This course looks at the development of site-specific performance with a special emphasis on projects that engage with social issues and include activist agendas. “Site-specific” is a term frequently associated with the visual arts but since the Happenings of the ’60s and ’70s, a body of work termed “site-specific performance” has evolved as highly structured works of art that are designed around, for or because of place and associated communities. As site artists confront the matrix of social forces, changing political policies and overlapping communities that relate to a given site, their aesthetics, creative process and goals have shifted. How are they blurring the lines between art and activism, art and urban renewal, art and real life? This arts workshop will emphasize making site work by completing a progressive series of studies, using various artistic mediums. We will also be reading about and viewing site work by seminal artists in this field. This course is recommended to adventurous students with interests and some training in at least one of the following mediums: dance, theatre, spoken word poetry, media, photography and/or visual art. Readings include texts by Maaike Bleeker; Jan Cohen Cruz; Bertie Ferdman, among others.
We know that for children play is more than just fun; it is the work through which they develop. But what about when adults play? Through play we find our freedom, spontaneity, and our aesthetic. What is there in human beings that enables us to play? Why is play considered an innate capacity of people from the beginning of recorded history? What qualifies as play? When does play become art? In this course, everyone plays and in doing so examines the historic and contemporary uses of play as a potentially universal impulse of humans, across generations, time and space. Play’s capacity to create and sustain community will be considered. We will examine play as it is reflected through theories of child development, dramatic improvisation, fine art, politics, social construction and identities, music, religion and spirituality, literature and social media. Students will examine the necessity of play in their own child and adult lives—the creative spirit, the adventurer, the empathic connection with humanity, and laughter, too. Books may include: Nachmanovitch’s Free Play, Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment, Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, and selected readings from Lorca, Nietzche, Piaget, Postman, Solomon.
This course will explore curatorial theory and practice toward a collaboratively produced exhibition of contemporary painting. Tracing the changing role of the curator in assembling art and argument, our work will culminate in an exhibition installed in The Gallatin Galleries. Working with local artists toward an emergent thematic premise, we will follow and examine the steps of exhibition-making to understand their intellectual underpinnings, historical import, and political urgency. The practical tasks of mounting an exhibition will include studio visits, work lists, shipping and delivery, exhibition design and installation, graphic design, and public programming. Throughout, we will expand the possibilities of the collective teaching gallery, emphasizing the relations between theoretical and material processes in thinking with (and in) exhibitions.
The ever-inventive world of arts publications encompasses a dazzling range of subjects, mediums, materials, and methods: from ancient illuminated manuscripts, political manifestos, and one-of-a-kind artists books to high-end glossies, handmade zines, posters and print multiples to the infinite possibilities of the digital realm. This workshop will introduce and explore many of these forms through guest lecturers, field trips to specialized collections and museums, directed readings, and hands-on work, which will culminate in final group and individual projects. Readings may include Posters: A Global History; Action Time Vision; and Design: the Invention of Desire.
In this workshop, students will explore the possibilities of dancing across spatial categories, making dances in “real” and digital space. Taking our cues from contemporary experimental and primarily post-modern choreographers, we will examine how our arts practices and beliefs about bodies and space are linked to evolving ideas and cultural systems; we will ask questions that tug at the assumptions of what dance is, what bodies are, what space is, and how these elements are significant as components of choreography and of our dance experiences. We will make and watch dances ranging from low-tech works to high-tech experiments. In addition to making dances, we will read about contemporary dance, technology, and other practices and disciplines (e.g., architecture, philosophy, neuroscience), view performances of choreographers and visual artists, and meet with practitioners engaged in the questions and practices of our study. We will join with CultureHub, an organization housed at La MaMa E.T.C. (one of New York’s most noted experimental theaters) and working at the intersection of art, technology, and community. Readings might include work by Gaston Bachelard, Victoria Hunter, Matthew Frederick, Merce Cunningham, Steve Paxton, Andrew Gurian, Yi-Fu Tuan, and other artists and scholars. The course is open to all students: anyone interested in dance and/or technology is welcome. Note: all workshop members will be expected to participate as movers!
Presently, the distinctions between fashion and art have begun to fray, revealing a dynamic cultural nexus that has propelled new concepts, processes, materials and modes of presentation. Artists, designers, curators and critics alike recognize the wide-ranging appeal of locating fashion within Fine Art and vice versa. This malleable exchange between the two mediums is illuminated in landmark exhibitions like Alexander McQueen’s Savage Beauty and in the profusion of artist to brand collaborations that continue to transform the fashion world. In this arts workshop, students will have the opportunity to explore fashion as art through a range of material investigations. Questions that the course will engage include: how has the confluence of fashion and Fine Art both challenged and enriched the cultural significance of dress, shifting the industries course and altering the way the world sees value, gender and even identity? “Additionally, how can merging these mediums expand and enhance one’s own studio practice? Students can choose from a variety of mediums, including, but not limited to: illustration, painting, collage, textile design, sculpture, photography and performance. This course is open to students of all artistic backgrounds with an interest in expanding their experiences in visual culture and the visual arts.
Both dancing and everyday movement offer continual opportunities for embodied experience. Those who regularly dance or engage in movement practices such as yoga, jogging, cycling, and walking typically develop an appetite, even a need, for moving and the breadth of experience it brings. Whether you already feel this appetite or want to explore embodied experience for the first time, this Arts Workshop offers the opportunity for deep investigation of movement, focusing on active and contemplative exploration of bodies in space and time. We will be guided by several research strands linked to the existence and power of embodiment, noting experimental choreographer Susan Rethorst’s term, “the body’s mind”: ways of knowing (individually, culturally) through our bodies. Through many movement options, including dancing and somatic practices, walking and other everyday actions, and personal/cultural/political movement histories, we will encounter or create relationships between what we do and who we are. In the studio and elsewhere, we will consider how our lives as movers, and our sense of ourselves as embodied, bring us into contact with others—walkers, dancers, friends and family—and with our spaces, places, and sociocultural worlds. In this course (open to anyone with/without previous training), our research-in-action will be supported by interdisciplinary scholarship engaged with dance, embodiment, space, everyday culture, phenomenology, environmental studies, and life writing. Readings may include works by Thomas DeFrantz, Anna Halprin, Victoria Hunter, Einav Katan, Marcel Mauss, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Andrea Olsen, Steve Paxton, Georges Perec, Yvonne Rainer, Susan Rethorst, Kathleen Stewart, and Yi-Fu Tuan.
The course explores how design can respond to environmental problems and climate change. In analyzing past attempts, the course starts with decolonizing turn of the century admirations for primitivism and ends with the cyber punks planning new environments online. Following the work of architects, artists, urban planners, graphic designers and fashionista, the course will review histories of adaptation and ways to design with climate. The class will decolonize modernist design schemes, and focus on better ways to design with climate. We will also devote time to discuss topics such as building closed ecological systems, counterculture designs, cyber environments, sick building syndrome, biomimetics, eco-fashion, earth art, and other methods to design within the realm of nature. The overall objective is twofold; to survey the larger historical context of ecological design and define specific contributions to the climate change debate. Ultimately, the students will be asked to design, develop, and participate in an ecologically driven conceptual final design project of their choice.
Dance reflects cultural heritage and is a key to understanding diverse societies. In this arts workshop, students explore dance as it appears on several continents. Dance can be seen as encoded forms of a society’s religious, artistic, political, economic, and familial values. Readings cover issues of globalization, fusion and authenticity. Migration, missionaries, trade routes and the diaspora have led to the creation of new dance forms like “Bollywood” and “Tribal” that are a synthesis of earlier forms. Students are introduced to different dance forms through selected readings, rich collection of video footage and studio practice often lead by various guest artists. After a brief warm-up, the class learns simple steps, floor plans and rhythms from the music and dance cultures being studied. Students choose a dance form as their project and themselves become researchers, performers and creators of new forms.
This course covers the very basic techniques of photography and digital imaging. Beyond Picture Perfect explores the many choices available to today’s image makers. New technology combined with traditional photographic techniques will be addressed, enabling the students to realize their distinctive image-making vocabulary. Daily discussions include understanding hardware mechanics, choosing a personal color palette, and recognizing “your” unique composition key. We will debate the many analog and digital tools available to photographers vital to their artistic expression. These concepts will be supported by daily assignments and class critiques culminating in a final project portfolio. Students with interest in analog or digital formats will be encouraged to develop an understanding of their medium and form an original visual strategy. Readings may include selections from: Robert Adams, Why People Photograph; London and Upton, Photography.
This architecture workshop introduces the basic principles of design. It begins with an analysis of a house by an important architect that examines the design concept or parti of the building, historical and environmental issues, as well as function, circulation, spatial organization, site, zoning, light, proportions, structure, and materials. In developing this project, students are also introduced to a vocabulary of design terms and the process of creating an architectural concept. In the projects that follow, students create their own designs for various types of structures. The assignments might include a New York loft space, a house in the country, or a small public or commercial building. These exercises provide the experience of creating designs by applying the concepts learned in the analysis. The basic techniques of drafting, rendering, and using Sketchup or similar software are also discussed. Films, lectures and texts on architectural theory provide additional insight. Design experience is useful, but not required.
This course is designed to help students develop a better understanding of music by presenting the opportunity to experience music as a musician. Students review basic music theory and develop rudimentary musicianship skills; learn how to utilize the basic functionality of common digital audio workstations; and use that experience to create music. The goal is for each student to be able to compose, rehearse, and then perform, original contemporary pieces of music, individually and in a group setting, in a wide range of musical idioms. The course culminates in a public recital of works written and performed by students.
New York’s soundscape is hard to ignore: it can be overwhelming, it is always intricate, but also surprisingly subtle, and there is much that we hear that we don’t really listen to. We will interrelate the subjects of noise, silence, and the city, ranging from important moments in the history of noise abatement in New York City to the philosophy and work of composers such as John Cage. New York City’s diverse population strongly affects and produces its unique soundscape; how does this particular city reflect its inhabitants? There will be off-site field trips to events such as the West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn, as well as visits to sited works such as Max Neuhaus’s Times Square. We will consider how sound is often explicitly designed to affect and influence us in places such as retail environments. How do our attempts to mediate sound with devices like headphones affect our listening? Students will engage the ideas of writers such as Stuart Hall, Jacques Attali, Luigi Russolo, John Cage, Emily Thompson, R. Murray Schaefer, and Shuhei Hosokawa, as well as works by Christina Kubisch, Susan Phillipz, and Pauline Oliveros. There will be three short production assignments, some of which will be made for specific sites in the city as a way of investigating the interplay between public spaces and listening. At its core, you will be asked to consider the politics and subjectivity of your own listening as a citizen of New York. Who do you hear? How do you sound?
Down by the water’s edge we find the color contrast delineating wet and dry to the rhythm of nature’s tidal flux. The ebb relinquishes 12 hours of waterborne mystery; the flow’s 12 hours blanket refreshes the shore’s human impositions. New York City’s 578 coastal miles inspire this photojournalist/ documentary workshop to explore ongoing changes in commercial development, political innovation and environmental climate. The gradual cleansing of New York City waterways has encouraged neighborhood communities to revive their historical, artistic, and literary traditions along shorelines once occupied by industry. Now attracting vibrant cultural activity, New York City coastal communities are again looking at the water, seeking inspiration in its beauty. Embarking on a photographic project of their design, students will develop their own personal viewpoint on society’s relationship to New York waterlines, determine their own perception (vantage point, angle, point of view, framing) and establish a unique relationship with the audience (through scale, rhythm sequence, position, color). Classes will offer technical instruction, critiques of student work, and visual analysis. Open to highly motivated students with experience in photography; digital or film cameras welcome.
Distance is Malleable is a multi-faceted course that contemplates the notions of human fragility, existential solitude, and metaphorical “nakedness.” Led by NYC-based interdisciplinary performing artist Eiko Otake, students will engage in movement study, art making, and exploration of different places and people, living or dead. How does being or becoming a mover reflect and alter each person’s relationship with the environment, history, language, and other beings? How are we defined by or/and how do we define our relationships to the particulars of place? How do we maximize the potentials of selected encounters with other human beings, places, and things? Reading assignments will focus on our collective experience of massive violence and human failure. In addition to the Gallatin studio, we will also work at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden where Eiko is an artist-in-residence. Weekly reading and journal entries are required. Students will share their projects in class.
Modern art has been a balancing act between control and letting go. This course focuses on the psychological interface between the two, the “liminal” zone. We will survey modern artists’ techniques for tapping sources of creativity, including Dada collagists’ free-associations; Surrealists’ automatic writing, doodles, and “cadavres exquises”; and Abstract Expressionists’ embrace of chaos. We will engage in simple exercises: doodling, speed drawing, painting an abstract mural as a group, keeping a liminal journal, collaging, and exploring ritualistic techniques. We will follow up with discussions, take a trip to the Met to dialogue with an African oracle sculpture,and conclude the course reexamining modern art in light of the inner journey threshold drama each of us has taken during the course. Readings include van Gennep’s Rites of Passage, Chipp’s Theories of Modern Art, R.D. Laing, Federico Garcia Lorca on duende, Victor Turner on liminal, Mircea Eliade on Shamanism Techniques of Ecstasy, James Elkins on alchemy and art, and Frida Kahlo’s journal.
In Jorge Luis Borges’s 1941 short story, The Garden of Forking Paths, a character named Ts’ Ui Pen seeks to build a labyrinth in which all men will lose their way. Borges reveals that labyrinth to be a sprawling book in which all moments in time are followed by every possible subsequent moment. Multiple futures and timelines exist as one in this garden of forking paths. Fast forward to today, where we find that Ts” Ui Pen”s seemingly incomprehensible vision has come to fruition via video games and interactive fiction. Both often eschew linearity and instead offer users the opportunity to drive the story and shape their own narrative experience. “In this course, we will first explore the trajectory of interactive fiction, from its early overtures in works by Borges and Italo Calvino, forward through Agusto Boal”s Forum Theatre, early computer text adventures, Choose Your Own Adventure books, non-linear film, and into the various digital interactive fictions of today, such as hypertext literature, adventure games, and visual novels. “From there, students will embark on their own adventure through interactive creative writing. The journey will begin with students taking apart and diagraming existing interactive works, and using digital tools to craft and share their own short interactive scenes and dialogs. We will confront the challenges and limitations of writing interactive story and establish some key critical theories governing non-linearity. The course will culminate in students designing and writing a complete short work of interactive fiction in a medium of their choice.
Augmented reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), “AI (Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning) art, projection mapped art, NFT art, as well as other types of digital artworks, have come to be an integral part of new media culture. The genesis of and their relevance to new media are cultural imperatives to study and analyze — from a creative, historical, psychological, philosophical, marketing, and technological perspective. Many artists (painters, photographers, sculptors, filmmakers, animators, and writers), scientists, and technologists at NYU, as well as nearby VR World, Artechouse, and Hall des Lumières , and other NYC organizations are central to producing realistic and immersive three-dimensional environments ” AR, VR and projection mapped (360 digital imagery) worlds. Through lectures, group discussions, GoogleDoc reports, field trips to museums and new media organizations, and workshops specific to new media innovations and applications, students will gain a framework to understand the importance of these evolving technologies and their impact on the arts, ecology (sustainability initiatives), social justice, and behavioral science. Students from varying creative and technical backgrounds will participate in the development of new media art projects, intended to be showcased at the Gallatin Arts Festival. They will be introduced to and encouraged to take advantage of NYU”s LaGuardia Studio, LaGuardia Co-op, and LinkedIn Learning instructional tutorials, as well as using their own resources to aid in developing their new media projects.
Until recently, the creation of interactive 3D graphics was only possible for large and capital-intensive uses: the armed forces, large-scale architectural/engineering work, mass entertainment. Now, open-source applications and powerful personal and portable computers are making it practical for individuals and small groups to independently build and share alternative visions. Whether you are interested in exploring new ways to construct complex networks of ideas in the present, or to imagine physical spaces to reflect and support new ways of life, this arts workshop provides a blend of critical orientation and hands-on experience. In this open project studio, the majority of course time and work will be taken up with the development of student-built individual or small team concepts, to be developed as 3D graphic “fly-through” models. Theoretical discussions will be initiated with a mix of relevant writings and media. Here is a representative sampling of sources: Douglas Engelbart, Eric Raymond, William Gibson, Zaha Hadid, Judith Donath, the Athenian Acropolis, the Kalachakra mandala, Salisbury Cathedral, the Schindler house, Artigas gardens, the 1958 World’s fair Philips pavilion, the Seagram’s building, Grant Theft Auto IV, the monastery of La Tourette, the Mangin plan, compendium.org, Betaville.
In recent years, video games have exploded as both a cultural force and a pioneering creative medium. Many critics and creative professionals believe that gaming offers both its practitioners and its audience the next evolution in storytelling. But how–and why–did digital games evolve from mechanic-focused experiences such as Pong and Tetris into more narrative-rich undertakings along the lines of Mass Effect, The Witcher, and The Last of Us? In this course, we will explore the vibrant and complex intersection between narrative expression and interactivity, examining the myriad ways dramatic storytelling techniques can be applied to a series of design mechanics to bring context to the player’s action, and, inversely, the ways that mechanics and design can be employed to express a theme or to convey a story. The course is intended to appeal to all gaming backgrounds–neophytes with a casual interest in games, enthusiasts who’ve spent many years passionately gaming and discussing games, and everyone in between. The first half of the course will establish a creative grammar and a base of common reference points from which students will develop their creative projects. The second half of the course will focus on the creative project. Students will be challenged to “gamify” a popular work of media (of their choosing with professor approval) into an interactive project–video game, interactive fiction, board game, interactive theatre, or any combination thereof. Incorporating the fundamentals established in the first half of the course, students will develop this game concept through multiple rounds of iteration and feedback, eventually breaking down the mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics of the proposed project via a highly detailed game concept document—the blueprint of an interactive experience. In the end, students should come away with a command of basic game vernacular, inspired to view Game Theory and Design as expressive narrative tools available to them in their own creative toolbox, regardless of discipline or medium.
This course explores image making, writing and their juxtaposition, as a method of thinking through and evoking ideas. At times, images lead, and text follows, providing descriptions of images, and at other times, text leads and images illustrate that text. In the realm of the contemporary American meme, just about every time images and words are present they have an effect upon each other in the mind of the viewer, which changes the meaning of both, producing something which is more than what is present in both image and text. That third and phantasmic image exists in the mind. The examples of Chinese Literati painting, and Surrealism will provide a historical point of departure, from which we to engage 21st century examples of image and word juxtapositions that create new ideas. This course will provide students with a general history of the relationship between the image and word, and a critical understanding of the composition and decomposition of image-word printed and digital matter. Along with skills in Lino-cut printmaking, Risograph printmaking, and publication design, students will also write poetry, short essays, and art criticism. Students will participate in the content production, design, and publishing of a book and magazine, zine and poster.
This workshop seeks to bring students from varying backgrounds together to engage in evaluating and sharing digital new media for the Internet and other new media art mediums. Each student brings to the class a set of experiences and skills, such as research, writing, design, film, music, photography, computer gaming, performance, animation, computer literacy, software knowledge, virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) Generative Art experiences, among others. The class will discuss new media concepts, content strategies, and frameworks that bridge theory and practice. Through lectures (including a survey of digital new media innovations), group discussions, virtual or other lectures and/or workshops, students will develop individual projects, based on their new media skills. The class intends to be a part of the development of the Virtual Reality (VR) Museum (“Virtual Museum XR”), or other Gallatin arts initiatives, such as Rabbit Hole. Digital new media projects may include digital photography, animated films, podcasts, sound art installations, TikTok, music videos, VR, AR, A.I. Generative Art, to name a few. Class projects, readings, and week-to-week journal-keeping reports are essential components of this workshop. They will reside in a designated Google Docs site, specific for this class. Students are encouraged to supply their own media and take advantage of NYU’s LinkedIn Learning new media tutorials and access NYU’s LaGuardia Studio and LaGuardia Co-op hardware and software opportunities.
This class is a guide through the works of choreographers who can teach us the elements of making dance and enable us to create our own movement identity. The psychological storytelling of Martha Graham, George Balanchine’s blazing neo-classicism, the chance field dances of Merce Cunningham, Twyla Tharp’s humorous inversions, the deconstructions of William Forsythe, Mathew Bourne’s gay Swan Lake, and the powerful Black gospel songs of Alvin Ailey are observed through video and readings. After a warmup of technique and improvisation, the student begins with small movement studies, leading to group studies of increasing complexity, with teacher and students responding with supportive feedback. New this semester will be a section, “Dance as Protest,” which explores texts such as Hot Feet and Social Change: African Dance and Diaspora Communities. We will study the movie In the Heights, where Afro-Caribbean dance, ballet, contemporary and hip hop convey ideas about community and representation. Texts include The Intimate Art of Choreography and “Dance in the Age of Black Lives Matter.” Students can have studied dance or simply wish to move and compose using their body and imagination. Student works in a final performance in the theater will be recorded.
This workshop studies the new, groundbreaking formats and genres of television storytelling by experiencing the unique creative process through which an original series makes its way to the screen. Together, we will break down the early proposals developed by the original show creators to present the episodes, narrative arcs and character profiles of their series, and we will compare them with the fully produced pilot. In-class screenings will include Squid Game, Euphoria, True Detective, the end of the f*** world, Rick & Morty, Breaking Bad, Mr. Robot and Stranger Things. The participants will be guided through the process of creating a unique series proposal, which includes the pitching of a pilot episode, the development of a first season outline, and the establishment of the series’ visual and narrative tone.
Located at the intersection of songwriting, storytelling, creativity, and commerce, the Broadway musical is one of New York City’s most significant and singular cultural artifacts. While this art form has a long and storied history, it continues to evolve dramatically in terms of aesthetics, audiences, content, and economics. In this arts workshop (open to artists, producers, and fans), we will take a look at some of the most influential shows to play the Great White Way over the last twenty-five years, with a focus on both how they are constructed and how they have impacted the field (and society). How does a musical get made? How do librettists, composers, and lyricists synthetize their visions to speak with one creative voice? How does a show like Hamilton become a worldwide phenomenon, and what keeps a hot property like Spider-Man from reaching its potential? Shows examined will include: Rent and The Lion King (shows that serve as the unofficial gateway to this new generation); Passing Strange and In the Heights (and the ground-breaking 2008 season); The Book of Mormon (and its film precursor South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut); Spider-Man; Fun Home; and yes, Hamilton. Weekly responses will include original scenes (or songs), casting breakdowns, design proposals, and other creative output, as well as some traditional essays.
Since the terms Realism and Naturalism were first applied to plays like Hedda Gabler and Miss Julie, the attempt to create a semblance of everyday life on stage has defined and sometimes dominated Western drama, even by inspiring other styles and movements in reaction. This course will explore the forms and purposes – the how and the why – of these “realistic” approaches to theater, both from a literary and a performance perspective. With the 19th Century movement in visual arts (Courbet, Manet) and literature (Zola, Elliot) as background, and contemporary equivalents in other media (Lucien Freud, Nan Goldin) as context, we will ask what is particular about Realism as a way of seeing or defining the “real”? What perspectives and assumptions does it use to recreate the details of lived experience, and what does a theater audience experience? We will look at some classic 20th Century English-language theatrical examples, from O’Neill and Hansberry to Athol Fugard and August Wilson, alongside contemporary pieces that draw from them, by writers like Robert O’Hara, Lucy Kirkwood, Kenneth Lonergan and Amy Herzog. Acting and directing texts from Uta Hagen and Harold Clurman, as well as writing about associated acting styles (such as “The Method”), will guide our work. Through rehearsing scenes and critical analysis, students will interrogate the techniques and their assumptions, asking what they now might offer us, in a culture suffused in “reality TV” and “realistic” film. The class will then create their own scenes inspired by this tradition.
This workshop interrogates the relationship between art and activism by focusing on the following movements: (1) Occupy Wall Street; (2) Strike Debt and Rolling Jubilee, (3) Gulf Labor Artist Coalition and its direct action wing, Global Ultra Luxury Faction (G.U.L.F.); (4) the Direct Action Front for Palestine (5) Black Lives Matter and Movement for Black Lives, (6) No Dakota Access Pipeline, (7) #MeToo, and (8) Decolonize This Place. These case studies, alongside course readings and discussions, will help us to situate contemporary art in a historical and political context—a moment of rupture that is informed by ongoing histories of racism, colonialism, and debt. We will then move on to question how this moment might inform our own art practice, interrogating how, as contemporary artists, we might produce art that does not simply add flair to political work, but that engages in a dialectical practice—moving between theory and research, as well as action and aesthetics—and that considers how practice and process might become the work itself. A major component of the course will be a project that students plan and execute during the semester. Choice of practice and medium will be open, but possibilities might include work that is performative, visual, or conceptual, employing photography and/or digital media, text, film, painting, or sculpture. Readings will include: Berardi, After the Future; Cesaire and Kelly, Discourse on Colonialism; Hardt and Negri, Declaration; Tuck and Yang, Decolonization is not a Metaphor; and McKee, Strike Art! Contemporary Art and the Post-Occupy Condition.
Dance reflects the cultural heritage and is a key to understanding diverse societies. Each week the students are introduced to a different dance form through videos, reading and a dance class. There is a Capoeira teacher of this Brazilian martial art disguised as a dance, and guest lecturers of Indian, Middle Eastern or Bellydance, Irish, Russian, Balinese and African dance from their locations. Dance can be seen as encoded forms of a society’s religious, artistic, political, economic and familial values. We discuss globalization, fusion and authenticity. Migration, missionaries the diaspora have created new forms like “Bollywood,” “Tribal,” and “K-Pop.” The internet has brought further influence for dance as signifier of new values during the pandemic, but live performance and ethnic roots survive. The student’s project is to find their own world dance. They themselves become researchers in the field, performers and creators of new forms.
This course explores the practices, principles and aesthetics of comedic performance. Questions examined include: What makes something funny? Why do audiences laugh? What is the relationship between performer and audience in comedy? How does a performer get the laugh without ‘asking’ for it? How is humor specific to certain cultures, historical periods, genders or age groups? Are any elements of humor universal? Does the nature of performing comedy change from medium to medium? The course investigates these questions through readings, lectures, discussion and experiential exercises. Students are challenged to synthesize theory, historical traditions, and practical application into viable comedic performances. Students will experiment with this synthesis through discussing, analyzing, rehearsing and performing scenes/monologues drawn from major comic traditions including: masked forms (such as Greek Old Comedy and Commedia dell’Arte), high comedy (like the comedies of Shakespeare and Moliere), low comedy (such as the slapstick of Charlie Chaplin, Mel Brooks, as well as modern sketch, improv and stand-up comedy) and that which defies easy categorization (such as Monty Python or Sacha Baron Cohen). The course will culminate in a public presentation, allowing students to share select comedic performances with an audience. Students are expected to rehearse outside of class time.
ARTS-UG 1065-000 (14847)09/02/2020 – 12/13/2020 Wed6:00 PM – 9:00 PM (Evening)at Washington SquareInstructed by
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For most students joining IMA in Fall 2022 and beyond, there is a new program structure that affects the categorization of courses on this site:
Any class in any IMA major elective category (ie "Art & Design") refers to the IMA program structure previous to those entering in Fall 2022. If you are in the class of 2026 (most entering Fall 2022 or later), any course in an IMA elective category are generic IMA electives in the new structure.