A broad aim of this theory seminar will be to better understand the conditions in which art and labor operate under contemporary neoliberal capitalism, and how an engaged art social practice can find avenues of connectivity and possibility within the great arc of global/local social, artistic, and environmental movements. Through the analytical umbrella of a rhizomatic dialectic of myth & enlightenment, biopolitics, psychopolitics, accelerationism, and ecoDomics, an effort will be made to disentangle some of the main ecological, historical, patriarchal, colonial, ideological, racial, and class-based components of what is today innocuously called the "knowledge economy," the "shared economy," the "creative economy" or the "platform economy," vis-à-vis their relationship to democracy, cultural production, and the environment. We will get an overview of the historical beginnings of merchant, agrarian, and colonial capitalism as they eventually transition to Fordist industrial consumerism, and post-Fordist semio-capitalism, with a particular emphasis on aesthetics, technology, and life. EcoDomics, the emotariat, and the aesthetic(s) of the common(s) are transversal concept/practice/pedagogy assemblages I have been developing over the last few years in order to better comprehend, resist, and overcome the fluid 24/7 dynamics of precariousness--exploitation of body, mind, and affect, through powerful computational, financial, and machinic strategies, that have rapidly intensified inequality, alienation, and ecological imbalance. Relevant visual and textual materials will be deployed, along with the work and talks of the Fall 2018 CCA visiting artists: Danielle Dean, Diana al-Hadid, and Ian Cheng.

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