Category: PGDip

2007: PGDip in Contemporary Art History at Goldsmiths College in London

Diploma course results

The results for the postgraduate diploma have arrived (well, they arrived last week, but I’ve not been in a writing mood recently).

Here they are, broken down into the separate courses that comprised the diploma:

  • Framing Art: Museums, Galleries, Exhibitions: 70 (pass)
  • Core course: Histories of Art: 71 (pass)
  • Philosophy and… : 60 (pass)

So, I passed!

I’m slightly disappointed by the Philosophy mark, as it’s lower than the mark I was given for my previous essay. Although I knew I was not very good at philosophy at this stage, I felt that my pieces displayed an inherent ability that could be developed over time. And I think I should have been rewarded for this aspect of the work. Then again, perhaps I was being rewarded and I have much further to develop than I thought!

Oh well, the important thing is that I passed, for which I’m very pleased. Now onto the MA!

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Conclusion

So what does gesture tell us about Tino Sehgal’s work and what value does it have?

Sehgal’s pieces seem a good fit for Agamben’s gestic politics – they deliberately eschew a product or remnant of any kind, and implicate the audience in a perpetual game of the confusion of roles with the other participants of the piece. The pieces themselves do not live outside of memory and make the audience physically aware of their role within the institutional context of the gallery or museum and within the piece itself.

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Gesture and Sehgal

Sehgal’s work relates to Agamben’s concept of gesture in a sense through it’s retreat form material form. Sehgal’s strategy of no documentation ensures that the materiality of the pieces remains in abeyance (although this action in itself becomes an important discussion point). By taking this approach to residue, the works emphasise the temporary nature of their acts, which in themselves incorporate gestures in the commonly understood sense of the term. For Agamben gesture requires that “nothing is being produced or acted, but rather something is being endured and supported” (Agamben, 1992, p. 56) which would seem to be a good description of the experience of a Sehgal piece.

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