080039 SE Seminar: Language, Writing and Technology from Cézanne to Post-Conceptualism (2019S)

After joint readings of theories of the divergent sign-functions of image and language the seminar will focus on the emergence and the function of “writing” in modern visual art. We will look at the intersection of the iconic model of representation of the (perspectival) image with forms of symbolic notation in modern painting (Cézanne, Kubism), at the presence and function of language in the work of Marcel Duchamp, at language-centered works of the 1950s to 1970s (Jasper Johns, Conceptual Art, Hanne Darboven, Marcel Broodthaers) and at some contemporary positions. The seminar will follow the hypothesis that the latent and manifest presence of writing in modern visual art is a reaction to the proliferation of technical and today of digital media of communication. The seminar will thus include readings of established and more recent positions in the media-theory and the philosophy of technology (from Friedrich Kittler to Bernard Stiegler).