Day Day Day

I think this is fairly typical of these blogs on courses – fairly steady – a bit inconsistent by midterm and then falls apart at the end. To catch up – We discussed the Wooster Group using the terms we have developed over the semester. This is the first time I have done this – leave the ever-growing list on the board and come back to them again and again. Notably we had a project at the beginning of class near spring break as a kind of review in which each group defined and gave examples of the terms. In discussing the Wooster Group we did the same thing, only now focused specifically on this “text.” The result is a much deeper sense of analysis of a single text than a surface reading of many. The same type of use of these ideas comes back on the final exam where students define 10 of a list of 23 terms complete with examples from our discussion and then go into detail using three of the terms to look at a project by another student. The hope is to make them both more observant as well as use the terminology and ideas.

The final projects were generally open ended. I broke them up into 3 groups of six (one group of 7 in the first section) and gave them Heiner Muller’s “Explosion of a Memory” to work with. The frame is that they can do anything they want as long as they start with this text. I see these final projects as a cap to the course – using the ideas in a more fleshed out way. Unlike an “objective” final in which I can look at “right” and “wrong” answers, this is more of a sharing of ideas. The hard part is to try and remove the focus on doing the projects for a grade. My hope is by now the students realize that I am not judging the projects in this way – that is what the take home exam questions are for. But they serve the same purpose – they pose the question “tell me what you learned in this course.”

Section 1 presented their projects on Monday. This is the early morning section so I am not really sure I ever saw all of the students fully awake. For the 1:00 pm exam time they were. I described the three projects like a bomb had gone off. Lots of sound, color, paint, violent images, garbled text, noise, etc. The first piece was a collage of a painted body, music, noise and text. Fascinating to watch and while it had a central image to focus on – the dancer who becomes ever more covered with paint, the result was much more chaotic. Sung text, feedback, movement – more of an assault on the senses than a direct appeal to sense. The second project had a similar paint derived vibe, but the paint was directed at a blank canvas (save the title of the piece) onto which paint was flung, smeared, shot from guns and dumped all while the text was being read at breakneck speed. The third piece took place behind a curtain while we were left to watch on the video screen. Like the first piece it offered a chaotic take with a central figure onto which abuse was hurled – slaps and slips of paper dumped on him rather than paint, but the result was similar. The “kidnapped” feeling to this one was odd to watch at a distance – whereas the first piece seemed empowering this one seemed disenfranchising.

The projects from the second section – offered on Tuesday – could not have been more different. More measured, contemplative, performative and less like an explosion. The first group showed a video intercut with textual elements, sounds, and images while the class wrote stream of consciousness. They then read out the new texts as we sat with out eyes closed and listened to the sound of the video. The second group brought us down to the chapel and set up a more formal arrangement as we watched them efface a projection of an Adam and Eve drawing with paint. The text was partly audible and partly garbled run through computer effects – at times taking on a demonic growl. Perfect for a space with the words “holy, holy, holy” inscribed on the beams above. They incorporated rewind sounds that affected their movement as well as Warner Brothers type sounds. The third group created an exercise in which people drew pictures of short phrases of text while not being able to see their hands or the paper. Someone sat across from them and wrote a sentence based on the drawing. All the while music played and a voice read out colors. A strange kind of telephone game. The end result was posted on the wall with the original sentences. The result was a new text with resonances of the old.

The tone between the two classes could not have been more dissimilar. Section one bursting with sound and images, section two far more introspective and language focused. They were both given the same exercises and the same course material but the end results were very different. This certainly says something about the make up of each class. This was a unique experience to have two different sections since all the other times I have taught this way it was one section only. It caused me to reflect quite a bit more in the second section about pedagogy and what worked and didn’t work.

In one respect I could easily see a more traditional teacher dismissing the chaos of the final projects as nonsense or unfocused or unstructured. In approaching the subject of postmodernism why would final projects be anything else? I could see examples of everything we discussed the whole term in these projects. The flip side of this is working to create a structure that can be chaotic, so students can try something out and see what the result is. Since chance and indeterminacy were part of what we discussed I had no problem with courting these ideas in the final projects. Beyond this, the point I tried to make to the students is that my job is to provide a framework – and open space for play – if the class is interesting it is interesting because they filled that frame with interesting things. I find this aspect so critical for the development of artists. It is the same idea that Tim Miller has worked on with our students – discovering one’s own voice. Does this happen in a week-long workshop or 15 week class – perhaps, but if not it at least suggests that it is a possibility.

I had the same feeling about the final project that I had with the final Gen Art projects – that we should have done this two weeks before the end of school and then shaped the pieces into something more polished.  This is something I wrestle with because I love the spontaneity of the projects the way that they are, but in all cases I could see how refining the ideas would make the pieces stronger. I may plan on something for this the next time I teach this way. It may be a matter of asking – what worked, what didn’t, what stayed with you? The revision part I really have not been good at. So – I’ll think about that for next time. 

Day twenty, twenty-one and twenty-two, and twenty-three: Gearing up for the end.

Actually it makes sense to discuss all four of these days at once. They were largely presentations days for me – so no projects – but also gathering days in which my intent is to prepare the students for the final piece of the term – Postdramatic Theatre, a look at the Wooster Group and the final projects. Like the disruption of master narratives project and the Fluxus project just tossing them into these ideas wouldn’t work. I feel like for these pieces they need more information up front. The “music” section of the class could probably be driven by a project, but there are quite a few ideas to deal with so it comes down to listening and discussing.

The intermediary step between Fluxus and folks like Steve Reich was a stop over in generative art. I spent time with the students talking about Brian Eno’s work, showing them his generative app Scape and discussing 77 million paintings.  Mixed in with this were moiré patterns the Flaming Lips Zaierika, and a handful of other examples. The point with all of this is to show how some of the Fluxus ideas about chance or indeterminacy can be developed into a more recognizable artistic process. Not sure I stressed that bit enough, but it was there.

The intent with this is to follow up with a listen and discussion of Steve Reich’s “Come Out.” Wonderfully generative, noisy, complex, and simple. It is so clear to see this ideas grow out of La Monte Young’s work in terms of drones and extended time frames. Listened to a bit of Reich’s Pendulum music and then where these ideas went in terms of Reich composition. Juxtaposing this with Schoenberg’s 12 tone/serialist stuff there is a clear difference between control and indeterminacy. Cage’s Imaginary Landscape #4 helps raise the idea that an indeterminate composition can sound very much like a determinate one since you can’t hear the structure. With Reich you can hear the structure – it is a meta gesture just like John Barth’s “Lost in the Funhouse.”

Minimalism gives way to post stuff for the next day. Students may have lots of info on this or may not, but the goal is to sort of connect the dots. A sweep from proto-punk, through punk to post-punk to post-rock to post-digital. Little more than a sampling of each. What was interesting is that compressing that sweep into a hour or so the sounds become more and more contemporary until we are left with glitch. What was nice is one of the projects today – in which groups had to do something to Gertrude Stein’s opening moment from Dr. Faustus Lights the Lights – one of the groups “granulated” the text by sprinkling scrapes of paper over it and then reading what was left uncovered. Just like the granulation of creating a glitch piece with a laptop.  

Today was about interpretation and ownership and deconstruction and The Wooster Group. Wanting an active and engaged audience to watch the video next week we spent some time talking about their technique. The tough part is that traditional theatre training – which is about half of the students in the class – is completely built on the sanctity of the script. TWG treats texts just about any way by sacred. The parallel is what happened with the Fluxus pieces in which the “author” generates an idea that is take up and then re-interpreted by the “performer.” A good place to discuss Barthes’ “Death of the Author” and “Work to Text” articles. The linkage of “work” to “text” to “performance text” to audience “text” raises a number of questions about who owns the interpretative rights. Especially when the original “text’ is put into question. The controversy surround TWG’s use (or abuse) of Miller’s The Crucible works well here. Where did he get his ideas from casts us back to earlier texts.

I finished the class by urging the students to review all of the terms and ideas we have discussed and bring this knowledge with them to watch the video of House/Lights- TWG’s take on Stein’s Dr. Faustus. Having wrestled with and seen interpretations they at least know where TWG started with this piece. I also tried to make an end run around the criticisms from the last time I showed this video – that they were all “bad” actors because of how they looked at the audience and smirked. I suggested perhaps they were playing by postmodern rules.  We shall see how the process the video. I feel like these students are much better prepared for it than the last time I taught it.

All of this is leading to the final project. I want them to see what TWG does to a text to give them permission to do the same. I plan on reminding them that they are well prepared for this assignment having executed projects on juxtaposition, movement, disrupting narrative, space and irony and indeterminacy. Plus we have been doing this type of work at the beginning of almost every class. The one piece we haven’t done yet is refine the ideas. I know that they can work quickly to create something interesting, but what happens if I ask them to work over three hours or so? I may need to consider that question the next time I teach the class – devote a few days after mid-term to projects refined and built on in class. 

Day eighteen and nineteen: Fluxus!

With the Fluxus project I have found that the students have a better idea of what is going on if we spend a day or so talking about this kind of work before the projects are due. There are projects that I really do want them to go into blind and execute as best they can and then reflect on readings afterward. This, like the master narratives project, tends to work better the other way around. LaMonte Young’s randomized lecture always raises a number of good questions. Drawing a straight line, releasing a butterfly, building a fire all presented as “musical” ideas begs a number of interesting questions about sound. Beyond this it raises questions about the role of the “artist” or “composer” or “author.” Traditional artistic forms seem to want to clamp down on meaning in ways that the Fluxus stuff destroys. It really is right in line with what we have been discussing – more a refinement of ideas than new ideas. The role that indeterminacy has played in most of what we have discussed has been there, just not brought out until now. I am sure I made too big a deal out of it, but his straight line composition really is a foundational “drone” element in western music. Hard to imagine the last 50 some odd years without it.

I love the simplicity of the Fluxus stuff – and yet the pieces can be profoundly moving – it all depends on how they are interpreted. So – we looked at a few examples of pieces drawn from the fluxusworkbook. They all suggest a range of interpretive possibilities. The rest of the class period was left to talk about the implications of these pieces. What is the role of the “originator” of the piece? What is the role of the “interpreter”? Who ultimately “owns” it? Since the pieces are often designed to blur these boundaries you end up not asking these questions. This also allows for the question of concept art – ideas VS things. The fact of the matter is that just about every student on campus is trained to interpret texts in the same manner that the Fluxus pieces demand an interpretive approach. Rather than a play or screenplay, piece of music or choreography you have an idea. It is a genesis – a starting point – that can go in any number of directions. The difference is the level of control exerted by the starting point.

This is the whole point in having students create their own pieces. I typically don’t tell them that they won’t be performing them. So I have them write out three pieces – one sculptural, one musical, and one performative – without specifying which one – then we pool them and draw cards. In creating the piece students have an idea, an intention, a direction but that may or may not be seen by the person who now has the card. It is a simple way of giving up control. The students present/perform the pieces one at a time and only after the presentation do they read the card. The object is to create in the “composer” the role of watcher – of not knowing what will come next. For students trained to be specific in their choices this is often a different experience. But, it leaves room for surprises – for watching in a way that artists typically don’t watch their own work.

The last project was to be presented as an object or image – away from the creator – so they could reflect on it as others do. With these Fluxus pieces the work is taken completely away from the creator. The results are always interesting. The hard part is to make connections to arts training that is based in deliberate choices. I find the indeterminate quality liberating in that it often takes me to places I would not go otherwise. The same impulse behind using generative sound programs to create music. I need to follow this up with more examples so that the Fluxus state of mind doesn’t seem totally isolated. We will probably deal more specifically with generative art in the next class so that the examples of indeterminacy can be widened to include just about every artform. I suspect Eno will play a large role in that conversation. Having used this sequence last year it feels very different in this class primarily because of the timing – later in the term – as well as the growing list of terminology with which to address the ideas. Its hard to see what each project will become in advance. But that is the fun part. I get to watch along side of the students. 

Day Sixteen and Seventeen: The built in contradiction

It makes sense to discuss these tow days together – basically a continuation of the ideas. We were able to have a good chat about the museum projects in presentation class period so we used Tuesday as a kind of catch all day. I love these open discussion days in the syllabus. They are useful if we need more time to discuss the projects. If not, we can expand on ideas in that space. So – a couple of things were covered. As a project students drew terms out of a bag and then grouped up to define them and provide examples from readings, discussion, projects, or new examples. We then moved to the word cloud created from all of the definitions of postmodernism. I love these things as a quick read on a large amount of info. We then discussed what terms caught their eye.

The rest of the class was used to discuss a few more ideas from the Lyotard reading –namely the ideas of aesthetics, beauty, rules, and change. It was an opportunity to bring in a handful of examples to discuss. Serrano’s Piss Christ was very useful. It is such a wonderful picture – works according to all the standards for “good” composition. But then it’s a picture of a crucifix in urine. So a useful picture to talk about what ideas have lasted and what has changed. This was grounded in a brief discussion of Eco’s Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages. The question is what we replace “godliness” with in the aesthetic criteria to evaluate works from today. We ended exploring some of Rachael Whiteread’s casting pieces with the question “Is there an objective criteria with which to judge ‘good’ postmodernism.”?

Thursday was dedicated to discussing postmodern architecture and so I brought the Legos out again. This time students could work alone or in groups to create a representation of the idea of “absence.” Some great answers. I was also pleased that when asked each student had clear and perceptive ideas about the reading. Unlike last year where I felt we had peeked at the break and then couldn’t get the energy back I feel like we are still moving forward. The goal is to do enough exercises, enough projects, pack as many postmodern ideas into the students heads that when we form groups for the final projects they can just go. I feel like we have been prepping the ground for those projects all term. It will be interesting to see what happens. Especially since the students ability to produce some thoughtful and interesting pieces in 10-15 minutes has been refined over the past 10 weeks or so. Given 3 hours of class time my hope is they can produce some amazing stuff.

So after explaining why I use architecture to discuss ideas, plays, structure, etc we took a look at some of the terms and ideas in the Jencks and Venturi articles. The ideas that they develop are right in line with what we have been discussing all term – disharmonious harmony, difficulty whole, asymmetrical symmetry. The built in contradiction. The difference here is that it is generally easier to see. One look at Ghery’s House and the idea of a difficult whole becomes clear. It looks like a jumble, but beyond that has a wonderful sense of structure. Angles, materials, open space, contained space were all chosen for a reason. Amidst the seeming disjunction is a kind of order.

The notion of the difficult whole was countered with the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk – or the master art work. Wagner’s ideas are built on a unity of exclusion – things that don’t fit a re jettisoned. Reaching for a more contemporary metaphor we discussed Chorus Line. In order to fit into the chorus line each dancer needs to be unique, but give up a little of that uniqueness to form a unit. Whereas this idea requires elements in the structure to give up something in order to be included in the whole the idea of the difficult whole is built on tension. It is also build on showing the seems – like some kind of Frankenstein monster, but without the pitchforks and torches.

Al in all two sort of gathering days. Students were given their next assignment – the Fluxus assignment – with the understanding that we will be talking about Fluxus next week before their project is due. The goal with this, as with watching the Holy Grail and reading “Lost in the Funhouse” prior to the master narratives project, is to give the students a bit of a background in the subject before the project is due. We are inexorably heading toward the Postdramatic Theatre project, which draws on all of the other projects – objects, movement, text, space, etc. 

Day Fourteen: The rules of what will have been done

In teaching the dissonance class last year I felt like the class peeked with the Fluxus projects. The energy and ideas where there and we were moving forward. Then spring break came and I didn’t feel like we ever recaptured the momentum. So, with this class I decided to slow the pace down a bit and hold off on the Fluxus project until about the three quarter mark of the term. That has meant that a few days felt like we were kind of treading water, but I did feel that this past week after the break it was worth it. Two excellent classes with two completely different trajectories. On Tuesday we started by talking about fixing issues with the class. We discussed more feedback on the portfolios. One thing I tried to make clear is that I have deliberately not commented on projects in class or on the portfolio entries. The point was to do them, get comfortable sharing these ideas, and then build on them. At that point I can offer more specific feedback.

Working toward a discussion of the Lyotard reading I had each student identify one thing that struck them about the article. I find it frustrating that in the first section about 1/3^rd did not complete the 9 page reading. This always puts more of a burden on those that did read it. The second section had nearly 100% of the students doing the reading and more than ready to discuss this. It is almost impossible to describe how different these two sections have become. There is good work going on in both sections – some amazing work actually, but the level of engagement with the ideas and the level of conversation is not the same. It may be a combination of the hour the class is offered, the students, or possibly my approach to one section after having taught another. For classes like this I really need to find a way to only have one section.

So we started the class with an exercise building on Lyotard’s idea of impossible ideas made visible by the avant-garde. So I broke the students up into four groups, told them to decide on an abstract idea or concept and the build that concept in Legos. What I love about Legos is the nostalgia factor – plus they are just incredibly fun to play with. But beyond this students are forced to encounter the limitations of the medium for representing ideas. The solutions need to be clever – there is just no way around it. In assigning this exercise I really hadn’t seen the implications for the Lyotard reading beyond the point made above. As the first section was working on the project it dawned on me that Lyotard faced a similar issue in discussing postmodernism. Here is was trying to articulate a complex, double coded, non-settling down idea with the language of philosophy. A straight forward reading is impossible due to the limitations of the medium. As a number of the students pointed out – his language is dense, confusing, loopy, etc. The project gave us a way to discuss why he would choose to write that way.

What I like about  Lyotard is his point near the end of the essay that “the rules and categories are what the work of art itself is looking for. The artist and the writer, then, are working without rules in order to formulate the rules of what will have been done.” This provided ample opportunity to discuss the avant-garde (Duchamp, Cage, Malevich) and to talk about the “rules of art.” On the one hand it is easy to say that there are no rules to art, and yet to say that at an arts conservatory is another thing. What are the students here to learn if not the rules of artmaking? Some of this progressed with a discussion of whether a work of art (or a work of philosophy) should make sense. Sensemaking in and of itself becomes a defining rule-like characteristic. The hard part is what you do when your predecessors have broken all of the rules. This question has become a much larger part of this class than I had intended, but it is a necessary one. We can never understand the postmodern unless we discuss what came before it.

The final gesture of this day was to ask the students to reflect on the ideas generated by their fall term class Self, Society, and Cosmos and to think about what has changed in the modern era and what has remained the same. Generally the response matched the one from last year, that the search for meaning or humanity or whatever has remained the same, but the forms used in that search have changed.  There is still much left to explore with that response. 

Day Thirteen: Creative Disobedience

In thinking back over the projects there was a lot of interesting material offered. Some clever re-tellings of fairy tales that illuminated the objectification, voyeurism, eroticism, etc that generally goes unacknowledged because these are stories for “children.” After finishing up the projects we discussed the idea of master narratives and how coercive they can be, mainly because we don’t pay attention to them. Things like hero stories or quest narratives, coming of age stories, conflict stories, etc all suggest a specific arc to the narrative, but one that does not draw attention to itself. The re-telling of the fairy tales often tipped the narrative hand to how the story was being told. Having wrestled with what to do with the stories and then seen 18 different versions we were ready to dive into this topic.

As I explained in class today, executing the projects often provides the student with space to learn about the subject. The presentation, then becomes a documentation of that process. It is not that the presentation is irrelevant, but that the thinking part is done and now we get to re-think these projects in conjunction with a host of solutions. I feel that they get the notion of master narratives and get the coercive structure of things like fairy tales much better having torn one apart. The conversation did ramble a bit from idea to idea – largely because that was how I tried to structure it, but it meant taking a look at the same issue from a number of different sides. It was also another opportunity to draw on some of the material presented in our book. So we breifly exploring the idea of reflexivity, of Barthes’ notion of naturalization, of Foucault’s questions of power. Referencing the projects become the grounding point for these ideas.

I do need to work on talking about the projects more directly. I often reference a handful of them because they provide useful examples for the discussion, but I need to do a better job of providing feedback – not to each student individually, but to the group as a whole. By asking the students to delve more deeply into the terminology we have discussed in their e-portfolio write ups of this project my hope is that I can return to the projects with more of a specific focus. As I was thinking back over them it dawned on me that many of them offer very clear examples of deconstruction – so I will need to weave this into our conversation about the Wooster Group and re-visit the re-tellings again later in the term.

I asked the students for feedback on how they thought the course was going so far. Some good points and ideas – the main ones being to offer more feedback on the projects and portfolio entries and to work harder to involve everyone in the discussion. I go back and forth on the discussions since I typically don’t like to call on students unless they offer to be called on. It just never works out. But I will think about ways to develop this conversation across a broader spectrum of students.  The projects and portfolios pose a more interesting problem. I deliberately don’t comment too much on the first few projects – we use them as examples, but I feel if I offer too much criticism or too much observation or commentary then I am directing the student rather than allowing the student’s impulses to direct them. Four projects in students have begun to develop a vocabulary, have allowed personal passions and interests and ideas to animate these open-ended projects. At that point I feel like I can begin to offer more feedback – to suggest paths of development, refinement to the ideas. I don’t believe that I have done a good job of this with past project driven courses, but I will work to offer this type of feedback this term and see what happens. 

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/07/07/the-educational-value-of-creative-disobedience/

Day eleven and twelve: students who actively wrestled with the question and created something on their own probably got more out of the exercise than students that simply found someone else’s example of postmodernism

Ahh – I hate falling behind in keeping up with this blog. OK – so the subject for last class was a discussion of Holy Grail and John Barth’s “Lost in the Funhouse,” and Eco’s Postscript essay on irony. Unfortunately with the movie and then a discussion day following it we have gotten out of the warm up and exercise rhythm. I suspect we won’t get back to it until we discuss the Master Narrative projects on Thursday. I find the discussion days crucial to how the course progresses. Projects and examples are great, but there needs to be space to analyzes them also. I really don’t want to resort to things like quizzes and tests so we start these days with students talking about one thing that caught their eye in the articles to be read for today. I learned the lesson of getting them away from their books the first time we did this – it was far too easy to just thumb through the reading and randomly pull something out on the spot. I am disappointed when students do not do the reading – which means that their understanding of the discussion is significantly affected. On the other hand I am always impressed when students bring in a list of ideas from the readings.

The main point of the discussion was to establish a number of useful postmodern ideas – things like metafiction, intertext, and double coding. The Barth short story and the film are great examples of these ideas. I am struck by the fact that we often do not pay enough attention to how a story is told. We tend to get caught up in what is being told instead. The Funhouse and Grail examples fragment the narrative and draw attention to construction in such a way that it is hard to ignore the structure. Sowing doubt in the role of the narrator or storyteller is a clear indication that something different is happening in these stories.

All of this was designed to be inspirational material for the project due today. Students were asked to draw on the growing list of postmodern terms and ideas that we have been developing and use them to change, alter, deconstruct, re-tell a fairy tale. A number of students took this suggestion literally and re-told familiar tales. This offered a nice collision typically between the rather antiquated values and structure of the stories and contemporary material added to or filtering the stories. Some took it as a challenge to create alternative ways of exploring these stories – power points with a great deal of information packed into them, videos, boxes to open up and explore, performance art, and mashups. I do struggle with courses like this not to grade or elevate “good” projects at the expense of “poor” projects, but that dynamic does exist – you can feel it during the presentations. Some students simply develop the ideas more fully than others.

The difficult part with this is that the projects exist as a challenge on a couple of levels. The first one is simply coming up with an answer to the question, but beyond that it involves the public display of the answer. This structure of the course is designed to create an environment that is not just teacher/student centered, but class or group centered. My hope is that students can see the more developed answers and then aspire to do something similar with the next project. If that works or not remains to be seen. I do need to mention in class on Thursday that students who actively wrestled with the question and created something on their own probably got more out of the exercise than students that simply found someone else’s example of postmodernism. Just pressing play is not the same as assembling something.

The next step to this is to get the students to begin weaving the ideas we have been discussing into their write-up of their projects. The first three I really only expected descriptions – the last four I expect analysis. Whereas the first three responses I was concerned if they had been posted. The remaining responses I will offer more specific criticism.

I felt that the Dissonance class that I taught last year had peaked too soon. We ended up exploring the ideas of indeterminacy right before spring break and couldn’t get the momentum back.  I have deliberately slowed the pace of this class down to allow the elements to come together later in the term. After the break we need to do a great deal more exercises and in-class projects. The goal is to lead up to the final project where all of these pieces are pulled together. 

Day eight, nine, and ten: Project, discussion, information, gather

Lumping three days together. This always happens at this point in the term. Our discussion following the third projects went quite well. I realize as I approach this material that I have a history in my head that may or may not be accessible to the students. Some of the pieces show up in our readings – either as brief quotations in the Postmodern book, or as a mention in a long list of names in things like the Hassan article. So – we needed to break down the ideas of modernism, avant-garde, and postmodern.  I decided to start this conversation by drawing on some rule established by Allan Kaprow to create Happenings. I split the class in two and they had ten minutes to come up with an exercise for the whole class based on these rules. Without a history of Happenings it offered little more than an example to draw on over then next few days. The main gist of this exercise is to continue the conversation of the life/art dynamic begun with the third projects.

A huge part of what I see as a transition from modernism to postmodernism is the breaking down of lie/art barriers. So – emerging from the avant-garde things like employing chance begin to challenge the notion that art is over here in these buildings and life is over here in these. Duchamp became a main focus of this conversation. I have used his Fountain for years, but never quite approached it in this way. Picking up on Danto’s point about Duchamp asking philosophical questions with his art I asked what questions he seemed to be posing. This was followed with a question about the role of the spectator, specifically in relation to Fountain. If the artwork is asking questions what does the spectator do with these? Beyond being implicated in the process, this role of the spectator picks up on Fried’s point about art becoming theatrical – or incomplete without an audience. At that point it was easy to ask the same questions about John Cage’s 4’33”.

So – this set up the conversation about postmodern dance. As we discussed with the third projects – intention can help to shift focus on how a piece is read. Someone walks in a circle – the question is what do we have to do to look at it as a dance piece? Framed as such – either by intention, building, stage, or merely a suggestion – it is easy to shift focus to see it that way. One of the big shifts at this point – from Duchamp to Cage to Cunningham and after – is a negation of skill, technique or training. Granted Cunningham worked with well-trained dances, but the choreographers he inspired did not always do this. The main question with this is without skill or training as the focus what does the spectator look for? It engages a similar question as Duchamp and Cage’s work. Sally Banes’ comment about how postmodern dance actually resonates with modernism in other areas suggests looking at postmodernims as opposed to a singular image.

So we looked at A Cunningham pieces and talked about the shape and form – seeming like a group of soloists performing simultaneously. We then talked a bit about the Judson folks and Robert Dunn’s composition classes based on Cage’s ideas. The notion of creating a piece with a structure that could accept just about anything as opposed to a sealed work of art that requires a maximum amount of control. This is a question we are likely to raise again when we discuss Monty Python and the Holy Grail. As I watch the film I realize that the structure can absorb just about anything. We finished up by looking at some pieces by Lucinda Childs, Meredith Monk and Twyla Tharp.

Day Ten was a watching day – Holy Grail. The idea is to weave all of these pieces together and also talk about Lost in the Funhouse and Umberto Eco’s article from Postscript to Name of the Rose. I find the rhythm of these classes interesting in that there are project days, information days, discussion days, and gathering days. My hope is that each time the students come to class we don’t fall into exactly the same pattern. But habit is a tough thing to break. 

Day Seven: Yes there is a point to all of this

I’ll admit that the project I assigned students for today was a little odd. They had to execute an everyday activity in front of the class. The activity needed to be sustained for at least one minute. On the surface level it probably seems like an acting exercise. I did want to draw a distinction between “presenting” the activity and “executing” it. But it still has that quality. The assignment does indeed have a purpose. As I explained – in order for us as a group to get to the point where we can do some interesting thinking, talking, and work we have to get comfortable with each other. That means sharing, creating a safe, non-judgmental environment. Beyond that my goal is to link the execution of the actions to the development of postmodern dance, which in turn will be linked into the notion of challenging the authority of institutions like museums and theatres as well as the artificial divide between life and art. The point is to get the students to think about this divide and what happens to it in the wake of Duchamp, Cage, Cunningham, and others. Once the sanctity of the institutions is in question the idea of a stable framing device for artistic expression can be explored from a variety of perspectives.

I enjoyed the presentations today, although, as with the other two projects, the tone and approach between the two classes was widely different. The first section seemed more external whereas in the second section many of the activities were more introspective. It will be interesting to see how that develops over the course of the term. The point with the first round of executions is to – well – execute the action – and watch and be watched. The second step was to group them together and then re-watch 1/3^rd of the executions as if they were a dance piece, 1/3^rd as a piece of music and 1/3^rd as a piece of theatre. This lends itself to all kinds of discussion points – readymades, defamiliarization, happenings, postmodern dance, theatre and post-Cagean sounds. I know that if I just asked the students to think about everyday activities in the guise of “art” the impact is minimal. By getting them up on their feet to execute these actions hopefully they can begin to address the questions raised from a much more personal and engaged perspective. I do need to give them a run down on modernist, avant-garde, and postmodern before we are ready for that conversation. We shall see. 

Day Six: Technology in the Age of Irony

First article today – Hassan’s Towards a Concept of Postmodernism. Actually we started with an Oulipo exercise in which the students had to “rewrite” a sentence with all the vowels removed. I love the idea of creating arbitrary rules or restrictions to work within. We discussed that as a technique or tactic for developing artists – something to help you see things a different way when stagnation sets in. 

The conversation about the article went really well in both classes. Having completed two projects before the article gave them something to think about in connection with Hassan’s observations. I can see a bit farther down the road since I know what examples we will see later, so there is a kind of looped quality to the class where we move forward by reflecting on where we have been. I have never been they type of teacher to call on students for information – I figure if they want to offer it – fine. The projects are a way of getting around this since each student is “called upon” for the presentation. But with this class I thought I would try something a bit different. We started the conversation with each student identifying one idea, word, question, comment, etc they derived form the reading. I realize that this doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone read it, but even scanning the text to pull an idea out opens up the space of conversation. 

I really need to work on removing myself from the center of the conversation. Even though I ask for student input, which foregrounds questions and ideas that I didn’t necessarily have about the article, I then end up weaving it all into what I had planned to say. Perhaps this is the class where I abandon writing notes out for everything and just listen to see where the conversation ins headed.

Two subjects that I had not anticipated were contemporary technology and irony. Although the subject of the course is “postmodernity,” I feel that what we are really trying to get a handle on as what factors contributed to the development of the society we now live in. I love the notion of a palimpsest in which you can look at different layers of history at the same time. With the technology we now have this is possible in ways previous eras could never have fathomed. Virtually all of human history can be accessed in an immediate way. With all of this at your fingertips the question then becomes – what do you do with it?

A number of students commented on the fact that fashion, style, music, etc seems to come and go with extreme quickness. Its not just the ADD mindset, but the fact that the technology allows that. It’s the point that Reynolds makes in Retromania about the accessibility of music. Rather than tracking down sounds in a “shop” a few keystrokes and the entire history of a genre is now available. His point is “the impetus behind record collecting used to be: ‘I want to have something that no one else has.’ But with the advent of sharity that’s shifted to ‘I’ve just got hold of something no one else has got, so I’m immediately going to make it available to EVERYBODY” (106). I must admit that my search for ever more exotic and hard to find books and sounds is driven by the initial impetus, but facilitated by the second.

And so it is no wonder that irony has become a cultural disposition of choice. Is there any other way to approach this wealth of material. One need not be discerning if everything is at your disposal. How else can a generation process this much information critically without taking an ironic stance, which allows one to be engaged and disengaged simultaneously. I keep referencing the film Sid and Nancy since I seem to remember something about irony. I could be totally mistaken – I think the quote is “are you being sarcastic? Yes. No. I don’t know anymore.” Somewhere there is an article about Punks VS Hipsters and the ironic reinvention of sarcasm.

So – I was actually trilled with the conversation today – wanted it to develop farther. In future on days like this perhaps I will step back a bit and observe as opposed to trying to drive the conversation in a particular direction. 

Day Five: Not an earth-shattering day, but I know that without time to process and discuss the projects they remain isolated ideas

Catch up days after projects are always interesting. I like the flexibility of having an open day with nothing planned, but then always have the concern that we won’t have enough to talk about. We stared with an exercise in recontextualization. Breaking into 4 groups I gave each group a list of 7 quotations – each group got the same list. They then decided what to do with the list – between the two classes there were 8 totally different responses. In a gesture to meta-pedagogy I spent some time talking about why we start with these type of exercises. Engage the mind, collaboration, think on your feet, see the other responses, and finally some linkage to the day’s discussion.

Although I still feel like we are still in “exposition” mode in the sense that we are gathering information on modernism and postmodernism, the opening exercise was geared toward the same kind of recontextualization that we saw in the second project. I started the conversation by asking the students about the difference between the first two projects. Differences are easy in that one aimed for a discussion of unity and the other was designed to present fragments. The answer to the question – “could you explore the second projects with the list from the first?” was not what I had expected. The upshot was a conversation about how we as humans can rationalize just about anything. So – as the first project seemed to be about defending or at least explaining how the example fit the criteria and this approach could easily be applied to the second more fragmented projects.

I do find that in asking certain questions that I have an agenda – a list of terms, ideas, etc to cover. I am working at trying to phrase questions that require more thought than simply “yes” or “no.” But, this means that I may have no idea where the answer will take us. The process of structuring the conversation works like a feedback loop in which answers determine direction which determines questions and then back to answers. It would have been impossible to teach this way at the start of my career, I just wouldn’t have enough examples to draw on to weave into the conversation. Like most teachers I suspect that I come back to a set group of examples, any student that has taken more than one class with me can see this, but there are often augment by new material brought in by the students.

In these first few weeks I am trying to establish terms and ideas that we will later explore in more depth. So far we have discussed text, defamiliarization, juxtaposition, and now today the “play of meaning.” The point with this is to discuss the interplay of fragments in the second project and, how, without an argument or explanation, slippage between meanings is possible. As these become foundational ideas in turning more specifically to postmodern I asked what kind of culture produces those techniques. This lead to a conversation about technology and the accessibility of information. Quite literally this era has access to information from all other eras – instantaneously – not something that could be said of the past. Here I linked these ideas to Simon Reynolds’ book Retromania. Not an earth-shattering day, but I know that without time to process and discuss the projects they remain isolated ideas. The goal is to begin to shape them into something more connected.  The next class we dive into the first reading – Ihab Hassan’s classic essay “Toward a Concept of Postmodernism.”  

Day Four: More and more I am starting to trust the process

One of the things that I find difficult about teaching project based courses is that I constantly second guess the assignments. I find that I really don’t do this if I am lecturing or even leading a discussion on articles or plays. But, by asking open ended questions I really need to be prepared for what ever answers come out. So – generally – the night before the projects are due I lay awake and think – was this an appropriate question? What will the students get out of answering it? How will I keep them occupied and thinking about the course material for the full class period? Will we have enough time to look at and discuss all the projects? But more and more I am starting to trust the process. I have yet to be disappointed with the outcome – and this is over four classes and probably somewhere in the vicinity of 20 projects. What attracts me to these kinds of questions for material like generative art, postmodernism, aesthetics of dissonance, and chaos theory is that the subjects are about ideas – not facts, not skill, not mastery, but ideas.

So – for this project students were asked to place two or more pieces (any medium) in proximity so that the pieces comment on each other. The point of the project is to begin to engage in a conversation about fragments, quotations, juxtaposition, reappropriation, disharmony. Its hard to get that all in in one project, but it raises certain questions that can be addressed later in the term.

As I have mentioned a number of times in class – what is important about these projects is not only that the student engage in the process of answering the question, but that they are able to see about 19 other answers to the same question. As expected – some projects seemed simple – a basic juxtaposition between objects – but when we began to tease out some of the implications of this juxtaposition even the simplest projects seem far more complex. I would love to teach a class of about 10 – then we would have enough time to dive into the process behind each project. With 20 that is just not possible. I have no idea how I managed 30 last year. The e-portfolio is a potential solution to this, but that really depends on the student.

What I love about assignments like this is that it is often difficult to tell what is intended as a project and what is simply a pile of things just strewn about the room. It does raise the issue of intent as well as frame of mind. There were a number of pieces where I simply couldn’t tell if they were student projects or not. It forced me to reevaluate what it was I was looking at. In a very phenomenological way it caused me to bracket my assumptions until I could figure out one way or the other. At times I really couldn’t. It will be interesting to review the student posts on their e-portfolios and see if I missed anything or over interpreted anything.

Disclaimer: My intent with this blog is not to name names, but some projects I really do need to talk about because they sparked an interesting conversation or thought process. It doesn’t mean I value other projects less, it is just these specific projects sparked something.

One of the projects in the first section caught my eye primarily because of the student’s reticence to show it to the class. The juxtaposition of Obama’s speech post Newtown shootings with a laugh track. Yes – it sounds jarring – and it was – but not necessarily for the reasons I initially thought. Created between these two pieces was a tremendous amount of tension. It also opened up a space of play in which the viewer is left to decipher the meaning. Talking with the class it was clear that reactions were widely varied. There was a similar reaction to the presentation of a swastika as a unified, linear, beautiful object for project 1. It clearly points out the power of images like this, but also of the range of possible meanings once you get past the initial reaction.  

The second section yielded an interesting discussion about a mask that was propped up by an iphone. The student initially claimed that the phone was not part of the piece – and yet – for most of the viewers – it clearly was. This was a great space to begin to explore the idea of context as well as indeterminacy. We make choices everyday and often do not think about the implications of those choices or possible readings of them. Most of my arts training has been to close down those possibilities by making specific choices. But, even then there is a flexibility of meaning. This also opened a space to begin to discuss the notion of “text” in a postmodern way. Students discussed “reading” these objects, scanning them, interacting with them, searching for meaning or meanings. Many of the projects were as dense as a novel.

Next – a free day to decompress from the projects and review them.  I have a list of questions to pose. We will see where it takes us. 

Day Three: “why don’t you read the way I write.”

I know I say this after every project, but I am always impressed with what students bring in, mainly because they raise issues and ideas that I would never think of. The beauty of asking open-ended questions is that they leave room for very creative approaches. Today’s assignment was to bring in something that represented the list of “modernist” terms I had handed out (universal, complete, determined, unified, balanced, orderly, linear, logical, beautiful). It was interesting to see what a wide range of things these terms could be applied to. As I still work to understand how project based courses function I realize that I could easily have assigned the students a reading that dealt with these issues. The drawback to the reading is that it is hard to ascertain if everyone has done the reading, and typically students are only exposed to one way of looking at the ideas (the author’s or the teacher’s). By having each student talk about these ideas in relation to what they are presenting we now have 20-something takes on these ideas.

The other benefit to this process is that students have a more personal understanding of the material. Even if they choose to talk about something that they are disengaged with the act of dissecting it with the given criteria forces them to be more introspective – especially when they are standing in front of 20 or so colleagues. That is also a dynamic of this opening project – they have to stand up in front of others and talk. We do it right up front – get it out of the way – so we can move on. I know that in order to get students to the point where they are willing to do some interesting and creative work we have to find a space that is comfortable. The exercises and warm up at the start of most classes serve the same purpose. Basically, we need to get to know each other – which may take 6 or 7 weeks.

Part of what I need to work on is to engage the students in a conversation about what ideas or presentations made an impact on them. I am really not interested in engaging in a conversation of good and bad or successful or unsuccessful, but talk about what is engaging. What ideas they came back to. What images or sounds or ideas stuck in their minds. The hard part for me is moving between the two sections – which actually had two totally different trajectories. So I may need to remind myself who presented what in which section. They have another project due on Tuesday – which is basically the opposite of the question I asked them for today. The class following that one is wide open, so it will be a nice cap to the end of the second week to be able to reflect back on two completely different projects.

The one question I posed today which I need to come back to is how this “modernist” list corresponds to the method or process they are learning at UNCSA. The intent is not to criticize, but to open a space for a conversation about learned modes of perception. This typically plays out in an examination of art works with a framework of expectation built in. And again I return to Gertrude Stein’s beautiful statement – “why don’t you read the way I write.” Sometimes writing is “universal” and “balanced” and sometimes it is non-linear and fragmented. 

Day Two: I need to talk less and listen more

Students entered to the repetitive sounds of Laurie Anderson’s “Language is a Virus.” I do try and match the sounds at the start of class to topic (or one of the topics) for the day. I know the connections, but I suppose I should ask the students to begin to think about this. I did feel compelled to show the Family Guy clip mainly cause I felt it worked to deflate the rather oppressive start of day one. Since postmodernism raises questions about the fallibility of authority it is hard to teach this class without at least questioning my own.

So – then we warmed up and I gave the students a group project focused on language. I realized in going back over the book they are reading on postmodernism that it includes quite a few theory ideas (semiotics, deconstruction, Foucault, Baudrillard, etc). Reading about this is one thing, but if we can use the opening fifteen minutes or so to do an exercise on these ideas I feel that the students will have a greater understanding of them. Today, for example, I wanted to talk about semiotics and signs. So – I broke the students into four groups and have them four words to define: Red, Game, and Meaning. It is always interesting to see what each group comes up with and what elements are similar and where they differ. Great spinning out of these words to deal with images, emotions, ideas, etc. I then made a list of how they defined these three words and suggested that they now needed to define all these other words.

The whole point with this was to explore the deferring quality of language. That is, it is hard to pin things down with words since meaning can often be very slippery. I then got into teacher mode and talked about Wittgenstein’s notion that to imagine a language is to imagine a way of life, Saussure breakdown of a sign into signifier and signified, and finally Derrida’s idea of Différance. A lot to throw at the students the first few days.

We then moved to discuss the starting points for all of the P2P classes. LeeAnna’s on the concentration camp always yields good conversation, but there were great crossover points between that and Mike’s grid, Kry’s rulers and people, Janna’s uncertainty, and Betsy’s football lists. I asked questions, but I probably railroaded though my ideas more strongly than I should have. I know that, particularly with this subject, it will be a struggle all term between just telling the students things and letting them come up with the answers themselves. I need to find a way to be more of a guide and less of an “authoritative” voice on the subject. Yes – I could spend the whole term explaining postmodernism to them, but they have lived it so I would much rather hear what they have to say. For example, I loved the connection in the first section between the grid and how grocery stores are laid out. I never would have made that connection.

With changes in the syllabus to accommodate a meeting in Chapel Hill the students have two projects to execute back to back. The first – due Thursday – is basically a show n’ tell on something that fits a list of modernist criteria. The second, due next Tuesday, asks the students to place two or more pieces in proximity so that the pieces comment on each other. The example I tossed out was how Duchamp’s urinal recontextualizes the museum as well as the art within it. This space also works to “legitimize” Duchamp’s readymade as a “work of art.” Here is hoping I talk less in the next two classes and listen more. 

Day One: The Rules of the Game

I find it interesting that in a class where I would like to foster an open environment to encourage creativity I open by being such a jerk. A whole list of “if you don’t want to do this, this or this, then get out of this class.” Part of this is driven by having taught in this project based way in the past and having students in class who really don’t want to be there or don’t want to work in the way I am asking them to work. I really do love posing question that I have no answer for, but I can see that for some people this is very frustrating. Especially if they are used to an educational model that judges them on how correct their answers are.

I think the main thing I want to avoid is students thinking that this class will be easier then other classes since I am less interested in using grades as punishment (or reward) and more interested in the work produced. I tried to impress upon both sections of the class that I am giving up a good chunk of my authority and my position as arbiter to the class. This places the students into a position where their input, comments, ideas, etc are just as valid as mine. But, it means wanting to take on that responsibility. What I mean by this is that a collective mind is really only as strong as the whole – a whole created through the energies of all involved. Disengaged minds means that the collective is weaker than if it is constructed with engaged minds. So – Day one ends up being mostly about the rules of the game.

After monologing about the syllabus, requirements, expectations, etc we got to the fun stuff. We went through Debbie’s warm up exercise – which I have really grown to love. Yes it feels odd, and sometimes it would just be easier to just cut to the material for the day, but I really do enjoy the decompression time from one activity to the next. Taking a few minutes to stretch out and then play a game provides that window of transition. It also functions as a group activity since we do these tings as a group. I still haven’t hit on a good first day game yet though. We played “what is inside” today with a tin filled with objects that rattled. The point was to imagine what these objects might be – with no reality restrictions. Theoretically these objects could be anything. But we do tend to circle around the possible. The answers to this question are individual and so I feel like we need to do small group exercises next class since there is safety in numbers.

The warm up and game gave way to sharing names, area of study and something unique or interesting. The hope is that by the point the class is engaged, or at least more awake than when we started. Next we generated the list of Self, Society, and Cosmos terms and ideas. The list was not radically different from last year for the Aesthetics of Dissonance class, but exploring it through the postmodern frame revealed a lot of sort of mater narrative grand scheme unifying ideas. Since Postmodernism challenges these ideas this was a great place to start this class.

I know that in having taught this way in the past it will take us some time to get acquainted with each other. The hard part is getting students to the point where they are willing to take a chance on a project without having to be concerned with grades or judgment. It is at this point where I think we can get some real work done. So – we will see how things develop.

Of course, in retrospect, rather than prattle on about the structure of the class I could have just shown the students this video.

Teaching Postmodernism in the – um – age of Postmodernism or how Cool Hand Luke has affected my ideas on authority.

When I think back on it I think that my first role model was Cool Hand Luke. A fantastic anti-authoritarian character brought to life by the impish grinning Paul Newman. I clearly remember seeing this film on TV some time in the fourth grade. I suspect I have a class journal somewhere where I rave about the film, although this may be a constructed memory. In any case, as a role model he embodied the idea of flouting any and all authority. He attacks capitalism by cutting the heads off of parking meters; family in the heartbreaking scene in the back of a pick-up truck; arbitrary authority as deliciously portrayed in Strother Martin’s “what we have here is a failure to comun'cate” by not being broken by the system; and finally the big man upstairs when Luke shouts “Let me know you're up there. Come on. Love me, hate me, kill me, anything. Just let me know it.” Faced with silence he concludes “I'm just standin' in the rain talkin' to myself.” Clearly Luke dwelled in a post-Nietzsche world. He is a hero who chooses not to be one.  I like to interpret the moment near the end of the film with Luke standing before a window a choice to be taken out by the sniper’s bullet rather than acquiesce to authority and imprisonment. But Luke understood that this was a solitary, individual choice and not one to be slavishly imitated when he shouts at the other prisoners after another failed escape attempt to “Get out there yourself. Stop feedin' off me.” But they didn’t get it and spend the final moments of the film mythologizing the now Christ-like Luke. So – in a way – not only is he my first role model, but my first anti-role model as well. The anti-hero hero. How postmodern.

I have been thinking about his flouting of authority mainly because I am gearing up to teach a class on postmodernism in which I know I need to find a way to flout my own authority. I, like many teachers of my generation, came of age when theory abounded and the “academy” seemed to be on the verge of change. We were among the first to learn from and teach such things as graphic novels, video games, pop music, TV, and B movies – exalting the lessons and complexities of these genres the way preceding generations talked about Shakespeare and Eliot and Joyce. So, in some way I guess I saw embracing pop culture as rebellious, as anti-authority, as representing some kind of change. But then many of us got absorbed into the academy. We became teachers and (gasp) administrators, scholars, authors, and “authorities.” Our exaltation of pop culture as dreary and depressing as the previous generation’s lauding of the “classics.”

So here I am, an “authority” who despises authority, especially my own, getting ready to teach a class on a subject that fostered a supreme distrust of authority, especially in me. I have to admit that part of me is fascinated by this conundrum, until I realize that thinking this way and acting this way is the difference between looking at an Escher drawing and then trying to walk in it. So, in structuring this class I find I will be tinkering with when and where my authority is asserted and when it is deliberately marginalized. Of course deliberately marginalizing my own authority is ultimately an authoritative act. So – I need accomplices in this gesture – which is where the students come in. Part of the deal on the first day is to see if they want to play this game, after all, it is far easier just to sit in the back of a classroom and regurgitate what is said by the teacher than taking on a bit of that role yourself.

The hard part is trying to create a level playing field in which I am not the only one in charge. This is not a new thing, since I have developed a number of strategies over the years to do this. My favorite, employed last spring for a class on the aesthetics of dissonance, is simply to fade way. As the class progresses I do what I can to remove myself from the proceedings, to the point where I basically set a class in motion and leave the room allowing whatever to happen to happen. Some students step forward, asserting their own authority, but as a student among students they truly are on even ground. Students that use these moments for an open exchange of ideas are probably the right students for this type of method. Students that see the removal of authority as a means of escape probably don’t get much out of this structure. My hope is to make this clear on day one. I find that while this type of gesture works when the subject is the avant-garde - akin to the Situationionist’s idea of lighting the cultural fuse but refusing to deal with the detonation - it seems like a cop-out when approaching the postmodern ideas that developed in the wake of the avant-garde. In many ways this class is in response to the previous class – which really only I and perhaps one or two students will see.

So – I suspect I will hang around for all of this class, but work to create a space where I am not “in charge” or seen as the “judge,” or the “authority.” Hard to do within a system that demands feedback and grades. The trick is to get the students to stop looking at the grades as some sort of validation or punishment. The deal with this class is the same deal with all classes – show up, do the work to the best of your ability, engage in class discussions, execute the projects on time, and you will do fine. Probably easier said than done. My intent is to track the development of this course and these ideas here.