To understand contemporary poetic practices as a semiotic system making sense through analyses of range of art forms and media 

• To evaluate critically the notions of ‘political writing’ and ‘repurposing’ and ‘activism’  

• To analyse and critically evaluate the construction of a new field of investigation in contemporary French and Francophone cultures. 

• Reading, writing and speaking fluently in sophisticated French; likewise in English.  

• To structure and write an essay individually, or as part of a team;  

• To carry out independent research;  

• To participate in class discussions in French and English. 

By the end of this course students will be able to: 

• Engage in independent reflection and enquiry. 

• Analyse sources and cultural meaning, and provide a synthesis of their findings. 

• Carefully formulate a research question, and structure an answer in a logical manner.  

• Write in formal French and/or English.  

• Participating in group discussions in French and English 

• Engage in group discussion. 

• Formative, individual, in-class oral remarks on students’ participation and understanding.
• Summative, individual written comments on the assessed coursework essay.
• And finally, summative and individual written feedback on the final exam.

There is no set text to buy for this course unit, but key recommendations include:  

David Bolter, Jay and Grusin, Richard, Remediation: Understanding New Media (MIT Press, 2000) 

Leibovici, Franck, Des Documents Poétiques (Paris: Al Dante, 2007) 

Hanna, Christophe, Nos Dispositifs Poétiques (Paris: Questions Théoriques, 2010) 

Goldsmith, Kenneth, Uncreative Writing (Columbia University Press, 2011) 

Citton, Yves, Médiarchie (Paris: Seuil, 2017).