Interior Lives: Self, Identity and Consumption in Art, Design & Film

Course Content:

This module focuses on the construction of identities within spaces of consumption in
order to address and deconstruct themes of interiority and exteriority, in which the body
is constantly being remade, performed, fashioned, consumed and co-opted. It explores
the dynamic interaction between bodies, objects and the material world, and links interiority to social practices and contexts.
The module draws on theories of the self, ranging from psychoanalysis to critical theory ?
the body inscribed by desire and power ? and addresses debates in art, design and film
which connect or dismantle interior (psychological) and (material) exterior modalities
through representation, discourse and creative practices.

Topics covered may include:
? Critical approaches to identities in consumer culture
? The gendered body within representation
? Phenomenology and the built environment
? Body of the consumer ? inscription of the body, surface/flesh
? Identity and self in domestic space
? Desire and fetishism of the consumer object
? Consumption, status, power and display
? Performativity and performance
? Art and abjection
? Body and technology: designing the prosthetic body
? Biography, auto-ethnography and narratives of the self in art, design and film

Autumn semester:
? Interior lives
? Self-cataloguing
? Personal geographies, phenomenology and auto ethnography
? Structuralism, post structuralism and existentialism
? Historically unstable objects
? Post phenomenology and reflexive research
? Uncomfortable spaces
? The abject
? Domestic space and the body technological
? Life writing, self-plagiarism and interiority
? Ethics and materiality

Spring semester:
? Performativity / trip to Blythe House
? Public art and the performance of monuments
? Concretising the ephemeral
? The performance of research
? Fetishes
? Identities in consumer culture
? Personal responsibility and false altruism
? Agency and intentionality
? Essay tutorials
? Self-mythologising in the social media
? Life writing and the academic memoir

Teaching: Lectures, seminars, visits, workshops, study groups

Assessment:
STUDY OPTION 1:
? Life writing: (20%)
? Photo documentation (20%)
? 3,000-word essay (60%)
STUDY OPTION 2 OR 3: 3,000-word essay (tbc)

Study Option 1 = Whole Year
Study Option 2 = Autumn
Study Option 3 = Spring/summer