Debating Cultures:Art of Recycling: Remix, Appropriation, & Eco-Narratives in Latin America & Spain

SPANISH 3223

Some of the most disruptive and controversial artistic and literary works of the 20th and 21st centuries reuse previous materials and known works. These practices of recycling and appropriation have reopened great theoretical and socioeconomic debates: Is it ethical to create a work of art by recycling parts of other works? In these times of remakes and remixes, what gives originality and value to a work of art today? What are the legal limits of appropriation and intellectual property? In our course, we will discuss these questions by analyzing a wide range corpus (music, cinema, literature, photography, and other plastic and visual arts) of contemporary works, authors, and independent publishers that are recycling the canon and rewriting the current laws of how art and literature work in the Latin American and Spanish context. At the same time, the importance of the aesthetics of recycling coincides with a historical moment in which the ecological crisis is at the center of public debate. For this reason, we will also address questions such as how the materiality of works of art and literature is being rethought to make them more sustainable, and how Climate and Weird Fiction in Spanish are creating eco-narratives to denounce the extractivism of the planet's resources and propose new sustainable ways of relating to our environment and other species. This course will have an important practical dimension, so students will have the opportunity to experiment with different forms of artistic intervention and even print sustainable books (like "cartonera" publishers). The course will be taught entirely in Spanish, with a strong and graded oral communication component. Prereq. Spanish 303 or 308D. Students who have already taken more than two Spanish culture or literature classes (at the SPA 3200-level) must proceed to a Researching Cultures class (SPA 3600-level).
Course Attributes: EN H; AS HUM; AS LCD; AS LS; FA HUM; AR HUM

Section 01

Debating Cultures:Art of Recycling: Remix, Appropriation, & Eco-Narratives in Latin America & Spain - 01
INSTRUCTOR: Martin Gomez
View Course Listing - SP2023