Introduction to Critical Theory: The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility

Taking our point of departure from Walter Benjamin's artwork essay, we trace the way in which photographers and artists from the late 1970s to the present have asked us to understand their work as resources for doing political work, as strategies of resistance and activism, as even training manuals on how to engage, rethink, and address some of the most urgent issues of our time. We consider works by, among others, Susan Meiselas, Allan Sekula, Kara Walker, Kerry James Marshall, Carrie Mae Weems, Glenn Ligon, Alfredo Jaar, Marcelo Brodsky, Walid Raad, Taryn Simon, Nikos Pilos, Isaac Julien, Claudia Andujar, and Fazal Sheikh.