Dissonance Day Eight: DADADAY!

I absolutely fucking love DADADDAY! Over the years it has had a few different names – Dadaland, Order out of Chaos, a Happening, but the spirit is pure DADADAY! With fewer students it is easier to have everyone have a kind of communal experience, but with 30 it necessitates smaller groups. The students were broken up into 5 teams, each with up to 6 members. Team Tzara, Team Janco, Team Hennings, Team Arp, and Team Ball. When the students entered the space they were asked to pick a “card” from the fanned out pile. The “card” was the team designation. Part of the reason for this is to break up groups consisting of students who always work together. Plus it’s a chance thing. Each group a totally different makeup. Each team had to sit at one of five tables. Each table had a different activity. Make a Dada Poem, Make a Dada Mask, Make a Photomontage or Hans (Jean) Arp inspired image, Create a simultaneous poem, and play this wonderful game called FatDada (really just a Fat Albert game ransacked with the card replaced by Dada cards that ask the players to debate, proclaim, respond to a series of Dadaquotes. Each team had 12 minutes at each station.

Here is what I fucking love about DADADAY! The same pattern happens every time. Students start quiet. They sit down at the stations and begin to do what they are told. The instructions indicate that once a Dada Poem is constructed the student is to read it out loud. Once the Dada Mask is complete the mask needs movement. The simultaneous poem can only exist as it is performed. In the first 12 minutes the students remain quiet. Then slowly things begin to change. My job is to not interfere. I play music, wander around, shout out some Dadaquotes, etc. I also tell them when they have 6 minutes left, and when they need to move on to the next station. Things happen slowly. First someone knocks a chair over. Next someone gets a bit loud at one of the tables. Then one group decides that they would rather play the FatDada game on the floor on an overturned table. Then someone reads a poem out loud. Then three people get up and perform a simultaneous poem, which may or may not include the sound of the piano. Someone writes on the chalkboard. Someone does a dance.

Then it happens. The place erupts. Students are screaming, banging on the floor, banging on tables and whatever they can find lying around. There is a reason why we need to be up in the gym – isolated from the other classes. When I used to do this downstairs I spent most of the time reminding the students to be quiet. I didn’t need to do that today. But, it does bring up an interesting point. The projects are all designed to frustrate – it is almost impossible to complete any of them in 12 minutes. Any group that plays the FatDada game generally gets bored with it in about 10 minutes or less. The first group that played this game ended up lighting parts of it on fire. But I expected them to play it for 50 minutes – 12 seems much more reasonable. The noise, the actions, etc are all an outlet stemming from the projects.  These actions build off of the projects, but also provide something different from sitting down and cutting out little scraps of paper.

As the room becomes more and more chaotic I wrestle with how far to let it go. If I court chaos I have to be prepared to accept chaos. But then, I don’t want anything broken. I don’t want anyone hurt. These become the ground rules. I need to add no live flames, and no broken glass. When we get to destruction projects probably also no toxic chemicals. It is for this reason I tend to hang around during these class days. In the past I tried a number of experiments. One, where I didn’t want to leave, but also didn’t want to be present as the “authority figure.” So, I sat in a chair in the corner with headphones on, a blindfold, and duct tape over my mouth. Big mistake. Once the chaos kicked in I was the target. I wandered out blindfolded with all kinds of shit draped over my body. Giving instructions and leaving altogether generally means that the room will be destroyed. Torn up papers, magazines, stuff hanging from the ceiling, overturned chairs and tables, chalkboard covered with all kinds of stuff. It is cool to see the smoldering ruins, but I really want to watch the process.

Like any process this one ebbs and flows. It generally reaches a peak crescendo about 10 or 15 minutes from the end of the class period, about an hour into it. In the future I may take advantage of this and harness the energy before it dissipates. But – we are only 4 weeks into a 15 week term. We have plenty of time to court chaos and use this kind of energy. I find that some students are ready to dive into the projects and assignments at this point, but I still need to get everyone moving in that direction. My hope is that the students had fun. It looks and feels like elementary school work, but similar to elementary school it is not just play-time, but time in which students learn something from the exercises. I will have to find out at the next class what they learned. Since I want to tie these ideas back to the S,S, and C stuff I may give them five minutes to ask me any questions about DADADAY! It will be interesting to see if anyone takes me up on it.

Silly, playful, nonsense, whatever. As a teacher I have a choice. I can either have the students read about Dada and then we can all sit down and have a serious discussion about nonsense. Or, I cant let the students play for a day. This way is much more entertaining.

Dissonance Day Seven: In which we end up sitting around and talking about Futurism

We started with a group exercise based on one by the Oulipo group. Homoconsonantism: The sequence of consonants in a source text is kept while all its vowels are replaced. I had made up sheets with a sentence from Marinetti’s Manifesto.  This is the original sentence:  “Courage, audacity and revolt will be essential elements of our poetry.” Here is the sentence with vowels removed: C  r g  ,   d  c  ty  nd r  v  lt w  ll b   ss  nt  l   l  m  nts  f   r p  try. I will post the results once I double-check on them – I can’t read all the handwriting. This was the first real group activity of the term – that is in smaller groups than the full 30. There are more group activities set for Thursday. The energy of the group work was great and the sentences quite a bit of fun. There have to be ways to develop this exercise for images and for sounds also. So – perhaps at some future class we will come back to this idea.

After the time projects and the Bergson conversation and the Oulipo stuff having the students simply sit down so we could have a conversation seems a bit contained, a bit anti-climactic. It is inevitable that certain classes feel that way, especially since the projects come first and the talking after. The Gen Art class had a similar rhythm. But it does make me look forward to the next projects. This class was bringing us to the end of the Futurist stuff – so at this point we hit it head on with Marinetti’s manifesto and Russolo’s essay. A good conversation about the use and abuse of history – which can be seen as an inspiration or as an anchor. Lots of good points on why to keep the past rather than blow it up. It is also sort of humbling to think about how much the world has changed in the last 100 or so years. It is humbling to think about how the world has changed in the last 10 years. Part of the point I was trying to make is that our “traditional” art forms don’t always acknowledge these changes. If our world is radically different then it was 100 year ago why do we still perform the same plays, listen to the same music, read the same books as people from that era? Mostly rhetorical questions, but some good discussion.

We turned to Russolo’s Art of Noise next. Some excellent points by the students about intention and sound  - how noise can be shaped into music, but that some things just exist as noise. I still feel that the continuum idea is the best way to approach this. Something will not be completely noise or music, but somewhere between the two. We talked a bit about static. After class Emma told me that Skrillex uses static a lot – great example – I need to bring it in. It is a good point about how sound and music have changed in the past few decades. I really should have played more examples in class – Russolo’s sounds we on as they entered the class. But I did point them to the sound files on Bb. Next class starts Dada.

Dissonance Day Six: In which I see how curious the students are

On a whim I dragged the Kaos Pad and amplifier into the space today. I like the sound, and it has been a while since I tinkered with it. So it was making bleeps and bloops and whatnot as the students entered the space. I kept messing with it and walking away. I was curious to see if anyone would come take a look. Surprisingly no one did. I didn’t really expect them to start messing with it, but not even a glance, not a walk up, nothing. Hmmmm. When I chastised them about it – probably not the best way to start the class – the response was – “are we allowed to touch it?” The American educational system – or culture – or whatever – has done a fine job of discipline. I know with a room full of 6-10 year olds they would have been all over this thing. So the question is – how do I get college students – sleepy, sleep deprived, early morning college students to have the curiosity of a 9 year old? Hmmmm. Part of that question seems to reside in getting rid of the question of what is and isn’t allowed. The next step, much more difficult, is to abolish the notion of good and bad. But we have 10 more weeks to get there.

I do find that I look forward to these classes. I like the rhythm of the stretching and brain exercise to start. Rather than jumping right into the class material with no transition, this process seems to ease us into it. It is a nice kind of liminal zone between no class and class. While I might not always employ the physical and mental I can see developing some kind of starting process for all of my classes in the future.

The objective today was to link the time projects with Bergson’s ideas on duration. A number of the views expressed on time – its democratic nature treating everyone the same, its subjectivity, its inevitability, all worked well to lead into Bergson. This, of course, was the reason for the time project in the first place. I could have just said “set aside an hour of your day (or less) and contemplate the nature of time,” but it is hard to see that and even harder to get others to see these ideas. The projects externalized these ideas so we could begin to reflect upon them as a group. The input from the class – really quite a large percentage of the class – just north of 50% of the students in attendance today (typically it is more like 30%) – was excellent. So what I end up struggling with is being fascinated by all of these ideas and wanting to get through the material I have planned for today so that we are ready to discuss the Futurists next Tuesday. I do attempt to make links between the discussion points and the reading and then, far too often, fall back into teacher mode and simply explain or list ideas. Today the “lecture” portion keyed off of Bergson’s notion of duration, simultaneity, and dynamism – all crucial for understanding Marinetti and his merry band of Futurists.

The segue to the Jarry material was a bit awkward – keying off of a discussion of logic – but it did get us to Pataphysics. The question, as always, is how many did the reading. Students get more out of the discussion if they some idea what I am talking about. But Pataphysics lead to a number of interesting ideas raised by the students – particularly along the lines of anarchy – which lead to a discussion of rules – which lead back to the Kaos Pad. This was an unintentional loop – but worked really well for where we are headed. It also sets the groundwork for Bakunin and for Dada. What I need to work toward in the next class is weaving back in some of the Self, Society, and Cosmos ideas and the four main questions for the Paths to the Present classes. But this all sets us up well for the next class. If part of the Futurist’s desire was, like Jarry, to shake people out of there complacency then the question of how to get college students to approach this material like 9-year-olds fits perfectly well. Its almost like somebody actually planned this to happen with the course material. Hmmmmmm.

Dissonance Day Five: In which we discuss aesthetics and the first projects

I must say that I do like starting class by stretching and getting our blood flowing, but I execute it with a kind self-consciousness. I wonder if that will dissipate or remain for the whole term. The word games/brain teaser stuff I enjoy also but do less self-consciously. What I like about these exercises is the communal aspect – well that and getting students up out of their chairs first thing. It is so easy just to tune out and be disengaged. I don’t assume that starting this way automatically engages, but it at least provides a different rhythm from a more traditional academic class.

Delightful conversation today. One of those days where I get fascinated by the comments and questions raised by the students and wrestle with staying on the track I had pre-planned. Clearly we could talk about art and beauty – well – forever – but the objective was to use this conversation as a way to swing back to the first projects on time. The aesthetic issues we will return to again and again over the course of the entire term, but I wanted to raise certain questions about the first projects. The hope is that these questions usher us into the discussion of Bergson and the Futurists. On the surface the projects are an answer to a question – there was no presumption that students would bring in works of art, and certainly no presumption that they would be beautiful or polished or complete works of art, and yet many of them were. I wondered if this would be the case had I assigned this project to a group of chemistry majors or history majors or English majors. Do the works “become” art (or are viewed as art) simply because they were created by art students in a class taught at an art school. Or do we apply other criteria to them?  

I find this an interesting question not just because it raises the issue of intent, but also of reception. It implies the spectator in the work as much as the artist. This is something we will deal with more specifically when we get to the Gen Art section, but it will probably also inform our discussion of Dada and Futurism. A number of students raised the question of meaning – is it in the work of art or suspended between art-work and audience? A wonderful philosophical question that we will tackle throughout the term, but perhaps engaged by the Situationists in the most visible manner.

While we did not get to the discussion of “good” art and “bad” art – the criteria based on aesthetic study, tradition, habit, etc - we did wander close to the topic. I had wanted to raise the question of aesthetics in relation to the first projects. Not only if they can be considered works of art, but can they be considered “good’ works of art. The whole reason, of course, to employ the strawman issue of “good” and “bad” is to attempt to get beyond the two exclusive categories and move toward the idea of the continuum. There is certainly time for this conversation and I do not expect that as we move from project to project that they will inevitably be lost to time. The linkages and comparisons and contrasts between each project should yield some interesting discussion points.

The blogs are such a useful tool, primarily for students that took the time to document their process. Once we have seen the work this fills in many of the questions we may have about them, about certain choices or end results. The process itself stands out, connected to, but also independent of the final project. If part of the assumption of this approach to teaching is to start with what the students know, then asking questions about their intent or process and then making links to the ideas and concepts is a much simpler task than leaping directly to the abstract. Having executed the projects each student has a concrete understanding of having to express time in a number of different ways. I am curious to see what connections can be made between the projects and Bergson’s ideas on duration. The next step then is to make the connection to the Futurists. Which has already begun. (I am debating whether to include student names in this blog – but for now I will just use letters to abbreviate). In discussing the complacency of the audience SH made a great connection to the Futurist intent to get a rise out of the audience – to provoke them in some way to have a response that was not pre-programmed. I am anxious to get to the discussion of this process next Tuesday.

Dissonance Day Four - the first projects

I have to say that I was delighted with the first projects. The assignment was to focus on “time” as a subject and follow these rules:

You have a container to fill.

The size of the container is one minute.

Anything outside one minute will be considered outside the container.

You must fill the container with three different types of time.

The range of responses to this prompt were wonderful. I asked that the students not introduce the projects, but simply present them. The hope was that we would not be prejudiced to look for certain things, but see in the projects perhaps thing unintended by the creator. It was interesting that after the initial hesitation to start there seemed to be avalanche of people wanting to present next – either out of the excitement of sharing or just to get it over with. Some were performative – using a student or students in the piece, some were sculptural, gestural, textual, filmic, etc. Some relied on an audience, some did not. Some were loud, some messy, some quiet and contemplative. In discussing the project briefly after the presentations a number of students said that they had wrestled with what to choose. They were struck by a number of options, but had little time to mull them over. This is kind of planned into the pieces – which is why I gave them only about 48 hours to work on the question.

I liked the roughness of them – some were more polished than others, but the quality that these were ideas just formed and corralled together for the purpose of the presentation focuses more on process than product. I suspect if students were given the time to revise these pieces they might see more in them or magnify certain aspects of them. Perhaps some ideas will carry over into later projects.

What struck me about the projects as a whole is the sort of idiosyncratic quality displayed, like there was a kind of private vocabulary at work in each piece with deeper meanings built in. I would be curious to discuss this more on Tuesday. The other part of why I didn’t want introductions is because of the need to explain this private symbolism. But even if as an audience we are not completely aware of all facets of each piece we still get something out of them. They can be moving or funny or terrifying while still on another level masking more complex ideas. While we can discuss this in class, with 30 students it may be difficult to get to all of these depths. My hope is that is the purpose served by the blogs. Here students can go into more detail on intent and outcome. But I do realize that some will be more detail oriented than others – so questions in class may be able to draw some of this out.

Like the Gen Art class I was really struck by the cleverness and inventiveness of the answers to a complex question. One of the things that I like about open-ended questions is that there is plenty of room for a multitude of ideas. Unlike an assignment where I may be looking for a specific answer or a range of answers presented in a specific format, these questions enable the students to draw ideas out of their own experiences. They all know about time, but they all experience it differently. I’m looking forward to the discussion on Tuesday.

Dissonance Day Three

Today Debbie Frezell started us off with a five minute set of “get the blood flowing and wake-up” exercises. A wonderful way to start the day. My hope is that it will becomes a routine that we look forward to each Tuesday and Thursday. Since we had quite a bit to do today we ended up following the physical warm-up with a short mental one – a game of telephone with 30 people. Lots of fun – like 30 person babelizer.  I’m looking forward to using some of the Olipo exercises as we get farther into the term.

I acknowledge that this is an odd way to start each class. I know that a number of the students are uncomfortable with this, but it does serve two very distinct purposes. One) it wakes everyone up and two) provides a group activity in a class that is largely fragmented. Right now it is basically my imposition on the class, but I do want to give it a few weeks before I ask their take on it. It reminds me of Zakiya’s class in grad school. One of those impactful classes that I keep reaching back towards. Well that and the link to the Bauhaus stuff.

In addition to reading two articles on aesthetics – one by Kristeller that sort of summed up the general idea of aesthetics and one by Leo Tolstoy – the students were instructed to bring in something beautiful to share. One by one students shared what they had brought. Music, film clips, painting, poems, movement, photographs, architecture, digital media, etc. A wide range of material. Given the number of students in the class we did not have time for a discussion afterwards. But – I think this might work out well since the next class they present their first projects on simultaneity. The assignment is basically to fill one minute with three different types of time.  I have no idea what they will bring in on Thursday, but I am interested to see the results. Since there is a day set aside after the projects to discuss them we can weave back to the aesthetics discussion – but now with the additional ideas developed by the projects. 

I was struck by a few things as students shared their objects of “beauty.” The need to explain why this piece is important on a personal level. I hadn’t really thought of that when I gave the assignment, but it makes perfect sense.  Things we find beautiful have deep meaning for us. In fact, had I shared the Avro Part piece I brought in I doubt I would have been able to make it through the whole song without tearing up. So yes, that eye of the beholder thing does work, but I was also struck by what seemed to draw the pieces together. Many (including my own example) were tinged with sadness or melancholy.  I wonder about that – as we find things meaningful that are beautiful because they strike a chord deep within us. This seems to reinforce Tolstoy’s point that “there is and can be no explanation of why one thing pleases one [person] and displeases another, or vice versa.” But I do wonder if in a very general sense the personal connection has some root similar between individuals. Certainly something we can discuss next Tuesday.

Dissonance Day Two

The students entered to a Mark Rothko image side-by-side with a Robert Rauschenberg while Fennez’s Endless Summer played. Not as grating as the first day – still static, but nice soothing static.  I find it interesting that the immediate action upon entering is to find a place to sit. I had to remind them that we would be getting up in a few minutes and not to get too comfy. We circled up and did a few stretches. Two contributions from students – which is nice. It would be great to develop a 3 minute routine that we all did every day before class. Some of it needs to be more aerobic though since part of the job is to get the blood flowing. The stretching gave way to tongue-twisters. Three great ones. I like that these are funny and often hard to concentrate on – they trip up both the tongue and the mind. Next rather than a game each person – in whatever order they chose – introduced themselves, told us why they were here at UNCSA, and shared something interesting about themselves. Yes – very summer camp like, but the task was to start to figure out who each person is and start to memorize names.  I know that some students are more conformable with this than others. It is an attempt to get everyone over that unfamiliar feeling and the fear of talking in front of 30 other people. Some of the folks that would rather remain silent have fantastic things to share and add to the class. We need to find a way to get that material out in the open.

I didn’t really want to fall into teacher/student mode after this – me at the head of the class, them passively sitting and all facing me. But, there were things we needed to cover that could only be done this way. I did make a point of talking a bit about space in that the traditional educational space suppose that I have answers and that students look to me for those. Once we get into the projects and fragment the space that should go away a bit. We started with the P2P site material, specifically by discussing modernism and postmodernism. The students had some great insight into differences between them. One main point is that after viewing the site we are no closer to concrete definitions, but now have a collection of ideas and themes we can explore.

I posed the Greenberg idea of modernism as using the discipline to critique the discipline and talks about art about art – Jackson Pollack, Mark Rothko, Malevich’s White on White. From there to Schoenberg and the idea of 12-tone or serialist music and Philip Glass’s comment that “this music is much more interesting than it sounds” – suggesting a complex structure, but not anything you could hum. Cage’s 4’33” becomes the end of the line going into silence. Brecht, Pirandello, Thornton Wilder all offer theatre about theatre ideas. James Joyce and Gertrude Stein – writing about writing, etc. the inverse of this id Eco’s notion that the avant-garde moves toward a metalanguage and impossible texts. When you get to blank canvases, silent compositions, the empty page, the empty stage – where do you go?

This helped us move into postmodernism – and we used the Rothko and Rauschenberg as a place to start. Hard to define these terms specifically, but by moving around them a few ideas were established that we will be able to return to throughout the term. The other material listed on the site – the concentration camp, the grid, uncertainty, what is meant by “the people” sparked a great conversation about power, control, rules, education, etc. the modernist notion that rules and order can be useful gives way to internment and unlivable modernist spaces. I really need to show a clip from Brazil where the modernist dream housing blocks have degenerated into postmodern squall. The Occupy movement also became a nice connection to this - postmodern in its construction with no central authority or ideas – as opposed to the more modernist tea party. Mike’s comments on the grid offer a nice way to talk about structure and order, but also how people can be marginalized by this order also. The internet came up as a contemporary postmodern idea – un controlled and wide open (at least for now). We ended with Betsy’s list of themes connected to mod/post and linked it back to the continuum idea that things may be closer to one idea than another. In some sense it seemed like we were rambling, but ideas were being connected for later use. I do need to explain that this type of conversation is modeling a type of behavior – of making connections and links that I expect the students to begin to do for themselves over the course of the term.

Next class we talk about aesthetics and beauty – students are instructed to being in beautiful things to share. My hope is that it will not be so “teacher” centered.