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.

Week Two into three:

Well we lost Tuesday to the snow and ice storm that was way worse than expected. Even digging out by Wednesday was tough. So, projects were pushed to Thursday. One of the things I will remind the students is that they need to trust the process. It may seem like we are just fucking around or aimlessly wandering in ideas, but it will begin to cohere as the term progresses. I need to remind myself that also. I went into the first project day apprehensive – with all the standard worries – will the projects be interesting, will we have enough to discuss, will they establish ideas that we can work with during the term. And, of course, the work was wonderful. Although we only got through 2/3rd of the projects we could see variety of presentation mode, and, perhaps more importantly, so many wonderful different ways to think about time. This will give us quite a bit to work with – but already I can see ideas like: compressed time, layered time, elongated time, personal relations to time, progression, degeneration, frame or ground, implied spectator, anticipation (of evolution), the cyclical nature of time, intentional VS random composition, Bergson’s notion of duration, time capsule – projection into future/relation to past, where pieces begin and end, palimpsest, useful time, waisted time, the everyday or mundane, is “present” really present?, do. We see or create meaning?, perpetual evolution, erosion, how we use time, actions shaping action in time. Ans, we still have about 5 presentations in each section. The second round of projects were as engaging as the first. Really good work – and lots to think about. In discussing them I tried to make connections between the pieces with the above list – which I think may have set a tone I need to shift. I’m not sure why I am spending more time explaining and projecting ahead in the term than focusing on the present and asking questions. I seem to be doing the same thing in my MWF classes (which is compounded by not yet finding the rhythm of teaching 50 minute classes after not teaching them for 15 years). When I do pose questions the energy level seems quite low – so I need to start each class with some project or exercise to wake folks up. I also need to remind myself to be more patient to wait for answers – both Joe and Bob are way better at that than I. We have good information to work with so far, but I need to find a way to have the conversations gel better. Ais this always how these classes are in the first few weeks? Maybe.

First week – Day one and day two:

It is really fantastic to be back in the WW5 gym for this class – where I taught it last in 2015 (7 years ago?) Some things about the space have changed, but it’s great to have an open room to work in. The first class was largely dedicated to going over the syllabus, requirements, etc – and with this class trying to sort out those that want to play with this material and those that don’t. I’m trying to avoid any surprises about the structure. The icebreaker game this time round was based on the surrealist idea of question and answer – where the two don’t have to match. My initial intent was to have students writs down a question and an answer on separate index cards and then shuffle and distribute them, but in covid-times that didn’t seem like a great idea. I hope we can resolve this before Fluxus day. Students wrote them down and we circled the room posing questions with indeterminate answers. Then on to the Self, Society, and Cosmos ideas – good list of what students remembered from this class with the 8:30 section being a bit more awake than the 10 – which always seems to happen. This is why last time we started with stretching and whatnot – I may lean back into that as the term progresses. Then I assigned the first project due next week – I love this project which has students presenting three different types of time. Always interesting to see what they come up with. I’ve reminded them that the question is deliberately vague since I am not looking for any specific answers, just how they respond to the prompt. Day two was about discussing traditional aesthetics and so we started with each person showing/discussing something they find “beautiful.” It was interesting to see the difference in the sections with 8:30 leaning a bit more into process – complexity, layers, catharsis, formal elements and 10:00 a bit more on effect – mood, environment, impact. I always feel like benefit from this conversation in ways the students don’t so shared a bit of the 8:30 with the 10 and will do the inverse on Tuesday. The rest of the class was about discussing aesthetics, rules, patterns, cultural ideas, etc with regards to art-making and art-viewing. The examples students provided offer great detail for this conversation. I’ve tried to give them a glimpse of where we are headed – mainly as an extension of figuring out who wants to play with these ideas and who doesn’t. The first week can never really be more than exposition, but we’ve already played a game and students presented ideas – so we are in good shape. I’m looking forward to the first projects on Tuesday.

Aesthetics of Dissonance 2022

Coming soon - ramblings and thoughts on teaching two sections of a revamped Aesthetics of Dissonance in the age of COVID and American fragmentation. Should be fun. 

Generative to Situations

Part of what I like about the Generative Art pieces (the sound machine project) is that inevitably one of the machines goes awry and does something it is not intended to do. Not a huge diversion – but the comments often cycle around “it worked better at home” or “ can I try it again?” I ma amused by this largely because the parameters of this project are set up to insure that something will happen that the creator couldn’t control. The conversation then turns to what this means aesthetically. So – if traditional art making is about control – in the sense of skill, training or technique – then what do pieces like this have to offer? This gives us an opportunity to talk about the whole life/art thing that we addressed with the Fluxus projects. I continue to reflect no Cage’s art should reflect nature in her manner of operation – which isn’t always controlled.

So we talks about how the machines worked and what the process was of creating them in the first place. So, basic questions about approaches – each machine was designed to do the same thing – make a sound – but how each machine went about it was very different. IN reflecting on this we talked a bit about the Flaming Lips Zaireeka – designed to be listened to on four CDs simultaneously. This gave way to a discussion of other indeterminate pieces such as Milan Knizak’s prepared vinyl project Remko Sha’s machine guitars, Terry Reily’s In C and Cardew’s The Great Learning paragraph 7 – all driven by an idea that develops once set in motion. So – indeterminacy as an aesthetic device.

We followed that up with a discussion of Steve Reich’s “music as a gradual process” and Eno’s comments on Generative Music. Staring with Reich’s Pendulum Music – a microphone suspended over a speaker and swung with feedback like a pendulum. The process is both visible and audible – you can see and hear it slow down. It is both deterministic and indeterminate at the same time – it will always come to rest, but not always by the same pattern. Then we listen to “Come Out” – all 13+ minutes of it. It is a process of listening to changes over time. As Reich points out this piece does not develop by chance – once it is set in motion it simply executes the process. This leads to Eno’s generative music, apps, 77 Million Paintings, and Conway’s Game of Life. I love the connection to contemporary scientific models in that traditional science is like classical forms – driven by order, where as contemporary forms are often driven by chaos.

Framing it this way is helping to bring focus back to the class. I struggled with this the last time I taught it. After the Fluxus pieces – which were set just before the break last time and just after this time – the energy seems to dissipate. I think largely because the first two thirds of the term are driven by groups with clear ideological ideas – Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism – which gives way to less clear focus. So for the past week or so I have kind of felt like, well we have this list of terms and ideas and here we are looking at yet another example. Moving past the gen Art stuff helps with this. For me the revelation was Reich learned from his tape loop experiments and then brought that phase shifting into his compositional approach. So – he absorbs that process as a more traditional aesthetic technique. Eno does the same thing, but he is still keeping some of the outcome flexible. One of the students defined that at the difference between destination art and non-destination art. One you know in advance – the other you don’t.

That brought to mind Bill Viola’s note about the statement “if all you have is a hammer you tend to treat everything as a nail” which has become my mantra for the second half of the term (the first half it was Duchamp’s “I force myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste). The point here is that these ideas become different types of hammers and ask different questions. This led us to the Situationists – seemingly off the topic – but brings together the aesthetic ideas with larger cultural ones. The Marxist/ Anarchist frame. The point with that is Debord’s comment "that which changes our way of seeing the street is more important that which changes our way of seeing painting.” So – the ideas evolve and, with the Situationists, the objects disappear. This links back to the notion f concept art we discussed earlier in the term. What I always like about discussing the Situationists makes me want to roam – so we wandered across campus talking about Detournment, derive, and psychogeographical spaces. I will tie this all in with Punk and the discussion of our next project - the Auto Destructive Art projects.