Artifacts studies

Teacher : Ayo Kré Duchâtelet

This seminar for master's students Politics and graphic experimentation (MA) supports the multidisciplinary workshop. It aims to develop a study of artifacts - understood as all types of manufactured objects resulting from human activity - in their relationship to politics. Artefacts are manifold: architectural structures, chairs, books, road signs, bridges, tomato harvesters, drones, closed centers. They can be seen as machines, assemblages, arrangements, objects endowed with an "anima" or even devices. They are always made up of several parts and elements that are configured, oriented and purposely designed, but also have effects that are beyond all determinations.

Based on a reading of Langdon Winner's text "Do artifacts have politics?", we begin by exploring Winner's idea that artifacts can incorporate specific forms of power or ideology. We then go on to consider what this relationship between politics and artifacts might mean, in order to go beyond Winner's point of view by recognizing that artifacts have their own capacity to act or to make others act, beyond the simple function of transmitters of ideologies. Several artifacts are introduced into the seminar space throughout the year.

Various exchange formats are used during the seminar: presentations, discussions, debates, actions and collective readings. At the end of the first term, students will be asked to compile and relate, in written form, various summary notes taken during each seminar session. During the second term, these notes will be the subject of an editorial work assessed at the end of the year. Reading comprehension in English is required.