Ughh. I hate when I do that. Lecture. When I feel the need to explicate, to defend, to make certain that the message received is the one I am sending out. It’s a tedious way to investigate this material. Especially after starting each section with a project or in –class exercises. To resort to just telling the students things directly seems like a copout. But, rationally – isn’t that the job of a teacher, to explain things? Perhaps. But there is more to it than that. Getting a student to understand something on their own terms rather than mine is a much better solution. But then one must be willing to give up controlling that understanding. Rhizomatic education happens in multiple ways. I suspect when I go back over this blog I will see that each transition day – when we are ending one section and moving on to another – ends up feeling a bit like today. I know we had days like this with the Gen Art class and the Virtual Worlds class, so maybe that is just part of the dynamic of how this works. Or – maybe I just can’t help but to want to explain stuff.
I knew I wanted to discuss why the Surrealists developed the techniques that they did. I think it is important that we dissect these movements and ideas this way. Get to the philosophical ideas behind the surface chaos. To make the point that even though some of this work may seem purposeless, it is all done with purpose. My fear is if the students do not see this behind the chance and juxtapositions and such then it just seems like some pointless exercises. Even with the explication it may still seem that way. My goal with days like this is to help them look beneath the surface of the techniques. To ask “for what purpose.”
So – from Surrealism to Cage to prepare for the Fluxus stuff for next class. I knew I wanted to get Breton’s points about the dullness of mind exposed to only rational things, to dream logic, to the notion of the marvelous built on new and surprising combinations. But the real subject of all of this emerged with Miles’ comment about how he has been exposed to this his whole life. People that grew up with the internet grew up excepting collage, expecting juxtapositions, expecting surrealist combinations as part of the normal world. That is what the technology was designed to do. There are connections here to Dada as well as things like youtubepoop that we need to explore in greater depth. In retrospect perhaps we should have followed this thought. But I also know that we have about half of the term left and if we follow this thought now I am not sure where it goes and how we develop from there. Odd that that would be the thinking in a class that deals with liberation, questioning rules and openness to the unknown. I never said there wouldn’t be any contradictions. But I do see the irony of this gesture. Play like I say to play not like I play. Again – welcome to my lecture.
Part of me wonders where this path would lead at this time in the term. But part of me also knows that we will have a much better vocabulary for that conversation when we reach the post stuff. It does dawn on me that while some of the students would be ready for this conversation at the point in the term – not all are yet. Chaos and order, chaos and order. I want to get out of the binary and then I fall right back into it. I suppose if I just lectured then I wouldn’t be concerned about such things, that I wouldn’t ask such questions. Perhaps I should dispense with notes, dispense with an agenda and just see what happens. Hmmmm.
So Cage is the connective tissue between the historical avant-garde and the more recent stuff. Why did I not have a section on him in the syllabus? I suppose I felt that we could use him to connect one piece with the next. My hope is the blathering I did at least established the ideas of chance as a discipline, indeterminacy, and pollyatentiveness. My hope is that we can go more into this with the Fluxus stuff. A change in rhythm with this section – readings first and then project. So we will see what comes of that. My goal at this point is to use that last class before spring break to ask all of the P2P questions about modernism and postmodernism before we head into the Situationists. I do need to work in more smaller group exercises at the beginning of the class. To try and find the balance where all groups gel instead of just some of them. This may not be possible, but it is worth a try.
I left the class thinking about this:
The Man Who Fell To Earth = Alien Comes To Earth In Search Of Water. Becomes Alcoholic. The End. :P
ReplyDeleteYes. Although I have always sort of seen this as Bowie's filmic biography. Which is a complicated way of saying that I believe he is an alien.
ReplyDeletehaha .... Interesting.
ReplyDelete