In this seminar we examine some theories of time and their significance for understanding art. The categories we will be working with are drawn mainly from the Marxist tradition and the central problem is how to understand capitalism in its historical actuality. Throughout the seminar we will be consider- ing a range of artworks as ways of thinking about capitalist temporality as it emerges through aesthetic form: examples include Manet and the Impressionists, the Soviet avant-grade, Ilya Ehrenberg, Charlie Chaplin, Jean-Marie Straub & Danielle Huillet, Harun Farocki & Antje Ehmann, Allan Sekula, Santu Mofokeng, Shahidul Alam, Ursula Biemann, Chen Chieh-Jen, and the Radek Community.

Gail Day is Senior Lecturer in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds. She is the author of Dialectical Passions: Negation in Postwar Art Theory (Columbia University Press, 2010).

Steve Edwards is Professor of Art-History-Materialism and Head of the Department of Art History at the Open University. His books include: The Making of English Photography, Allegories (Penn State University Press, 2006) and Martha Rosler, The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems (Afterall Books, 2012). He serves as an editor of the journals Oxford Art Journal and Historical Materialism.