Here comes the printable version of the program of the theory course in the week from January 15 to 18, 2007. The goal of the session is a "soft reboot" of the theory program after one year, as well as a general debate about the relationship between theory and artistic production.

TUESDAY, JAN 16

10 am - 12 am

Collaborative Reading of a short text Michel Foucault wrote as the preface of the english edition of "Anti-Oedipus" by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari.

Copies will be available at the beginning of the seminar in the "art&architecture" space

02pm - 06pm

Studiovisits

WEDNESDAY JAN 17

10am - 12am

Why does theory matter for art and artists? Wednesday, the new theory-day, will start with a general conversation about the status, the impact and the various meanings of theory in the field of arts. Is theory opposed to practice? Is it maybe just an unsubstantiated guess or hunch? Can we use theory to explain, predict and master phenomena by constructing models of reality?

Please bring any objects, ideas, proposals that may answer or illustrate the question with you to the "art&architecture" space!

02pm - 05pm

Screening and discussion of various short films, excerpts and materials

07pm

Movie screening in Skybar

"Last year at Marienbad" (L'Année dernière à Marienbad), 1961, Alain Resnais

A cinematic puzzle, Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad is a radical exploration of the formal possibilities of film. Beautifully shot in Cinemascope by Sacha Vierny, the movie is a riddle of seduction, a mercurial enigma darting between a present and past which may not even exist, let alone converge. The film stars Giorgio Albertazzi as an unnamed sophisticate attempting to convince a similarly nameless woman (Delphine Seyrig) that they met and were romantically involved a year ago in the same enormous, baroque European hotel. In the end, it hardly matters -- they're not characters so much as pawns anyway. Hypnotically dreamlike, Last Year at Marienbad is a surrealist parody of Hollywood melodrama, a high-fashion romance with a dark, alien underbelly. According to screenwriter Alain Robbe-Grillet, the movie is a pure construction, without a frame of reference outside of its own existence -- the lives of its characters begin when the lights go down, and conclude when they come back up.

THURSDAY JAN 18

10 am

Studiovisits