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.