MFA courses

Conversations in Contemporary Art is a 3-credit graduate seminar that scaffolds the Studio Arts department's Visiting Artist Program of invited guests – including artists, curators, scholars and writers - with seminar-workshops centered on conversation as an artistic method. Students in this seminar can expect that the class meetings, readings and written work will address debates in current contemporary art discourses and will also cover a range of disciplines and approaches to conversational modes. Conversation, in this course, refers to dialogue and platforms of exchange in an expanded sense, from live events, interviews, and art-world rituals like the artist talk, the studio visit, the crit, and vernissage chat to written conventions including letters and the artist pitch (statement, website).

This section of Writing/Critical Methods and Practices focuses on professional practices in relation to professional and critical writing. The course will cover both methodology and practice. Following a schedule of assigned readings on contemporary artist’s writing, workshops and guest discussions, we will explore methods adopted by artists in their professional, critical and personal writing. In discussions about these readings, we will ask the following questions: what is the relationship between written and visual language? How do we describe our artistic process, which may be intuitive, or subconscious in terms that are generous, and, to a certain degree, specific? How do we frame that experience as research creation? Practically speaking, this course will include research and formal writing projects such as artist’s statements, grant, residency, and exhibition applications, and writing for applications for faculty positions.

Art + Evidence surveys a selection of recent art work and thinking that engages or addresses a forensic or investigative aesthetic, tracing the historical foundations of these practices through 20th and 21st century art and theory. How has the value of evidence, imprint and trace in contemporary social and cultural discourse changed over time? What historical, political or social function do investigative artworks serve? Does the presence of forensic practices in the museum change/expand the museum’s institutional mandate? What constitutes a forensic or investigative aesthetics in contemporary art and cultural exchange?

This seminar is a writing-intensive class for students who are prepared to develop a substantial piece of writing over the course of the semester. The emphasis will be on writing in relation to artistic practice. It is ideal for students who wish to write their thesis statement, an extended artist statement, artist talk, interview, catalogue text, or critical/creative essay. Students enrolled in the seminar can expect to emerge from it with a thoroughly revised draft of their project or a finished work.

During the past ten years aesthetics has received renewed attention in the visual arts having languished or been studiously avoided for decades owing to what were considered as adverse canonical affiliations. This seminar looks at the renewed interest with respect to making, experiencing and valuing contemporary art. Topics include: a) the emphasis on affect studies, b) the links between aesthetic experience and cultural identity c) Manovich’s notion of digital aesthetics, d) the search for new concepts, evident for example, in Sianne Ngai’s work “Aesthetic Categories” and Richard Shusterman’s “somaesthetics” and e) the possible rehabilitation of traditional aesthetic theories that are medium specific or propose a unified approach to matters of intent, emotion and practice.

The course work for Screen Culture will involve theoretical and historical readings and the study of single channel, immersive, installation, projection, inter- and new media screen-based art. Departing from an archaeological perspective, our discussions will consider the changing modalities of screen practices and their subject effects. We’ll explore the various ways in which screens permeate and intersect with built and natural environments and examine the different discourses framing the history of moving image arts in the museum, the spatial and temporal aspects of screen life, and the politics and possibilities of living in a screen culture.  

Conceived to function as both research seminar and artistic/conceptual think tank white /(h)wīt/ is a graduate seminar that derives its thematic, historical, and conceptual focus from the broadest definitions of the word “white” (adjective, verb, noun).

Students will engage with a wide array of contemporary art works, critical writings and lectures that look closely a short, yet complex word that concurrently describes: a non-colour, positivity, goodness, spiritual purity, illumination, superiority, (default) racial identity, cleanliness, social order, objectivity, simplicity, and/or invisibility.

Texts by Nell Irving Painter, Maurice Berger, Gabby Moser, Darby English, Claudia Rankine, Sara Ahmed and art works/performances by artists William Kentridge, Adrian Piper, Abdul Abdullah, Vanessa Beecroft, Anna Deavere Smith, Young Jean Lee, and Jeremy O. Harris will prompt students to consider the origins and intentions of these associations as they relate to social relations, artmaking and meaning, power and change.

This seminar is structured around a double question: where are sounds? where do they go?  Addressed both theoretically and practically, the question allows for the treatment of two main lines that are crucial to understanding and analyzing any sound phenomenon: space and time.

This seminar is intended for students interested in going deeper into the notion of listening. Hearing, listening, being tuned into are three expressions that refer to different attitudes towards the sonic. Each and every one of us listens differently at each moment of our life. Each space, each experience has its specificity in terms of acoustics. These differences will be raised and discussed in class, since the course will be developed through texts, listening sessions of sound pieces, and exhibition(s) visits or meeting(s) with an artist.

The emphasis will be on the reading of texts known for having developed their thoughts in writing or on workshops related to the notion of listening. To these will be added a few texts by the by theorists (philosophers, acousticians), authors describing particular sound phenomena and curators who have addressed the subject in an exhibition. Discussions will alternate with listening sessions so as to create a balance between reading, listening and discussing.

The whole seminar rests upon conversation and counts on exchange, transmitting and circulating ideas, mutual receptivity and thus on listening in a manner both pragmatic and absolute.

The Archive and Difficult Knowledge will present a thought provoking roster of media artists/theorists from Indigenous, racialized, differently abled, feminist and LGBT communities who use research and art to make social change by forging alternate discourses and visual/virtual worlds. Over the course of the semester we will engage with exhibitions, films, videos and critical theory that address issues of colonialism, power, oppression, representation, inclusivity and grassroots activism. The course will consider the historical development of the archive, recent critiques of its use and significance, questions of materiality and what differentiates the archive from its digital corollary, the database. We will look at current applications of archiving systems and technologies in relation to significant local institutions as well as consider how artists engage with both storehouses of physical and virtual information.