This sounds like an AMAZING class — the use of the phrases “symbolic capital” and “artifactual production” suggest the influence of Johanna Drucker’s writings on complicity in contemporary art. I heard Ken Lum speak at CCA a few years back — really bright thinker and artist.

Master Class: The Object of Art and the Art as Object with Ken Lum
The Banff Centre

The relationship between art and life (in terms of the potential collapse of one term into the other or the discursive separation between the terms) has underlined the primary function of the avant-garde in art. The dialectical tension between those objects deemed art or non-art is itself an institutional function of the cultural (social) category of art. How is artistic discourse produced to transform an object into art? In what ways does artistic discourse negotiate the question of the art object as commodity? What role does the artist play in this negotiation?

This Banff Master Class will study the operational functioning of the work of art within the constitution of the art world and in relation to different institutional frames. The relationship of art to the concept of “symbolic capital” and “artifactual production” will also be explored. As interest in art continues to accelerate and spread globally, the aim of this class will be to revisit the most fundamental questions about the status and function of art.

The class will take the form of a bi-weekly seminar. The first class of the week will critically examine an assigned reading. The final class of the week will be an open session moderated by the Master Class leader.

Now if only I had $5k for the class/room/lodging fee and the means to take 6 weeks off of work… Back in my twenties, my roommate would visualize finding a paper bag full of cash, and I think she did eventually did find a bag with like $40 on the street, once — maybe if I start visualizing a grocery bag or garbage bag or sofa stuffed with cash (Would walking distance to my house be too much to ask? OK.), it’ll magically appear.