Studio course (24 credits)

The total work of art has been a dream in many periods, where artists, designers and architects was working on a unifying and redeeming totality. The dream has been designs to transgress narrow boundaries and create new solutions for society and an architecture to embrace a still more complex reality. The word ’Gesamtkunstwerk’ or Total Wort of Art has reoccured to describe – critically og confirming – contemporary experiments combining design, architecture and art in new ways. The interest is both a revitalization of utopia, exploitation of media technology, new form of collaboration and collective interventions in society.

From contemporary phenomenons of cross over we go back through 20th century experiments and ideas to various stations as New Babylon, New Bauhaus, Third Reich,the  Avant-Garde and contemporary topics as mediation through space and design and branding as Gesamtkunstwerk. It leads to discussion on the limits of design and architecture as well as dangers of total aesthetization.

The students will learn to reflect on and situate design and architecture within a interdisciplinarily, historical and theoretical discourse of art theory, philosophy and cultural critique.

Lectures, seminars, presentations of texts, discussions.

Paper and seminar participation

Mandatory reading:

Compendium

Recommended reading:

Anders V. Munch. (2001). ”Design as Gesamtkunstwerk”, Scandinavian Journal of Design History , Vol. 11, pp. 32-60 [Danish version available here: http://www.sdu.dk/~/media/5605AFB2B140438191F6274B6A60CD6D.ashx ]

Anders V. Munch. (2004). “Allkonstverk som modernt konstbegrepp / Gesamtkunstwerk as Modern Concept of Art”, pp. 9-10 [PDF at: http://www.sitemagazine.net/ ]

Jan Michl. (2006). "Without a Godlike Designer No Designerlike God", in T. de Rijk and J.W. Drukker (ed.), [Proceedings of the] Design History Society Conference, Delft [Full-text at: http://janmichl.com/eng.intelligent.html ]

Coles, A. (2007). Design and art. London: Whitechapel.

Smith, M. W. (2007). The total work of art: from Bayreuth to cyberspace. New York: Routledge.