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Taking diverse examples (e.g. art works, archaeological artefacts, museum pieces or designed goods) students will consider the ways objects and architectures lie at the heart of popular conceptions of art, design, heritage and history, and rebound on notions of human creativity and authenticity. Through a comparative and inter-disciplinary perspective we will interrogate the place of material culture in social roles and practices. We will similarly focus on the things themselves and question how the aesthetics of surface qualities such as materiality, shininess and brilliance have been integral to the constitution of value across space and time. Finally we will track the routes that biographical objects undergo and follow objects in motion, for example through the so-called ‘circular economy’ in which questions of materiality - recycling, up-cycling, swapping and sustaining - are central.
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