170733 UE Chronopolitics: Norms of temporality and artistic interventions (2023S)

The starting point of this seminar is the observation that social hierarchies and the maintenance of normality are supported by temporal structures and forms. These dominant temporalities are referred to as "chrononormativity" (Elizabeth Freeman). The concept of chronopolitics addresses possible interventions in and changes to dominant temporalities.

"The artists, performers, and theorists I have engaged with have wrestled against straight lines and straight times in their examination of the ways in which time informs how we are gendered, sexed, and racialized. These artistic interventions in the field of queer temporality have pointed out that temporal structures such as chronology, linearity, and progression have been and still are instrumental in constituting certain bodies as normal and others as deviant - and that heteronormative and racist exclusions work through and are legitimated by normalized public timeframes."
Mathias Danbolt in "Touching History: Art, Performance and Politics in Queer Times," University of Bergen, 2013.

The seminar will deal with the reading and discussion of selected texts, as well as with artistic interventions in video art and performance art, among other things to make current political developments discussable. The artistic works inspire the analysis of the academic texts and provide interpretive possibilities for contextualizing the issues raised in the texts. In each case, the focus is on an analysis of the text as well as the work - which includes aspects of content, aesthetics, and form. The seminar offers an interdisciplinary interface between film, video, performance, conceptual art as well as cultural studies (especially postcolonial and gender studies).