2019 and a whole new class – Days 1-3 and first project:

I find that it doesn’t make sense to begin reflecting on this class until we have had some time to digest the first project. The discussion on the first day about SSC material yielded a really nice list of ideas. I need to remember to come back to them from time to time. The first project was assigned day one and due the second class. With 16 students we explored the projects over two days and still need to pull out techniques and ideas. I have no idea how I did this last time with 25 students. I like that we had time to settle into each project and discuss the basic design elements (line, shape, color, rhythm, texture) but also begin to shape meaning. When asked why they thought I had given the assignment one student reflected that others saw things in the project beyond the initial intention. A great observation I need to do more with in the next class. I really do love this project – students are asked to bring in two or more items that comment on each other. It is about as open-ended as possible. It works to start the postmodern class as the reappropriation project, the gen art class as the juxtaposition project, and even back to the roots of the assignment, the surrealistic museum. Part of the intent is to get into the habit of noticing things, but also to get to know each other. It is amazing how much these projects reveal.

Lots of great variety of pieces, some quiet and peaceful, some playful, some abstract, some everyday. They all provide a great place to start the conversation. Unlike last time I taught this class I really don’t feel that I missed the modernism project. I like diving right into things. But I do feel rushed. 2 ½ weeks less than spring term is too much time gone. I’ve already handed out the next assignment, but really feel like we need more space between them. It’s not due for two weeks, but I don’t think they know enough yet to tackle the assignment.  But, we do have two weeks to gather techniques and ideas and discuss how to use them. I debated moving the Hassan reading to before the project, but I need to keep in mind that students do these projects so that they can have a perspective on the readings and not the other way around. I may remind them from time to time to trust the process. I need to do so too. Looking forward to chatting about the first projects on Tuesday. I feel like we have already accomplished a great deal and now just need to digest and reflect on it.

Um – yea I’m still doing this thing:

Post-Stein we did some listening. The point here was to make connections to the ideas we have already discussed. To this end we revisited Cage for a bit but then moved on to listen to Reich’s Come Out.  I actually relish having students listen to the this in real time. 13 minutes of this kind of sound is a long time, but if they listen actively by tracing how the sounds evolve its not as painless as it might sound. It is a great piece to discuss indeterminacy, the death of the author and the idea of the open work. Reich’s position of listening is basically the same as ours. I do find it interesting that it is this moment that is blown up into the Gen Art class, the way the tail end of the Aesthetics of Dissonance class crosses over into the Postmodern class. The linkages between the three are really interesting, and yet each one traces a different trajectory to the present moment. Reich was followed by Lucier and Basinski, all basically doing the same thing.

The follow-up day is basically difficult listening hour part two – post – punk, rock, classical, digital, etc. Here I riffed on the idea of post a bit to tray and break it out of just post-modern, but to show how this idea – once developed – could play out in a number of different ways. More a clips and samples class than the extended listening of the previous one. Like the Reich, the idea is to make connections to the techniques and ideas we have discussed.

This class was followed by the presentation of the “hypertext” project – in which students had to take a passage from Stein’s Dr. Faustus and bring ten external elements to bear on it. The projects were fantastic. Really all over the map. Clearly a development from the initial juxtaposition project – here the collisions were deep, rich, and informed the text in any number of ways. One element that we reflected on is how aggressive many of these projects were. Perhaps because of the aggression of Stein’s text, or perhaps the gesture of layering ideas onto something brought this out. This is the first time I have used this assignment in this class and it worked quite well. A great lead in to the Wooster Group.

So we watched House/Lights the Wooster Group’s deconstruction of Stein’s Dr. Fautus. We spent a class period discussing their working method and keying on the rift that developed with them working on Miller’s The Crucible. This lead to a great conversation about ownership and when you have crossed the line and violated that. Also – a good conversation about deconstruction in general. The following class was the video. It had been some time since I have watched it – it really is kind of a beautiful mess. Aggressive, frenetic, loud, layered, everything postdramatic theatre aspired to be. A fitting final piece to the term.

The conversation today about the video was great. Lots of wonderful connections to the postmodern ideas as well as the projects. The video provided a good document to tear apart and then discuss its structure. It also allowed us to deal with a question that came up earlier in the term about the postmodern actor. Filtering their live performances through tons of media the WG folks seem like the perfect definition of that type of performer. Sort of a post-actor in which you can’t distinguish between live and mediated and so the question of presence gets completely disrupted. I did find it interesting that a handful of folks that have been fairly quiet all term  took the lead today to discuss the video. Variety of material always seems like a good idea.

I’ll follow up after the final projects but one thing that has been nagging me about this particular class structure is that we essentially explored the major terms and ideas prior to the break – most of the projects and readings were in the first half of the term. This meant that the second half was more about applying the terms and ideas and therefore somewhat less active. It feels less like we are driving to the end of the term and more like we are winding down. I need to find a better way to handle this – a better way to pass off the role of teacher to the students so they can bring it home. But, I’m excited to see what they will do to Heiner Muller for their final projects.

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.