Far too many days to count

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.

Hassan’s list:

Today as a follow up to the conversation about the Master Narrative projects we dove into the Hassan essay. This is really the first deep dive into postmodern theory. The Postmodernism book provided a good road map, but this essay is on a different level. I’d been thinking for some time that we needed to change our relationship to the space. Students tend to come into the room and plop down in the first available seat near the door. I was delighted to find all the chairs sort of scattered at odd angles in the middle of the space. Something I would have done if I had been able to get there before the students. I didn’t but they assumed I had anyway. Quite fortuitous. So – we started the day with an Olipo game in which you take a sentence and remove all the vowels and create a new sentence. Always fun. For the first time a group created a sentence of nonsense words – great choice.

After that we settled down and I asked each student to articulate one thing that caught their eye in the reading – about 2/3rds had something to share, the other 1/3^rd hadn’t done the reading. It was nine pages. What I like about this is not just calling out people who aren’t participating – it is often the students who seem disengaged – go figure – but that students often see things in the reading I didn’t. It opens the conversation up to a wider range of ideas than just what is in my notes. Then we moved on to chat about the Self, Society, and Cosmos ideas and how they relate to postmodernism. Some great observations about authority and truth and how postmodernism needs modernism to have something to push against. The one question that caught me off guard was about the relationship of postmodernism to religion. Since SSC carries with it a fairly high concentration of religious ideas students seemed perplexed that the same conversation didn’t continue into this class. It was honestly the first time that has come up in teaching this subject for more than a decade. It will require some research, thinking, and perhaps posing students more questions. Seems interesting that we are set to watch Monty Python’s Holy Grail – which takes on one of the most canonical Christian stories of all time. Perhaps we can touch on how Python approaches it in the follow up conversation. If only I had decided to use Life of Brian instead.

Post Master Narrative Project:

Hmm – I find that something just isn’t clicking with this class this time. I made some adjustments to the syllabus from the last time I taught it – some I am happy with, others not. For some reason I feel like the Master Narrative project – where they tear apart fairy tales – seemed to happen too soon. It is without question a more complex project than the first few, but not too complicated. The bulk of the projects were quite interesting, using a variety of way to tear apart and reassemble the pieces of the story. Bob and I has students do a similar project in the Gen Art class after we had discussed systems – so I wonder if that is what I am comparing this proves to.

One thing that seems to be nagging is I don’t feel like we have gelled together as a group. That may be because I have done far too few group activities this term – a lot of individual presentation stuff – but few group projects. I’ll have some time to develop this more in the second half of the term. I’m also struggling with the number of students in the class – 25 – now 24 – is just too many for this type of class. I have no idea how I did this with 30 the first time through the dissonance class. Ideally 15-20 is the best number – 12 actually seems too few.

That aside I think we have discussed and developed a good list of terms and ideas so far. Having all of these ideas defined out of the projects should mean that there are good clear examples of each. But, we will need to revisit them from time to time. I also need to get the students to start working with these ideas in the writing prompts. What I have seen so far in the two prompts has been great, but I think they can start to work on refining these ideas. I have yet to see any student express complete confusion – some frustrations – but everyone seems to be picking up on at least some of these ideas. My hope is as we take them into the Hassan essay and then into the Holy Grail movie the students will be able to synthesize this material a bit more. Then we take them into the second half of the term and touch on specific topics and ideas.

I’ve assigned them the ironic museum project – which seemed to work quite  well last time I taught the class. A couple of questions after the assignment went out have me already excited to see the results.  Since so much of the work so far has been performative  this project requires students to build something outside of themselves. It will give us an opportunity to reflect on each piece as we discuss them. I should probably photograph each one  so we can cycle back on the discussion.

One thing I need to keep in mind is that I do trust this process. I have had doubts every time I have taught a project-based class and then seen the results in the final few weeks of the term. Knowledge with this type of structure seems to accrue much more slowly than in lecture-based classes. So, I suspect I doubt around this point in the term every time I teach this way.

New Class that apparently I suck at keeping a record of

It is hard to believe that we are three weeks into the term and this is my first chronicling. It might make sense to chop this up into smaller chunks. First off – we lost a day due to snow. This totally disrupted the rhythm of how the class was structured. My decision to drop the first project on modernism was, in retrospect, a mistake. I should have kept the beginning of the class the same and dropped something later on. I can chat with the students about modernist ideas – and the book we have covers them fairly well, but they are poor substitutes for having objects and conversations to point to as examples of unified, complete, whole, well-designed items. So, we did the intro day and then just jumped right into project #2 about reappropriation. I love the project and it produced some really interesting answers, but without the counter it doesn’t work as well. There may be other opportunities to swing back around – possible with the mater narratives project.

With 25 students we really needed to spread the presentations of the reappropriation projects across two days – and they took the full two days. Part of the reason to take the time with them is to really dig in an ask basic questions about what students see and what how those elements fit together. Some really unique solutions that have given us a great deal to discuss. The answers to the project gave us a good solid list of terms and ideas to start the term with.

I moved where we discuss the Postmodern book sooner in the term this time – it is really mean to lay out specific ideas and direction based on what the students saw in the book. I must admit that the conversation started at a fairly high theoretical level – which works well with this material – but I also fear students being left out of the conversation that either didn’t read the book or didn’t process the information the same way. Circling back to discuss these ideas over and over may be the best approach.

Third project – which was really the second project – was about movement. The task to execute an everyday movement actually became about a wide range of movement possibilities. Mainly this is near the start of the term since each student has to get up I front of the class and do something a little silly, a little odd. We then mixed these into groups and I whispered instructions to watch the movements as dance, music, theatre, and kinetic sculpture. Again – 25 students in the class is a huge difference from the 20 last time.

We started the next class with defining the terms we have so far and then splitting up into groups to work on using them. Some interesting results. Working to connect the movements to where we were headed I did some connective tissue on Duchamp and Cage. We will dig a bit deeper into Cage later in the term as well as do an exercise on indeterminacy next class.

Today was about postmodern dance – so a brief history from Graham to Cunningham to Judson and we were ready to dive more deeply into Solo olos. It was clear that not everyone had watched the video – so I brought up rehearsal videos and we discussed the structure. Some had seen it in Spring Dance last year and this was the first time they had to talk about it and understand how it was put together. This worked incredibly well as the first clear example we have explored. So far the term has been project heavy at the start – so now we will settle down into digging into the theory a bit. A long way to go and a short time to get there.

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.