School of Art Spring 2021 Course Listing
AUDIOVISUAL
AV: Ways of Seeing
FA 385B
Monday 10–12:50
Raven
With an emphasis on independent student projects, this course will be grounded in a theoretical, historic, and material exploration of how we see and experience moving images today, and how those ways of seeing has alternately evolved or remained unchallenged over the past 100 years. Alongside one on one visits and group presentations of individual student work, we will examine of the 19th and 20th century ideologies inhered in camera, editing, and projection technologies—the subjects they imagine, the viewing habits they engender, and by extension, what alternative paradigms might be proposed.
AV: Revolution and Time-based Media
FA 387B
Thursday 2–4:50
Reeves
Course description to be updated soon
AV: Performing Architecture and Moving Image
FA 389B
Friday 1–3:50
Tossin
Note new day and time
This course focuses on different approaches to the relationship between architecture, the body and the environment We will consider the ways in which artists have engaged with social-spatial processes that constitute our built environment through film, dance, sound, and narrative. Readings, in-class screenings, sharing of new work and discussions are integral to the course.
ELECTIVES
Painting Techniques and Materials
TE 217
Wednesday 10–1:50
Hostvedt/Gully
This course provides training on the safe handling of painting materials, contemporary applications and techniques in a range of painting media. Practices in color mixing, color matching, glazing, uses of mediums, creating textures, effects, surfaces and customizing paint from dry pigments will be covered through instructor lead demonstrations and assignments. Students will receive hands on practice with various techniques by producing original works. In addition, students will be introduced to the origins, history and contemporary evolution of paint as a material. Relevant examples will be presented through various media and field visits. 2 credits. One - semester course. May not be repeated. Free elective credit.
Contemporary Art Issues Seminar
SE 401B
Monday 10–12:50
Fusco
In this class we will explore the complicated relationship of culture and power. What is culture for and who is it for? How do we determine cultural value and who decides what is valued? How do we define cultural belonging and cultural power? How is visual art different from other cultural forms when it comes to power? What roles do art institutions play? How do artists address power relations in and outside the art world? What does it mean to speak of cultural property and cultural ownership? We will consider these questions in relation to a range of artistic and curatorial practices. We will also delve into current debates about decolonization, repatriation, patronage, and appropriation. We will read texts by Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault, Dan Hicks, Kobena Mercer, Clementine Delisse and others.
Casting Techniques
TE 390
Monday 1–4:50
Wilhelm
Casting Techniques will pursue the methods, techniques and concepts involved in bronze casting adapted for online learning. Students will learn flexible mold making, wax casting and have the opportunity to cast their work in metal by mailing/or dropping off their patterns. Alternative casting techniques will be introduced, and the class will also delve into 3D Modeling and 3D printing. Students will have the opportunity to cast 3D printed patterns in metal, as well.
Casting Techniques will be adapted to online teaching by delivering lessons and demonstrations through videos and text/image documents. Class discussions and problem solving sessions will take place using Zoom and email. Students may mail or drop-off projects for casting. In person work sessions can be scheduled to allow students to work in the Sculpture shop, as long as COVID guidelines allow. Students will also investigate digital 3D modeling, and output projects by 3D printing/casting.
EID247: Introduction to Sustainability and Alternative Energy Technologies
Monday 6-9
Davis/Simson
Sustainability and sustainable development and how they relate to culture, politics, and design of our built environment. Review of the technological history of fossil fuel use and how it has affected Earth's climate. Global warming potential, radiative forcing, carbon cycle, and carbon budget. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and its application to sustainability / minimizing environmental impact. Alternatives to fossil fuel energy (including nuclear, geothermal, solar, hydropower, and bioenergy sources) and potential consequences of these technologies.
Prerequisites:
The course has no prerequisites; all material needed to understand the various topics will be covered in class. The class is aimed towards 2nd year students of all majors (Architecture, Art, and Engineering).
Learning Objectives:
· Explain what sustainability is and how it is affected by time, geography, and people
· Explain what a life cycle assessment is and what needs to be considered to create one
· Use LCA as a tool to compare two alternative processes or products
· Calculate air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions associated with switching between common fuels for electricity production
· Explain the technological, social, and economic impacts of switching to different alternative energy technologies from more common fossil fuel based processes
· Apply basic material and energy balances to explain how various alternative energy systems produce electricity
Homework, Projects, and Exams:
There will be four (4) homework assignments, one written paper, and one group poster presentation for this class. Homework will be problems and short answer questions which reinforce concepts from class and the textbook(s). The project will be to perform a life-cycle assessment on two similar products or process alternatives. It will be a group project and students will be required to create a poster.
Earth Science: The Dynamic Earth
RS 201a
Monday 2-4:50
Peter Matt
Students will recognize how geology affects their daily lives. They will understand that Earth is a complex system which ultimately controls all aspects of life, and which is sensitive to anthropogenic inputs. Students will demonstrate a fundamental grasp of Earth materials with particular attention to rocks and minerals. They will know the rock-forming processes for each of the three major rock types. They will be able to explain plate tectonic theory and to describe the interior structure of the Earth. They will know how glaciers have shaped our region. Students will become acquainted with the broad scale of geologic time and major events in the evolution of the planet.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Visual Identities: Icons, Marks, Emojis
FA 320
Tuesday 2-4:50
Glauber
From the thumbs up in a text message to the power-off button on an appliance, the swoosh on a sneaker to the cloud on a weather report, we rely on icons, marks, and emojis to help us communicate. In this course, students will be exposed to a wide range of systems that use non-verbal forms to communicate function, type, identity, or emotion and will draw and develop their own through a series of assignments.
PAINTING
Advanced Painting
FA 331B
Tuesday 2–4:50
Sillman
Painting is a process that works like a circulation system, between the nervous system, the motor skills, the brain, the eyeball, etc-- a kind of dialectical machine. The aim of this class is to develop alignment between production and conversation, bringing language to what you already do instinctually, and meanwhile developing the guts and rigor to investigate other work and ideas that you are not already aligned with, or that may seem outside your area. The goal is to widen the field of vision, to question, cross-fertilize, and push your work individually and collectively. The class will include individual studio visits, class critiques, visiting exhibitions, reading and discussing texts by artists writing about their processes.
Advanced Painting
Alex Katz Chair
FA 335B
Wednesday 2–4:50
Chitra Ganesh
This course will explore painting as an expanded field of inquiry, rooted in visual and historical research, with attention to currently evolving matrices of geopolitical/art-historical frameworks and approaches extending beyond a Euro-American canon. With a focus on independent projects and research, we will probe the possibilities of building a practice and visual language that is simultaneously anchored in a rigorous approach to material, form and their attendant histories of representation. Alongside one on one visits and group presentations of individual student work, the divergent approaches discussed in class, and pursued in independent practice, will be situated within critical readings in visual theory and history. As this is an expanding field, always on the move, students will be required to take research-based initiative, to explore art works and materials beyond the limits of what is presented in class, and introduce meaningful texts and artworks within the classroom.
Bio:
Chitra Ganesh is a Brooklyn-based visual artist whose work encompasses drawing, painting, comics, wall installations, video art, and more. Through studies in literature, semiotics, social theory, science fiction, and historical and mythic texts, Ganesh attempts to reconcile representations of femininity, sexuality, and power absent from the artistic and literary canons. She often draws on Hindu and Buddhist iconography and South Asian forms such as Kalighat and Madhubani, and is currently negotiating her relationship to these images with the rise of right wing fundamentalism in India. Ganesh graduated magna cum laude from Brown University, and received her MFA from Columbia University. Her work has been exhibited widely across the U.S., Europe, and South Asia. Her works are held in prominent public collections such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art, San Jose Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum, the Whitney Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art.
https://brooklynrail.org/2020/07/art/CHITRA-GANESH-with-Megan-N-Liberty
PHOTOGRAPHY
Photography: The Future
FA 361B
Wednesday 2–4:50
Backström
Photography is an indexical medium that records the present. This studio class will examine the relationship between photography and the future. Photography has a constitutive relation to memory and history, supporting judicial evidence, familial memory, and archival documents of past events. Can photography address the future through the past? Can photography be mobilized as a speculative medium like drawing, or as a medium for science fiction like film and literature? Through critiques and discussion, the class will explore if and how the future could be photographed.
Photography
Henry Wolf Chair
FA 364B
Friday 2-4:50
Carrisa Rodriguez
Artist Statement: "Arriving at art from other places (literature, cinema, subculture), I often feel like a non-artist trespassing in the field of art. The task therefore is to carve a temporary space to exist within it, and through it. This requires taking possession of space, but also accepting a job; in both senses – an occupation. Art for me is a way of living and working that necessitates being ready to exit art at any time, so as to consolidate the internal, external, conscious and unconscious conditions of each departure, in the form of an image, an object, an exhibition." https://walkerart.org/calendar/2019/carissa-rodriguez-the-maid
Photography: Alternative Processes
FA 366
Thursday 2–4:50
Jennifer Williams
This course breaks down barriers between digital and analog photography, transforming meaning and content through various forms of manipulation. Its fast-paced, hands-on demos include hand-applied photographic emulsions (such as cyanotype, Van Dyke, palladium, and liquid light) and digital printing/transferring options (beyond emulating the traditional print, on surfaces such as paper, wood, metal, fabric, etc.). The production of large-format analog and digital negatives will also be explored.
Adjustments for remote teaching include live-streamed and pre-recorded demos of processes as well as presentations focusing on contemporary and historical uses of processes. Students unable to work on campus will be provided supplies for “safe-for-home” processes so they may work concurrently with what is available in the lab. These include Anthotypes, Cyanotypes, Lumen printing, Chlorophyll printing, building capture devices, Wondersauce inkjet transfers (non-toxic), and gel-medium transfers.
PRINTMAKING
Paper: Materiality and Sustainability
FA 253
Friday 10–1:50
Martin
For Paper: Materiality and Sustainability in a remote setting, we will expand from a focus on predominantly Western techniques (that rely on the Hollander beater) to a blend of Eastern and Western methods. What remains unchanged is investigating and utilizing the medium to each student’s creative agenda. As always, students are encouraged to take a multidisciplinary approach to explore how papermaking can enhance their artistic practice in other mediums.
Videos of Instructor demonstrations will be posted online weekly. Classes will meet on Zoom for discussions and to review video demonstrations, with one-on-one instructor/student appointments available each week. Resources like PDFs, images, website links, books and more casual “chatting” will take place on Slack. Students will be expected to snail-mail samples of paper to each other as well as photographing and posting to the informal Cooper papermaking account on Instagram.
SCULPTURE
Sculpture
FA 392B
Wednesday 10–12:50
Fusco
Social Practice
Social practice is understood in the social sciences as collective human endeavor oriented toward bringing about social change in a community. In the last fifteen years the term has been used in art contexts to refer to aesthetic activity that is participatory in nature. Social Practice Art involves collaboration between artists, communities, and institutions. Our conversations about student works will focus on the strategies and challenges involved in collaboration. We will also consider ways of understanding process-oriented art as sculpting in and with time.
Sculpture
FA 391B
Thursday 10-12:50
Pascher
The course helps students develop independent work, from conceptualizing to realizing their ideas, and provides them with a critical vocabulary with which to express a sound rationale and gain a greater self-understanding. Intention, process, form and context will be emphasized. Open to any materials, media and methods, the course is intended to foster rigorous and independent artistic thinking and making. Artistic practice will be discussed with regard to larger cultural, historical and social issues. Lectures, readings, and other materials will complement group critique and individual meetings with the instructor. 3 credits. One-semester course.
Sculpture: Gathering
FA 398B
Friday 10–12:50
Adelita Husni-Bey
Gathering as a motion, as pulling strings together to make rope, as coming together in protest, gathering for mass, or as clouds gather in preparation for a storm. This class is centered on gathering as the infrastructure and scaffolding that holds social relations together, while asking: what does it mean to operate, act, and think through notions of molding, carving, casting?
Using experimental pedagogy, including seminar style readings and discussions, as well as haptic and performative exercises, we will explore gathering through gravedigger strikes in 15th Century Italy, foregrounding mutual aid organizing and government decrees in response to current and historical pandemics, touching upon the themes of necessary work, kinship and care, reproductive labor, abolition and law - arising from the ashes of systems that organize isolation and abandonment. How will this congregation call upon your experience, practice, poetics, and presence?
Bio:
Adelita Husni-Bey is an artist and pedagogue interested in anarcho-collectivism, theater, law and urban studies. She organizes gatherings, produces workshops and exhibition work focused on using non-competitive pedagogical models through the framework of contemporary art. Working with activists, architects, jurists, schoolchildren, spoken word poets, actors, urbanists, physical therapists, athletes, teachers and students across different backgrounds the work focuses on articulating the complexity of collectivity under capitalism. Solo exhibitions include: Maktspill Bergen Kunsthall, 2020, Chiron, New Museum, 2019, A Wave in the Well, Sursock Museum, 2016, Playing Truant, Gasworks, 2012. She has participated in Citizenship: A Practice of Society, MCA Denver, 2020, Being: New Photography, MoMA, 2018, Dreamlands, Whitney Museum, 2016, The Eighth Climate, 11th Gwangju Biennale, 2015. Holding workshops and lectures at CalArts, 2020, The New School, 2019, Sussex University, 2011, Sandberg Institute, 2015, amongst other spaces. She is a 2012 Whitney Independent Study Program fellow, a 2020-2022 Vera List Center fellow and has represented Italy at the Venice Biennale of Art, 2017 with a video installation rooted in anti-extractivist struggles.
Sculpture
FA 393B
Friday 2-4:50
Mooses
This course will be centered on independent student projects supported by group discussions and conversations with guest scholars, artists, and writers. Students will be introduced to a range of contemporary art practices and projects that are shaping conversations around art-making today. Group critiques, individual meetings, and workshops will be integral to the class structure. We will examine the different forms of cultural and artistic organization, and look at the role of sculpture in politics, institutions, communities, and experimental art spaces. We will discuss the importance of context, relevancy, and the evolution of sculpture. Class projects include a collaborative mail art project that draws inspiration from artists such as Eugenio Dittborn and Adrian Piper.
STUDIO ELECTIVES
Projects: Technics
FA 384B
Monday 10-12:50
Enxuto
This class will introduce students to tools and technologies that are reshaping what artists produce and how audiences engage. Technological developments bring new socio-ethical issues to bear and we will attend to a number of these emerging debates. As a research projects course, a clear emphasis will be placed on considering how interdisciplinarity can be made to work for artists. Activities will include seminars, workshops, and tutorials with visitors specializing in areas such as machine vision and virtual reality.
This course begins with a consideration of technics, or a knowledge of technical forms and systems that aid and augment human creative production in the 21st century. These processes frame and filter our perceptions of the world and what gets bracketed as Contemporary Art and how creative work becomes entangled with digital labor. This course is open to juniors and seniors, or sophomores with the permission of the instructor.
Projects: Squares
FA 384B
Tuesday 2–4:50
Raven
In this open-medium studio course, students will work on semester-long projects made specifically for the “share screen” function on Zoom and other remote conferencing platforms. Drawing on a broad history of remote presentation strategies including artist lectures, live-to-tape TV recordings, cable public access programming, YouTube tutorials, as well as military, civil, and commercial surveillance techniques, we will investigate the technological and social permutations of the form, and experiment with its possibilities in the present. Through research, one on one visits, and class-wide readings and conversation, students will independently develop a work meant to be experienced in this format, which will be workshopped in class throughout the term, and presented to the class at the end of the semester.
Teaching as Collaborative Social Practice
FA 301
Wednesday 6–8:50
Olivera
For the upcoming fall 2020 course, TEACHING AS A COLLABORATIVE SOCIAL PRACTICE, one of my main goals will be to ensure that materials, resources, and work produced by students will be made available in several different formats, and through several different platforms to be able to accommodate the varying needs and resources of students.
Along with hosting classes via Google Meet. I will back up files and resources on both Google Drive and Google Classroom. Students will have my cell phone number and will be encouraged to text me about time sensitive matters. They can, of course, email and I will check my inbox frequently.
As the course involves discussing the history of alternative teaching environments and organizations, along with having students work in groups to create and discuss curricula I do not currently foresee any need for additional space or equipment. My objective is to work with the current limitations, a new and real situation students and teachers are dealing with. I will be transparent in a discussion of how remote learning affects the educational experience, and part of the course will involve developing and implementing new approaches. The understanding should be that success will not be as vital a goal as analyzing what the desired classroom outcomes are, what challenges our current environment represent, and trying to understand the results and limitations of our experimental approaches.
