Surrealism, Artaud, and Baraka:

The juxtaposition or surrealistic object project is one of my favorites. A fairly simple process – combine things that don’t go together – but yields quite a bit to discuss. I think this project works best when it is the first one, but the way this course is set up it comes in second. Some really wonderful work – a lot of food related projects – which adds that interesting dimension of decay. Perhaps we will revisit this with the auto-destruct projects. Rather than send students around for Surrealistic museum I opted to move from project to project with the “what do you see” questions. This, of course, means we don’t get all the way through the projects in one day – but it’s worth spending the time on this early in the term. As always, we often see things in the projects that were either not intended or not on the radar of the maker. Particularly with juxtaposed pieces we could spin out endlessly. We paired the discussion with Breton’s Surrealistic Manifesto. We discussed how in creating short circuits to the brain we still struggle with “meaning.” That’s the fun part. But even with this discussion I feel like I am trying to pull observations out of them. Even simple questions like “what do you see in front of you” somehow baffle or cause students to lock up. On impulse I asked my first section – what do I need to change to lead a more vibrant discussion? Is it the questions, location, material – what? Ironically – we had a great discussion about discussion. Same in my second section. So, I’ll work on changing the dynamic. The follow up to this discussion was about Artaud and Baraka’s work. I returned to the roots of the class and started with a physical warm up. We then did an exercise with an audience inside and activity. I had indented to break them up into groups to do this, but felt we might not get too far into the process. So – we discussed what was on their minds, what is most pressing. No suppose that it is the workload of the school and the never ending treadmill – very similar reactions in both sections. So we created apiece with half the class on the outside and half inside a circle – with movement around the outside. Both section responded to movement that got faster and harder to execute until collapsing. We assessed the first round, made some adjustments, and then swapped inside for outside. Once we discussed this I felt it was a good example of some of Artaud’s ideas about the spectator in the center of the action. We discussed Artaud’s No More Masterpieces essay, his First manifesto, Baraka’s Revolutionary Theatre essay and Slave Ship play. The pieces fit nicely together. Part of what I want them to see is how connected these ideas are to what we have been discussing and also how they have been evolving. Went into the quieter and more intimate kitchen for the conversation – which felt a bit better – but I have yet to have a class where I feel like all cylinders are firing. On to Cage and Fluxus next.

Bakunin and Danto and Dada – oh my!:

So to prep the students for chatting about authority and power I changed the class dynamic by making them sit in assigned seats on a traditional classroom arrangement. Sometimes this backfires and there is a great sense of relief that they can just be told what to do. And, it does make me feel uncomfortable, which I guess is part of the point. Actually a bit more lively a conversation than we have previously had – may be due to the deafening heating/AC system being dampened by our distance – or a sense of familiarity at being in a “real” classroom.” In either case, I felt that we covered the material quite well and got to the major points of all the reading. I do like to raise questions about agency and how they can tell if someone is telling them something useful. The question of why they would trust me, or any of their instructors, always rankles a bit – as it should. The Bakunin and Danto conversation leads into discussing dada – through some of Ball and Tzara’s writings and Duchamp. We started creating simultaneous poems – three groups creating a minute of sound - which was fun and works as a good example of the dada stuff we will discuss. But, after the fun its back to struggling to get any response from the students about any of the questions. So, part of what I’m wondering about is not just engagement, but ideology. Are they disengaged because they don’t like the material , didn’t read it, don’t want to discuss it? I’m just finding it difficult to turn the corner on this class and have what I would consider a good conversation. Perhaps that will happen with the surrealist projects – or not.

Project 1 to Futurism to Dadaday:

So, having lost a day to the snow and ice we compressed the discussion of the projects into the material on Bergson and then into the Futurists. I don’t think we went as deeply into the projects as we have in past classes, but there were some good observations and connections. Some of this is about pulling ideas and techniques out of the projects – which we did, but I feel like I was perhaps offering the bulk of these ideas. This lead us into discussion Bergson’s notions of duration and simultaneity. I’ve also added palimpsest and defamiliarization as terms. This all led to discussing cause and effect and the relationship of the part to the whole. Not sure I have gotten to those things at this point in the term, but they are proving useful. The addition this time was Lorde’s essay “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” – which worked quite well. While I recognize that Lorde is discussing race and gender, I see her essay as universal (not to take away from its power) and the same observations can be applied to religion, law, education, aesthetics – any system of value. This offered a great way in to the Futurists. I do think that was the clearest I have ever discussed them. Finding new ways to articulate familiar things can open up a lot. This carried over into the next class when we discussed Russolo and sound. The main point here is that as a painter Russolo’s pallet was wide open – why then would it be closed to certain sounds in music? Not a huge revelation, but an opening up of the idea of what can and can’t be used artistically. We may or may not see this pushed on in the surrealistic projects. This gave way to a truncated Dadaday – with three activities – dada poem, exquisite corpse text, exquisite corpse image. Three groups rotating between the stations. Some fun appeared to be had and we posted results to discuss. This is where things are not quite gelling. I’m really struggling to get students engaged in the discussion part. Not sure why. It does feel like we have a long way to go to establish a working dynamic for this class. My hope is that as we move to the next project students will become more engaged and more vocal. Well – chatting about authority and Danto and dada tomorrow – so we shall see.