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.