To say I have been doing an appalling job tracking this
class is an understatement, and not. I do spend a fair amount of time thinking
about the course design, the projects, and the conversations. Students have
posed questions of this material that I have not heard before – like is there
such a thing as postmodern religion, and how would you know if a piece were
designed in a fragmented way or just badly. Great questions. So – my last entry
is on the Hassan conversation . The next two classes were dedicated to watching
and discussing Monty Python and the Holy
Grail. Simply a textbook example of postmodernism with basically everything
we have discussed up to this point represented.
We followed this up with presentations of the “ironic museum” project. This has fairly
quickly become one of my favorite assignments. Hard to do too early in the
term, but it allows for such variety, such fascinating solutions that I need to
consider using it, or a version, in other classes. 25 projects take a while to
digest and so on presentation day we just barely were able to do that. I
encouraged students to spend a good few minutes with each piece, make notes,
and then go back around to visit each one and start to make connections.
Our discussion of the projects started with a review of the
terms and ideas we have generated so far. Each student pulled a term out of the
bag, and worked with a group to define and provide an example. The intention
was sort of a midterm review before spring break. Always a fun project – we
will need to do this again before the end of the term. The we talked about what
ideas were generated by the projects. A couple of key terms to emerge were: erasure
or effacement, implied spectators or incomplete without a spectator, works that
offered commentary on themselves, woks that fixed impermanence, mediatization.
We then moved on to a discussion of what constitutes a
“good” or “poor” postmodern work. Kind of a meaningless question, but does lead
us to address criteria and begin to talk about the authority of things like
museums. Its here where I usually try to erode my own authority by asking what
gives me the authority to teach and how do they know I have any idea what I am
talking about. I love to see doubt creep in at this point. A word or two on how
to read Lyotard and then send them off to break.
Returning from break we dug into some Lyotard as a way to
get back to the theoretical ideas. Many of the students did a wonderful job
unpacking what he had to say – I really was stunned. Not all students, but a
good number pulled ideas out that were quite exciting t discuss. This was a
good place for this essay – relocated form last time. It allowed us to talk a
bit more specifically about modernism and the shift to the postmodern. The
notion of the postmodern sublime was defined, by relating to our experience
with the projects, as having a certain level of frustration that rewarded
deeper thought. One student defined it as first pain and then pleasure.
Next up was me, more or less, lecturing on postmodern
architecture. We started that day with Legos – always fun – in which students
were instructed in groups to create a representation of “absence.” Four totally
unique expressions, that had some similar ideas. More importantly, they used
the readymade pieces like doors and windows very much like Ghery and Venturi. I
spent quite a bit of time on Ghery’s House as I want to revisit that to discuss
The Wooster Group. Many pictures, many buildings, many ideas. Our list of terms
and ideas gets longer.
On to La Monte Young and Fluxus – way condensed. I went
through an explanation of the Fluxus ideas, looked at a few examples of event
scores and then had students create their own. We were able to see a few
performed before the day was over. The Young material was really a set up for
our conversation about sound, and the event scores were in anticipation of
discussing Gertrude Stein’s Dr. Faustus
Lights the Lights. I was out of town for Fluxus Day, so we revisited a few
more cards when I returned.
The main questions I posed were about where meaning is
located in these activities and who has ownership over the final “product.”
Mainly this is to spur thought on how to treat a text. That led us to discuss
Stein’s play. I gave them some background on her work and we talked a bit about
her use of language, her sense of time, and the exploration of the present
moment. Dragged them outside to talk about theatre as a landscape – which never
fails to amuse me since someone always walks though the frame when I do that
adding to the “drama.” The question I posed is what would happen if we treated
Stein’s play like a Fluxus event score. Their next project asks them to do just
that. All of this is in anticipation of watching the Wooster Group’s deconstruction
of the text.
