All courses that count as IMA Major Electives
Integrated Digital Media (Undergraduate)
3 credits – 15 Weeks
4 points – will count toward general education requirements (Humanities) Social, political, and economic upheavals produce shattering transformations in human life, yet some of the most significant artistic works in literature, visual arts, theatre, film, and music have been created under these extreme circumstances. The focus of this course is on developing an interdisciplinary approach to an understanding of the arts, artists, and the artists’ response as a catalyst for social and political change. We will explore the history of various practical crises and examine how they have influenced art and artists. Some of the examples include the works of Czechoslovakian films during Soviet Occupation, Protest Theatre during Apartheid South Africa, Shostakovich’s Trio during Soviet Era, underground music scene in present day Iran, Cindy Sherman’s photography in the USA, Croatian artist Sanjan Ivekovic and Bangali writer Taslima Nasrin’s. We will also look at some examples of propaganda artists and their work as well, artists like Morteza Avini in Iran and Liu Wenxi of China. By investigating the artist’s understanding of political, social, and economic forces that impact upon art and their own lives we will examine this question: What are the complex dynamics that are involved in the emergence of movements in the arts?
Ctr for Art, Society & Pub Pol (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks
In many political movements, the festive emerges as a major force shaping alternative social practices, forms of gathering, being together, and moving together. These alternative modes of being in collectivity are actively redefining the political. This sense of collectivity becomes particularly evident in the aesthetics of the Global South and its Diasporas. Consequently, this course explores the festive’s role in forming political movements beyond the traditional scope that reduces it to a simple byproduct of social life. It also explores how the pandemic has forced us to reimagine what coming together means. Taking Latin American and Caribbean aesthetics as an initial case, this seminar engages in a detailed interpretation of performances that challenge traditional definitions of both the festive and the political. A wide range of performance practices, such as carnival parties, sound systems, cabaret shows, popular dance styles, artworks, organized slave riots, and indigenous uprisings, shape the modes students will engage in theory and practice. For this course iteration, we will focus on questions around Black and Indigenous relations to carnival performance, structures of mutual aid as festive practice, and how they enact utopian modes of communal life, and how these modes of communal life redefine current understandings of art and politics. The class involves field trips, visits to several performance events, and conversations with artists and organizers who use the festive as a political tool to engage in political action in NYC. Questions regarding race, gender, and class will be directed to the philosophical, anthropological, and historical texts paying close attention to their involvement in the formation of colonial oppression. Performance studies’ methodologies will serve as the guiding mode to articulate these questions.
Class titles vary by section.
The introduction of the video camera into the artist’s studio pushed the boundaries of time-based media beyond its traditional use in cinema and television production to embody technology and narrative as an intimate material process. This video course will explore the various dimensions of video art, including its physical sculptural qualities, its use as a tool for poetic and conceptual gestures, performative approaches, and its role as a spatial dimension in video objects and installations. Video’s ability to collapse an art object through its process, utilizing experimental documentary approaches and research-based methods, enables unique collaborations between artists and disciplines to invent formats such as dance-on-film, poetic essay records, personal and collective social experiments, remote documentary performances, and hybrid forms of audience interaction. Through thematic case studies and assignments, students will develop and produce several video works in the semester, providing them with the art historical context, technical skills, and conceptual framework necessary for creating and installing time-based video art. The course will culminate in a gallery special video installation, emphasizing the audience’s interaction with time-based media within the visual art context of galleries, museums, and site-specific presentations.
Students conceive, produce, direct, and edit a short film exploring the Paris experience with smartphone technology. A survey of cellphone cinema history leads to the study of visual storytelling principles and techniques, which students apply through practical exercises. Choosing among available short film genres (experimental, documentary, portrait, essay, fiction), students are trained through every stage of the movie making process: pitching the idea, scripting and storyboarding, shooting, and editing. Each student finishes the course with a facility in smartphone video technology as well as a coherent film record of his or her particular vision of Paris.
Cinema Studies (Undergraduate)
2 credits – 6 Weeks
CINE-UT 9566-000 (4455)