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.