Dissonance Day Twenty-four – God! I am such a fucking wuss!

Part of my approach to this material is that I should no longer be needed. To create an atmosphere where experimentation can happen, where failure or success don’t matter, where I no longer need to ask the questions and conduct the sessions. If a large part of moving to the present involves flagrantly fluting the rules (of aesthetics, politics, social structures) I am baffled by lemmings. Perhaps it is the deadening of the American educational system. Perhaps it is 8:30 in the morning. In any case, I am frustrated by the fact that about half of the students are ready to take these ideas and make them their own while the other half still feel compelled to ask me what I want them to do.

Yes – I was pissy when class started today – for a few reasons. We have started every class for the past 13 weeks with some sort of exercise – physical or mental. And yet students still need to be told to get up out of the fucking chairs and move to the open space. I give quick instructions on the mental exercises and students still worry about what I am asking for. I am not sure how else to convey that what “I” am asking for doesn’t matter. The instructions are deliberately vague because I am more interested in what the students – alone or in groups - do with the exercises. It has been that way since the beginning. My frustration comes out of two different impulses – 1) I am tired of hand-holding and 2) where did I screw up that created such a dependent situation?

Typically I get the impulse to “blow up” a class at least once a term. It is probably hard to explain what I mean by that, but it largely has to do with limiting my agency or control or completely withdrawing from the process. It often takes the form of a Happening in which I am not present. These are useful projects in that students are forced into leadership roles – open boxes, read notes, ask questions. But then generally order is restored when I return the following class. I think because I have been interested in the projects and in the conversation this term I have not felt this impulse until now. Today I needed to plant the bomb and then light the fuse next class. I really only went half way. I started edgy and agitated and pissed off but that gave way into being drawn into the translation exercise and then the conversation about punk.

Punk segues to Situationism which segues into Deconstruction and I could talk about that shit all day. I addressed the notion of Larvatus prodeo (I advance masked) in the sense that someone like Debord makes a final gesture of releasing his film contracts as if to say – “Look – I am anti-capital but made a lot of money here – even I am full of shit.” It is a brilliant gesture. It helps destroy binaries and at the same time forces the viewer/reader to think for themselves. I do often attempt to take this approach to teaching in that I have ideas and opinions – but they need not be yours. Part of that gesture has to be destroying the teacher/student binary – of removing the “leader” from the group. Today it needed a stronger action than simply suggesting I set the class up based on projects because I was too lazy to fill this time or to grade essays. It was a very feeble attempt. In all the years I have been working on this type of gesture only one student has directly understood. When asked to provide an example of deconstruction he cited the class and my approach. He was dead on.

But like Johnny Rotten’s idea of “no future” designed to be a call to arms but interpreted as nihilism shows that the message sent isn’t always the one received. I realize that this gesture involves combating years (generations?) of educational systems that asked questions that had ready-made answers and ranked students on how quickly and how accurately they could dredge this information up. But the role of the artist (at least as it is defined in our culture) doesn’t always have answers – some only have more and more questions. So – do we need to train artists to say “how high” when we ask them to jump or do we have to place them into positions where they need to figure out if they want to jump at all and then how they would go about approaching that gesture? I’m rambling, but I don’t think training artists is about conformity or correct answers, I think it is about problem solving.

So now I have a choice. Do I show up at the next class and continue the same process of leading the students through exercises and questions or do I make them do it? Do I stay and watch or leave? Do I provide questions or just say “go”? All of those alternatives suggest control and a hierarchy. Do I push the hierarchy to a breaking point – a point beyond which they will not go – force the hand of rebellion? Part of me feels that we have built up some very good connections this term and I am unwilling to destroy those for this gesture. There has to be an approach that takes me out of the “teacher” or “leader” role and still allows a conversation to develop. Do I let them form groups based on interest – knowing at least one of the groups will not be interested in talking about any of this shit.

I know that this is at least a three part deal – set the bomb today – which I kind of sort of did, light the fuse, and then process the aftermath. The aftermath is designed to lead into the last few days of the term, which are left open for the students to create their own projects and ideas. Some are ready for this – have been ready for this for some time – some will simply give up their agency to another student.  I wonder if a semester is just too long to sustain this kind of energy. Perhaps in the future I should cut them loose after about 10 weeks and then uses the final weeks to go back and process everything they did.  This seemed to work better in a team teaching situation. As Bob pointed out – the students don’t have to worry about the teacher since they a friend along to keep them company. Perhaps that is part of what is going in with this dynamic is that I am doing it alone. In any case, I do know that part of the aftermath will just be a listening party (a kind of “difficult listening hour” built on post punk and glitch) – but I don’t know what the ignition looks like yet. Well I have a weekend to figure it out.