2nd Year Graduate Seminar

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General Information

Course Requirements

Calendar

Truth

General Information

DM7102: 2nd Year Graduate Seminar, Fall 2006
Digital+Media Dept., Rhode Island School of Design
Wednesdays, 6 - 9PM, CIT Room 413

Catherine D'Ignazio, professor
kanarinka@ikatun.com
AIM: kanarinkabot
Yahoo: kanarinkabot
GoogleChat: kanarinka

Course Description

This course should plunge you into your thesis research - both for the exhibition component and for the written thesis. To that end, it combines a number of assignments, writing workshops, small group critiques, and individual meetings to start incrementally building your work and your thinking towards the thesis in the Spring. You will emerge having done a significant amount of preparation for the thesis project.

Small Group Critique Format

• Only questions may be asked. If you have a statement to make about the work, you have to re-phrase it as a question.
• The person being critiqued starts the discussion by directing us towards a few relevant questions or topics that they want feedback on. They should continue to lead the discussion and direct conversation thereafter (e.g. let's get rid of the passive student under fire during critiques trope).
• People may be assigned to be devil's advocates - e.g. to ask specifically critical questions, especially if we are all being too nice to each other.

Optional Reading Topics

The readings are all optional, but I highly recommend doing all of them and thinking about them not as "theory" but specifically in relation to your art practice. The question is "How can you use them?" They touch on several key topics:

• Site/Participation: What is the role of site, place and community in your work? How does your work invite public participation and, by so doing, produce new audiences and agencies in the process? What kind of agency does your work produce?
  
  
• Technology & Public: What is the larger social, political and economic context for your work? Within what political/economoic structures is your work situated (starting with RISD as an elite educational art institution)? Does your work uphold, challenge, provoke or confirm the status quo? Whose status quo? Need it do any of those things? Who does your work serve and who uses your work to do what?
  
  
• Anti-dualist "Hot or Not" Thinking: Does your artwork suffer from dualist habits? How can we rethink traditional dualist categories like nature/culture, individual/society, man/woman, form/content, etc? How can we stay away from "Hot or Not" and allow space for other ways of thinking and making?
  
  
• Authorship & the role of the Avant Garde: What is your role as an artist in contemporary society? Why are you in an MFA program participating in the educational wing of the culture industry? What can you learn from the avant-gardist practices of the 20th century? What modernist tendencies must you throw away in order to move on with making good art?

 

Requirements

Assignments & Grading

20% - Varied Due Dates. 20 min Thesis Research Presentation.
Your thesis research on the work of 3 artists & their relation to your art practice, particularly the work that you will be showing in the thesis exhibition. Articulate your thesis argument as part of this presentation and demonstrate how the work (yours/theirs) relates to the argument. Written component to turn in: 1-2 written page/s per artist + images. NOTE: This is NOT a book report about the artists. It should be a sophisticated engagement/dialogue/critique/contextualization of other artwork in relation to your own. We will spend a 5-10 minutes offering questions and critiquing the effectiveness of each presentation.

10% - Varied Due Dates. Thesis Exhibition Proposal. 1 written page + sketches/images. Due at your individual meeting with me.

10% - Due Sept. 20th: First Version of your Thesis Statement/Bibliography.
Thesis statement should be no more than one page that clearly states your argument. The purpose of the thesis is to make a case, so make a strong one - e.g. be critical, specific and ground the argument in examples.

0% - Due Sept 27th: Thesis Committee Form w/ signatures.

20% - Due Nov 22nd: Primary Source Research/Interview.
You will conduct an interview as part of your thesis research. Recorded interviews should be transcribed/summarized and turned in in written form.

40% - Critiques, Class Preparation & Participation
Preparation for class meetings and participation in class critiques is extremely important.

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DUE DATES from ANNE WEST (discuss with her for more details):

Due October 25th - Matrix Map

Due November 29th - Map as inventory, composite map with 3 pages text, and outline (table of contents), NOTE: SUBMIT TO ENTIRE COMMITTEE

 

Policies

LAPTOPS: No Laptops during class discussions & critiques .

LATE PEOPLE: Each time you arrive late to class your class participation grade will drop by 1 percentage point.

LATE ASSIGNMENTS: Each day that your assignment is late, it will lose one grade percentage point.

ABSENCES: If you have more than one unexcused absence you risk failing the class.

 

Course Calendar

Wed, Sept 13, 2006

• INTRODUCTION: course overview
• WHAT IS A THESIS? What is a thesis statement? Looking at examples.
• ISEA 2006: Some ways not to write about your work.
• FIELD TRIP TO THE LIBRARY

Optional Reading Topic: "What the hell should an artist be doing now?"
Gilles Deleuze: Post-script on Control Societies
Walter Benjamin: The Author as Producer

Wed, Sept 20, 2006

• DUE: Preliminary Thesis Statement & Bibliography
  
• Review thesis statements
• Continue Deleuze discussion in relation to art

Optional Reading Topic: Site/Participation I
Miwon Kwan: The Unhinging of Site-specificity
Claire Doherty: The New Situationists

Wed, Sept 27, 2006

• DUE: Thesis Committee Form w/ signatures.
• WRITING WORKSHOP WITH ANNE WEST
• Optional Reading Topic: Anti-Dualism I (nature/culture)
  Brian Massumi - The Political Economy of Belonging
  Imaginary Economics: p. 9 - 41

 

Wed, Oct 4, 2006

• Thesis Research Presentation + Written Text: Rachelle, Geon
  
• 7-9PM: SMALL GROUP CRITS (20 min/person)

Optional Reading Topic: Authorship & Avant-garde I
Hal Foster: Who's Afraid of the Neo-Avant-Garde?

Wed, Oct 11, 2006

• WRITING WORKSHOP WITH ANNE WEST.

Optional Reading Topic: Technology & Public I
Dario Gamboni: Composing the Body Politic
Bruno LaTour: Do you believe in Reality?

Wed, Oct 18, 2006: MIDTERM SHOW Critiques

Note: Class from 6pm - 10pm. Show location TBA.

Thurs, Oct 19, 2006: MIDTERM SHOW Critiques

Note: THURSDAY Class from 6pm - 9pm, This time is unconfirmed and may change.

Wed, Oct 25, 2006

• Thesis Research Presentation + Written Text: Chris M, Peter, John E., Sarah
• INDIVIDUAL MEETINGS (8, 8:30): Rachelle, Geon
  

Optional Reading Topic: Anti-Dualism II (woman/man)
Elizabeth Grosz: Introduction, Volatile Bodies
Imaginary Economics: p. 41 - 80

Wed, Nov 1, 2006

NO CLASS - Catherine in NC

Optional Reading Topic: Anti-Dualism III (Form/Content)
Manuel Delanda: The Case of Modeling Software
Imaginary Economics: p. 105 - 13

Wed, Nov 8, 2006

• WRITING WORKSHOP with Anne West

Optional Reading Topic: Technology & Public II
Herbert Schiller: The Corporate Capture of the Sites of Public Expression
Simon Schaffer: Seeing Double
Imaginary Economics: p. 81 - 105

Wed, Nov 15, 2006

• Thesis Research Presentation + Written Text: Ebe, Leon, Lisa
• Thesis Research Presentation + Written Text: Christopher R., Carmen
• INDIVIDUAL MEETINGS: (9pm): Chris M

Optional Reading Topic: Authorship & Avant-garde II
Owen Smith: Avant-gardism and the Fluxus Project
Hal Foster: The Artist as Ethnographer

Wed, Nov 22, 2006 - HOLIDAY, NO CLASS

Wed, Nov 29, 2006

• DUE: Primary Source Interview
• Thesis Research Presentation: John B., Bo, John E, Elliott
• INDIVIDUAL MEETINGS (8, 8:15, 8:30, 8:45): Sarah, Ebe, Peter, Lisa

Optional Reading Topic: Site/Participation II
kanarinka: Entries for a Psychogeographic Dictionary
Claire Bishop: Antagonism & Relational Aesthetics

Wed, Dec 6, 2006

• Thesis Research Updates/Questions
• INDIVIDUAL MEETINGS (6:30, 6:45, 7:00, 7:15, 7:30, 7:45, 8): Leon, Christopher R., Elliott, Carmen, John B, Bo, John E
  

Optional Reading Topic: Technology & Public III
Michael Foucault: The Eye of Power
Stephen Graham: Software-sorted Geographies

Wed, Dec 13, 2006: STUDIO REVIEW WEEK, NO CLASS

 

Links & Misc.

Readings

Imaginary Economics by Olav Velthius

Reading Packet available from the Dept. See Sue for details.

Art Truths That You Will Learn If You Don't Know Them Yet

These are meant to be playful and polemic. Hopefully you disagree with some of them.

1. "Truth isn't something already out there we have to discover, but it has to be created in every domain" (Gilles Deleuze)
2. All art is interactive.
3. All art produces agencies and audiences.
4. All art is site-specific.
5. All art is public art.
6. All art is political.
7. All art participates in various economies even if it's not for sale.
8. Don't express yourself. Nobody cares (and if they do you probably don't want them to).
9. Originality is not original. Steal things first.
10. Work leads to work.