60-360 The Precarious Body in Contemporary Art

9 units, Carnegie Mellon University

This seminar will examine images and projects in contemporary art that deal with debates concerning ideas that had already begun brewing in the 1980s and early 90s, that addressed issues of institutional violence circulating under the guise of "discourse," or that delved into ideas of difference and alterity through the notion of "abjection." More recently, the idea of precarity has taken central stage as a way of thinking through, and taking action against, the kinds of structural oppression that deems certain groups of people vulnerable to repeated forms of aggression, poverty, illness, and displacement without protection. We will also explore a seemingly opposite corollary: the SUPERCLEAN— a trope that exploits the capacity of certain technologies to present hygienic forms of representational violence at the level of the digitally manipulated image. We will read the work of Tung-Hui Hu, Zuzana Kovar, Judith Butler, Claudia Rankine, Pamela Lee, Frantz Fanon, Sarah Ahmed and study the projects generated by artists, such as Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica, Superflex, Anicka Yi, Mika Rottenberg, Carolyn Lazard, Katherine Behar, Trisha Baga, Hito Steyerl, among others, as a way of interrogating these State mandated structures of material and psychic repression. A major part of the course will examine how contemporary artists responded, acted, and produced—addressing the precarious body as the site for political and aesthetic resistance.

Prerequisites: none listed

Offered: Fall 2026

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