Street Media: Urban Interfaces

Course goals

The course aims to train both practical and academic individual and collaborative research skills, and to investigate the role of media, art and performance in urban space and in relation to contemporary urban transformations.

After completing this course, the student will have

• engaged with creative methods to produce a prototype
• trained in reflexive knowledge production through critical making
• increased knowledge about (some) current debates about participatory media, art and performance situated in urban, public space, within the broader field of Media, Art and Performance Studies;
• trained to succinctly, clearly, and carefully analyse, summarize and discuss the main ideas as formulated in the assigned academic texts;
• trained to professionally communicate insights, reflections and questions about the discussed topics in oral presentations and discussions as well as academic writing;
• trained to communicate reflection on the relevance of the topics and reading of the course in relation to the student’s own research interests.

Content

This course actively teams up with ongoing research of MCW's research group [urban interfaces]. The research group [urban interfaces] investigates urban transformations and the role of mobile and location-based art, media and performance in urban contexts (see https://urbaninterfaces.net).

Since the beginning of the 20th century, cultural researchers have been concerned with how transport and communication technologies, rapid urbanization and massive social upheavals shape social mobility, civic engagement and modes of belonging. Today, globalization, the spread of information technologies in the urban domain, and the debates about participatory culture and civic engagement spur a further mobilization of urban culture, identity and publics. Scholars, artists, designers inquire how urban spaces invite collaborative and playful practices of resistance, appropriation and/or engagement. By productively exploring mutual similarities and differences in concerns, methods, concepts, and skills, the course seeks to investigate transformations in urban media cultures in a methodologically innovative manner.
 
Students will produce a critical speculative prototype in interdisciplinary teams on a ‘critical making’ assignment and develop their own research in relation to current urban media, art and/or performance projects. In the course, they will reflect on creative methods for humanities research and explore the potentials of collaborative research and of inter- and cross-disciplinary methodologies.






 

Additional information

This course is for students in the RMA programmes MAPS, Musicology, Art History, Gender Studies, Religious Studies, NLC, CLS. The entrance requirements for Exchange Students will be checked by International Office and the Programme coordinator. You do not have to contact the Programme coordinator(s) by yourself. Students from other MA programmes should check with the course coordinator(s) before enrolling. Only in this way participation can be granted.

Please note: the time slot shown here is not yet final, and may still be modified until the third Wednesday in September.
 
 Career orientation:
The course actively engages students in ongoing research projects of the [urban interfaces] research group and current urban media, art and performance projects; students get acquainted with inter- and cross-disciplinary approaches and  collaborations with researchers, artists and designers relevant to the professional field of media, art and performance, and current cultural (urban) dynamics.

Transitional provisions:
This course is equivalent for MCRMV16045 Mec-Urban interfaces. Students who have completed MCRMV16045 Mec-Urban interfaces before, you cannot take the course Streed Media.