Dissonance Day Two

The students entered to a Mark Rothko image side-by-side with a Robert Rauschenberg while Fennez’s Endless Summer played. Not as grating as the first day – still static, but nice soothing static.  I find it interesting that the immediate action upon entering is to find a place to sit. I had to remind them that we would be getting up in a few minutes and not to get too comfy. We circled up and did a few stretches. Two contributions from students – which is nice. It would be great to develop a 3 minute routine that we all did every day before class. Some of it needs to be more aerobic though since part of the job is to get the blood flowing. The stretching gave way to tongue-twisters. Three great ones. I like that these are funny and often hard to concentrate on – they trip up both the tongue and the mind. Next rather than a game each person – in whatever order they chose – introduced themselves, told us why they were here at UNCSA, and shared something interesting about themselves. Yes – very summer camp like, but the task was to start to figure out who each person is and start to memorize names.  I know that some students are more conformable with this than others. It is an attempt to get everyone over that unfamiliar feeling and the fear of talking in front of 30 other people. Some of the folks that would rather remain silent have fantastic things to share and add to the class. We need to find a way to get that material out in the open.

I didn’t really want to fall into teacher/student mode after this – me at the head of the class, them passively sitting and all facing me. But, there were things we needed to cover that could only be done this way. I did make a point of talking a bit about space in that the traditional educational space suppose that I have answers and that students look to me for those. Once we get into the projects and fragment the space that should go away a bit. We started with the P2P site material, specifically by discussing modernism and postmodernism. The students had some great insight into differences between them. One main point is that after viewing the site we are no closer to concrete definitions, but now have a collection of ideas and themes we can explore.

I posed the Greenberg idea of modernism as using the discipline to critique the discipline and talks about art about art – Jackson Pollack, Mark Rothko, Malevich’s White on White. From there to Schoenberg and the idea of 12-tone or serialist music and Philip Glass’s comment that “this music is much more interesting than it sounds” – suggesting a complex structure, but not anything you could hum. Cage’s 4’33” becomes the end of the line going into silence. Brecht, Pirandello, Thornton Wilder all offer theatre about theatre ideas. James Joyce and Gertrude Stein – writing about writing, etc. the inverse of this id Eco’s notion that the avant-garde moves toward a metalanguage and impossible texts. When you get to blank canvases, silent compositions, the empty page, the empty stage – where do you go?

This helped us move into postmodernism – and we used the Rothko and Rauschenberg as a place to start. Hard to define these terms specifically, but by moving around them a few ideas were established that we will be able to return to throughout the term. The other material listed on the site – the concentration camp, the grid, uncertainty, what is meant by “the people” sparked a great conversation about power, control, rules, education, etc. the modernist notion that rules and order can be useful gives way to internment and unlivable modernist spaces. I really need to show a clip from Brazil where the modernist dream housing blocks have degenerated into postmodern squall. The Occupy movement also became a nice connection to this - postmodern in its construction with no central authority or ideas – as opposed to the more modernist tea party. Mike’s comments on the grid offer a nice way to talk about structure and order, but also how people can be marginalized by this order also. The internet came up as a contemporary postmodern idea – un controlled and wide open (at least for now). We ended with Betsy’s list of themes connected to mod/post and linked it back to the continuum idea that things may be closer to one idea than another. In some sense it seemed like we were rambling, but ideas were being connected for later use. I do need to explain that this type of conversation is modeling a type of behavior – of making connections and links that I expect the students to begin to do for themselves over the course of the term.

Next class we talk about aesthetics and beauty – students are instructed to being in beautiful things to share. My hope is that it will not be so “teacher” centered.