Trans(  )infinities: aesthetics, performance and interventions

 

Section 202

Room: VAF 366

Monday: 3:00p - 5:50p

Professor: Ricardo Dominguez

Email: rrdominguez@ucsd.edu

 

Office Hours: Monday 1pm to 2pm (CAL IT2/Atkinson Hall 2nd fl - 2501)

 

Class Description:

 

Trans(  )infinities in this class will be imagined as an (empty set) of potential aesthetic practices that move between, through, across and beyond the post of the post-contemporary by transfixing on the loanwords that can double bond/double stage the effects/affects of parallel dimensions touching one another intimately/extimately: trans(  )aesthetics touching demanding infinities; trans(  )coding dreaminng trans(  )empirical; speculative realism drinking trans(  )borders; trans(  )versal subjects screaming trans(  )performatives. The (empty set) transmitting us from Kant to Baudrillard to Whitehead to Grosz to D&G to Antonioni to Teresa Margolles to border disturbances to trans(   )media exploits beyond code to our own trans(  )valuations that always/already trans (   )queer our gestures.  What can come from the imagined excesses of trans(  )infinities as practices to create lures of feeling that can only become real hitting the hard ground of the streets that have been left behind in our forgotten futures. Certainly an unwise move – but who said we would have to be wise between our own (empty sets).

 

 

Grading Policies

Final Grade Evaluation:

50% Attendance and Participation

50% Project/Paper presentation

 

You will be expected to attend every class. If you have more than 2 unexcused absences, your final grade will drop 1/2 a letter for every additional unexcused absence.  Two unexcused lateness will be considered an absence.

 

Readings:

Infinitely Demanding: Ethics of Commitment, Politics of Resistance by Simon Critchley (2008 paperback edition)

 

The Exploit: A Theory of Networks by Alexander R. Galloway and Eugene Thacker (2007 paperback edition)

 

The rest will be on-line materials.

 

Class Diagram:

 

March 29thth  - Introduction and Film 

 

April  5th – Trans(  )aesthetics

 

Part I: Critique of Aesthetic Judgment

Book I. Analytic of the Beautiful.

by Immanuel Kant

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/k/kant/immanuel/k16j/ - section1

 

Simulation and Transaesthetics: Towards the Vanishing Point of Art1

by Jean Baudrillard

http://www.ubishops.ca/baudrillardstudies/vol-5_2/v5-2-jean-baudrillard2.html

 

April 12thth – trans(   )lures

 

Without Criteria

By Steven Shaviro

http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ucsd/without.pdf

 

Chaos, Territory and Art

by Elizabeth Grosz

http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ucsd/chaos.pdf

 

April 19th – trans (   )performatives


Electronic Disturbance (Read Chapters 2, 4 and 6)

By Critical Art Ensemble

http://www.critical-art.net/books/ted/index.html

 

Digital Zapatistas

By Jill Lane

http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ucsd/DigitalZapatistas.pdf

 

April 26th – trans(   )demands

 

Infinitely Demanding (Book)

 

May 3rd – trans (   )races

 

Toward a Global Idea of Race by Denise Ferreira da Silva (2007)

(Introduction)

http://books.google.com/books?lr=&q=Toward+a+Global+Idea+of+Race

May 10th – trans(   )borders

 

Muerte Sin Fin: Teresa Margolles' Gendered States of Exception

By Amy Sara Carroll

http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ucsd/sinfin.pdf

 

The Homoerotics of Immigration Control

http://www.barnard.edu/sfonline/immigration/brady_01.htm

 

Transborder Immigrant Tool

http://bang.calit2.net/xborder

 

May 17th – trans(   )codes

 

The Exploit: A Theory of Networks (Book)

 

What is Queer Technology? By Zach Blas

http://users.design.ucla.edu/~zblas/writing/whatisqueertechnology_zachblas_2006.pdf

 

May 24th – trans(   )codes

 

The Exploit: A Theory of Networks (continued)

Micha Cárdenas "Becoming Dragon: A Transversal Technology Study"

http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=639

 

May 31st – Presentations

 

June 7th – Presentations

 

OTHER SUGGESTED READINGS – DURING THE CLASS.

This documentary on border practices (a "minor simulation") can perhaps be framed as a type of trans( )aesthetic gesture of trans( )versal subjects.

Adrian Piper's "Kants Xenophobia"

http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ucsd/AdrianPiperKantsXenophobia.pdf

S.Shaviro's "Pulses of Emotion"

http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ucsd/PulsesofEmotion.pdf

B. Reynolds "Transversal Subjects"

http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ucsd/transversalsubjects.pdf

Daniel W. Smith "Deleuze and the Question of Desire: Toward An Immanent Theory of Ethics" Daniel W. Smith

http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ucsd/DeleuzeEthics.pdf