the Cooper Union School of Art Interdisciplinary Seminar
David Joselit
WITNESS: Spectatorship in Action
This lecture took place on April 19th, 2010 at 6:30 pm in the Wollman Auditorium at the Cooper Union
Lecture introduction
Focusing on two works by Harun Farocki, this talk will propose a model of spectatorship founded on the witnessing of difficult actions--often fictionalized or reenacted-- that call forth an ethical response as opposed to the mere consumption of documentary evidence.
About David Joselit
David Joselit worked as a curator at The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston from 1983-1989 where he co-organized several exhibitions including “DISSENT: The Issue of Modern Art in Boston,” (1985) “Endgame: Reference and Simulation in Recent Painting and Sculpture” (1986) and “The British Edge” (1987). After receiving his Ph.D. in Art History from Harvard in 1995, he began teaching in the Department of Art History and Ph.D. Program in Visual Studies at University of California, Irvine, where he taught until 2003. He is currently Carnegie Professor of the History of Art at Yale where he served as Department Chair from 2006-2009. Joselit is author of Infinite Regress: Marcel Duchamp 1910-1941 (MIT Press, 1998), American Art Since 1945 (Thames and Hudson, World of Art Series, 2003), and Feedback: Television Against Democracy (MIT Press, 2007). He is and editor of the journal OCTOBER and writes regularly on contemporary art and culture.