This course brings together texts in aesthetics and other areas of philosophy with works and methods in film and other art media. The goal is to gain a better understanding of key ideas in aesthetics in order to put them into practice in art and filmmaking, addressing three broad themes: judgment, expression, and critique. We will look at what role judgment plays in creating and assigning meaning to works of art, with readings from Immanuel Kant and Thierry de Duve, alongside works by Marcel Duchamp, Yoko Ono, David Ireland, and from the Fluxus movement, as well as found footage films. We will investigate how meaning is expressed in language and non-verbal works, and whether artmaking is a form of thinking, with readings from Nelson Goodman, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Sergei Eisenstein, alongside film and other works using montage, collage, and assemblage including John Akomfrah, Hannah Höch, Noah Purifoy, Zarouhie Abdalian and others. Finally, we will ask what makes a work of art critical (of institutions, of society), and how critical meaning is communicated in film and other media, reading texts by Theodor Adorno, Judith Butler and others, alongside work by Martine Syms, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, David Hammons and others.
Class meetings will be divided into three parts: lecture and discussion of assigned texts; viewing and discussing relevant works; and preparing and critiquing projects that make use of concepts and questions raised by these texts and works. Throughout the term, students will produce several small studio projects in their chosen medium alongside short writing assignments that engage with the work and course readings. For their final projects, students can choose either to make a creative work in their chosen medium with an accompanying short text, or a term paper that engages with the course themes. This course is designed for students from all disciplines, including studio/practice-based and academic/theory-based programs. This course is co-taught by practicing artist Dicky Bahto who works primarily in film, photography and performance, and philosophy professor Patrick Londen who researches and writes on historical and contemporary philosophy.

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