Professor Richard Noble - Inaugural Lecture 2018 скачать в хорошем качестве

Professor Richard Noble - Inaugural Lecture 2018

The View From Nowhere: The Utopian Impulse in Art and Education In recent years my research has focussed on the significance of the utopian impulse in contemporary art. A variety of strategies based on modelling utopian ideas or aspirations are important for contemporary artists who aspire to comment critically and/or relevantly upon current social and political conditions. Here I explain why it is possible to re-claim the concept of utopia, long derided either as politically naïve or the root of totalitarian oppression, as a strategy for making politically relevant visual art. The utopian impulse can be understood to be intergral to the activity of making art, as well as what survives in the contemporary moment from the legacy of the modernist avant-garde. Second, I extend this discussion to a consideration of the utopian impulse in arts and humanities education. I will elaborate a conception of university education as an end in itself, which is now from a practical standpoint obsolete, but nonetheless contains an important utopian impulse. The relevance of this utopian idea of a university education in the current moment is that it reminds us of the fundamental value of research and teaching as ends in themselves. It provides reasons to resist the relentless instrumentalisation of higher education, and offers the possibility of a language in which it might be possible to make the case for both art and education to those who wish to instrumentalise both in terms of other values. Professor Richard Noble