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.