Political Arts

There is an increasing awareness of the term ‘the political’ playing an ever increasing role in ever more aspects in today’s world and culture, as well as in the reflection on yesterday’s world and culture. A creative and dynamic approach to the concept when seen in relation with its field of play is the raison d’être of Political Arts. This minor seeks to test the boundaries of the political through a comparative lens—both geo-cultural and temporal—as well as through multi-media work—including the deployment of the creative arts, the performing arts, and culture in general. The new teaching and research agenda in liberal arts themed around political and legal issues being developed at LUC provides an ideal space for such transdisciplinary explorations. Springing off questions of representation, performance, spectatorship, judgment, action, and communication, this minor capitalises the performing and creative arts as a direct means to approach, understand, and promote political aims. Understanding the politics of self and identity as performative, it encourages engagement with queer theory, gender theory, and psychoanalytic theory. Political aesthetics thus intertwines with practical creative performance to form an integrated and lively study of 21st-century aestheticisation of the political.