Accelerating Duchamp

Serkan Ozkaya, We Will Wait, 2017
Photo illustration by Brett Beyer and Lal Bahcecioglu

Accelerating Duchamp is a re-thinking of the modernist artist Marcel Duchamp’s practice in the culture of late capitalism. Specifically, this research project will focus on his creation of the readymade, works of art chosen but not produced by the artist, in relation to both the rationale of consumer society.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES:

  • Define a specifically Duchampian form of accelerationism
  • Re-think the role and function of Duchamp’s readymade mode of art-making
  • Propose an alternative aesthetic mode of defining object-oriented relationships that do not depend upon the given structures of consumer capitalism
  • Explore the possibilities of accelerating Duchamp within current artistic and cultural practices

 

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

This research project involves a significant re-thinking of Duchamp’s importance in the 21st century, specifically proposing a Duchampian form of accelerating culture. I locate the aesthetics of his practice, most notably the readymade, within current theories and debates around consumer capitalism and the question of the object. This research is explored in two main projects. The first is a book titled Duchamp, Aesthetics, and Capitalism, which will be published by Routledge. In this book I propose what I call an accelerated Duchamp that speaks to a contemporary condition of art within our era of globalized capitalist production. The second is an international Duchamp symposium that will bring together scholars who are actively pushing Duchampian research beyond the given confines of the current historicized understandings of his art and practice.

 

 

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

A photo illustration: in a dark room, a projection comes from two small holes in a double door and plays on the wall
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Thursday, January 17, 2019 - 10:15am