Thematically, this course departs from mundane objects of the material, industrial, contemporary world. Much has happened technologically and culturally in the course of the late 20th and early 21st centuries to alter the traditional parameters of art making. Together we will examine crucial pivots and revisions, endeavoring to understand “extra-artistic” and internal forces that shape the landscape in which contemporary sculptural gestures are made.

Artists are engaged in some of the most exciting research around--research into what it means to be alive and human right here and right now.  Art, if you let it, will blow your hair back, get your heart revving, and even make your skin tingle. My teaching celebrates this through experimentation and exploration; it’s not art if there isn’t risk-taking, trial, error, revision, frustration, failure and epiphany. My classroom is dynamic space, virtual or otherwise. That said, it is a collective space, where we all benefit, support, encourage and challenge each others’ endeavors. A spirit of cooperation befits this and I exhort you to contribute to it.  The quality of your presence and attention to course content is indispensable. Now, in this virtual space, these forces of attention and commitment are critical in entirely new ways and foundational to every thing that we do.

I have conceived an overall architecture for the course, but I am also excited to tailor our investigations to our interests and needs as they evolve and present themselves. I expect you to make a serious and sustained effort to wrestle with the ideas proffered, to take notes during lectures, to come prepared to actively discuss readings or assigned videos, and to spend time at least twice during the week to further your projects between classes. It will be important to develop habits of mind that keeps you moving forward and connected to the course goals at regular intervals, rather than making binge-y, spastic, all-or-nothing gestures constrained heavily by time, i.e. “cramming” an art work into being.

Please feel free to be in contact with me as much as you need: in class, during office hours, via email. You may even text me or call my cell phone if you’re really struggling with something. Like most folks, I can get overwhelmed by email and therefore need to practice good boundaries with it, so please give me 24 hours to respond in that way. Also, I’ll expect you to check your email once every 24 hours or so, because I’ll occasionally want to communicate via this medium (about assignments, materials, etc.) and need to rely upon the certainty of your being on the other end of these electronic missives. Thank you, in advance!

Last but not least, this syllabus functions contractually, and as such delineates course objectives, expectations and obligations. You are responsible for the information herein, so please take time to read through this document carefully.

SOME THOUGHTS ON VIRTUAL LEARNING: This course will be driven by a relationship-centered pedagogy. That means we will privilege the relationships we have with each other, strive to make connections between course content, materials and larger intellectual themes, and consider this virtual space as just one of many materials we can intentionally sculpt during our time together. We will do this across and despite vast geographic and experiential space. We will do this under very unusual and often stressful circumstance. I sincerely commit to honoring the strangeness of this time with all of its possibilities, limitations and unknowns.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES:

- Develop 3-D visual thinking and making skills. The hand knows things that the mind does not!

- Understand the techniques and processes related to individual media. Get into a complicated relationship with matter!

- Hone your ability to assess and interpret 3-D forms, conceptually and formally. Cultivate intuitive, irrational, emotional, embodied intelligence!

- Develop an aesthetic vocabulary informed by the Visual Elements and Principles of Design. Duh.

- Become acquainted with the critical discourses that articulate the historical and contemporary concerns of sculpture. Whut.

- Take creative risks, experiment, fail, succeed, and repeat. Yes, THIS!

- Think divergently. Make radically!!!

EVALUATION:

Process (everything that leads up to a work)

Process is paramount in artmaking. Dedicated development of your ideas, exploration of a variety of options, and patient consideration will yield the most extraordinary results. By “process,” I mean the development of your ideas in sketches, maquettes and in concept. As a general rule, persistence and deep attention offer ample pay-off; at other times you will need to submit to the irrational forces of intuition and madness, heeding the unique screech of sirens and muses.

Product  (design, craft, imagination manifest in the final piece)

The formal choices that you make about size, scale, shape, color, material, etc. ARE the content of your work. Close attention to the Visual Elements and Principles of Design will yield the greatest synthesis between FORM and CONTENT. By “product” I mean the final work, its formal success and achieved meanings as delineated by the assignments, and in conversation with the fundamental concerns of sculpture, historical and contemporary. 

I’m as interested in thinking as I am in making and particularly in the intersections between the two. (One never happens without the other!) In light of this, I will grade you on your ability to articulate ideas in both materials and words.  In addition to presenting a variety of physical/creative problems to solve, course content will include discussion of influential technological, social and cultural forces that have impacted artists and art making over the last 100 years. Your work and the discussion of said work should evidence engagement with these ideas.

All assigned activities must be completed in order to pass this course. Activities completed on time, with high degrees of attention, persistence, passion, and creativity will warrant high marks.

Projects

Color Wheels - 5pts.

The Tool Makes the Teacher - 5pts.

Umbilicus - 5pts.

Body + Object Gestures - 5 pts.

Moo - 5pts.

Product Placement - 5pts.

Say It With Your Body - 5 pts.

The Thing That Makes the Thing - 5 pts.

Levelling Up - 10 pts.

OFFICE HOURS: I’m available to you during our class time and at other times through the week when you may need assistance with course content/assignments; just email me if you’d like to meet outside of our regular timeslot. We can chat about the course, college more generally, careers, current events or whatever. Do not feel like you need a so-called “good” question – you can even just say “hello”!

CITIZENSHIP: I use the term Citizenship normally to indicate your performance in the studios with regard to participation, work ethic, cleanup, organization, and safety, in addition to a measure of the quality of your engagement with the meat and bones of this course’s intellectual content. In an online setting your attentiveness to the larger learning environment/culture and collective intelligence that we generate (or thwart) together takes on a totally new dimension, while the proverbial dust and debris typically associated with sculptural processes fades from consciousness almost completely. Sculpture still requires a particular kind of mindfulness, presence, and an ability to execute from places of intuition/embodied intelligence. We will cultivate these throughout our time together. Citizenship - 45 pts.

THOUGHTS ON POWER, REPRESENTATION AND HISTORY: I believe art and artists are indispensable to a well-functioning democracy. Democracy requires imagination and flourishes when the imaginative life of a society is cultivated and nurtured. We can only create that which we can imagine, whether our creations are works of art, engineering, public policy, etc. I therefore strive to maintain a classroom that is deeply respectful of differences in ideas, opinions, strategies, and experience. Yet the history of art is affected by the same historical operations of power that play out in the world at large. Cognizance of the ways race, class, gender, sex, ethnicity, religion, age, ability, national origin, and sexual orientation inform our making and interpreting is crucial to our intellectual inquiry. I seek to know and carefully navigate the ways artistic representation makes power and privilege visible. This can be tricky, but again, I endeavor to build a community in which we ask hard questions about how the history of images and objects shapes our experiences, desires and sense of the possible. Building this awareness will assist the effort to decolonize the curriculum.

I would be remiss to fail to acknowledge that the forces of empire in their different guises (genocide, slavery, white supremacy and misogyny) have conspired to allow us to inhabit this room on this campus on this land, even virtually. I do so with the hope that consciousness of these agents can lead us away from their perpetuation.

CRITIQUES: Critique is a format for discussing work in a more or less public way. Critiques can take many forms, including group-wide scenarios, peer/partner critiques and written reviews. Often they utilize free-association, but they function best when the criteria for analyses are clear. You will be on both ends of the critique, giving and receiving feedback. At the most basic level our interest will be in learning how visual language functions, and how to wield it for certain effect. All artworks make arguments and utilize visual rhetoric to do so. But art also traffics in language that is spatious, historically situated and slippery, permitting meanings to function in ways that are not rational or literal but instead oblique, associative and evocative. Interpretation happens best at the deep end of the pool and we will spend a good amount of time there.

LATE WORK: Projects unfinished by the designated time are extremely discouraged and will--excepting rare cases of serious personal crisis, famine, war, acts of God and/or economic collapse--suffer commensurate reduction in grade. I advise you to communicate with me well in advance if you anticipate not being able to complete an assignment on time.

ATTENDANCE/TARDINESS: Prompt and consistent attendance is crucial and your success in this class will depend largely upon it. I take attendance daily and the quality and quantity of your attendance will be reflected in your Citizenship grade. I always require an email from the Dean of Students in order for an absence to be considered Excused.  Often, at the beginning of class I make important announcements and set up the schedule of activities, answer questions, or reflect on our direction and progress.  Routinely missing the first 5-10 minutes is unacceptable and will severely impact your Citizenship grade.

WORKLOAD: A modicum of success in this class will typically require 5-6 hours of work outside of class time per week; this includes working on class projects, readings/videos, attending exhibitions and lectures, etc.

Art making is not a linear process, and artworks cannot be crammed overnight; this dictum applies especially to material based works, which are supremely subject to laws of physics, skill and investment of time.

CLASS STRUCTURE: Our time together will be structured by short video lectures, group and individual Zoom interactions, critiques, and thinking through/together: writing and discussing art, artists and ideas online and via Zoom. Outside of class you will have time to make and post your work to our class Instagram.

INSTAGRAM: transformed_object2020, password: piggyphant101

COURSE FEE: The typical course fee for this course of $150 has been removed. I’ll supply a list of materials that I’d like you to acquire for the class. These can typically be purchased at hardware, grocery and craft stores. You can also feel free to incorporate materials you already possess. I may opt to mail you some more obscure items.

SAFETY: Works involving bio-hazardous materials, body fluids, egregious physical or emotional pain, or weapons will NOT be permitted in class. If you have ANY concerns regarding the safety of a material or process or project, you are required to consult beforehand with me. Let your guiding principle be “do no harm,” physically to the building, yourself, grounds, facilities, etc. or emotionally to yourself/others. While some actions may be intellectually defensible within the history of art, there are limits to what I will allow to happen in my classroom, virtual or otherwise, for both your and my emotional safety.

CHANGE: I reserve the right to alter or modify this syllabus as we proceed through the weeks of the semester.

ACCOMMODATIONS:  If you are a student with a disability who will need accommodations in this course, please meet with Julia Dunn, Associate Dean of Students (Mem. 205, X5213, dunnjl@whitman.edu) for assistance in developing a plan to address your academic needs. All information about disabilities is considered private; if I receive notification from Ms. Dunn that you are eligible to receive an accommodation, I will provide it in as discrete a manner as possible.

Week 1

Monday, January 25, 2021

WATCH: course intro video + Jessica Stockholder ART 21 video

QUESTIONS: (create a google document that you will add to throughout the semester where you can work with these questions.)

Jessica Stockholder argues that there are different kinds of thinking, some kinds that only the hands know. What does she mean? Can you put this into more concrete language drawn from your own experience?

Jessica Stockholder claims that intuition is a form of thinking, as opposed to being something distinct from thinking. How can you dig into this notion a little more, what comes up for you?

What kinds of thinking exist? Start to generate a list.

Jessica Stockholder suggests that choosing to put yourself in a space of art making (literally and figuratively) is about seeking to put yourself in relation to what you don’t know. How do you know what you don’t know?

How/why does Jessica Stockholder use almost exclusively found objects in her work?

MAKE: color wheel (see samples below) with 50+ random objects, post to Instagram by 10pm Tuesday.

Wednesday, January 27, 2021

ZOOM: Wednesday 1pm  https://whitman.zoom.us/j/2208648525

• course intro, discuss the Jessica Stockholder video, look at and discuss color wheels.

Week 2

Monday, February 1, 2021

WATCH: Damian Ortega Art 21 + short lecture

QUESTIONS: (add to your google doc)

How is an act of artistic appropriation a political statement?

Damian Ortega seeks for his works to “transform and recontextualize” everyday objects that we often take for granted. One example of this is his piece Cosmologia Domestica. If you had to create a similar work, what objects from your current surroundings would you include?  These objects would be used to describe an account or theory of the origin of the universe, i.e. a cosmology. Name 5 objects and give a little bit of a rationale for each. What warrants their inclusion in such a piece? Please be prepared to share about your 5 objects in class on Wednesday.

Damian Ortega claims that the most exciting moment in making an artwork involves taking risks, and that one of the most important ways to learn is via failure. Curiosity drives DO’s practice, and DO attributes his strong sense of curiosity to his childhood, where his parents were supportive of free-form experimentation and play. What experience or force has stimulated the most curiosity in your life?

In response to a feeling of disillusionment with his university education, DO sets out to create an alternative with friends. The Friday Workshops were an extremely fertile place for them to experiment and learn on their own terms. What kind of learning environment or situation would be most stimulating for you?

Damian Ortega is fascinated with tools, as extensions of the hand and mind and as metaphorical and literal levers to do new things. Sometimes, a work requires a new tool to be made to accomplish a really specific task.  You will now have an opportunity to start to think with objects doing the assignment The Tool Makes the Teacher . Start to think through this prompt and gather some “tools” before class on Wednesday.

Wednesday, February 3, 2021

ZOOM: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2208648525

We will discuss the Damian Ortega video and talk specifically about your Cosmologia Domestica objects. This is only a thought experiment, a way to grease the cogs. Still, spend some time thinking about all your possibilities.

I’ll introduce the The Tool Makes the Teacher project during class; it is designed for you to do over the weekend.

Week 3

Monday, February 8, 2021

LOOK: thoughts on design

OPTIONAL: Get feedback on your The Tool Makes the Teacher ideas, to make sure you are on the right track.

OPTIONAL ZOOM: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2208648525

Post your 3 best Tools (a drawing or a photo) to Instagram by Tuesday at 10pm.

Wednesday, February 10, 2021

ZOOM:   https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2208648525

We will discuss the The Tool Makes the Teacher works you’ve made and posted on Instagram.

Week 4

Monday, February 15, 2021

NO CLASS - PRESIDENT’S DAY

Wednesday, February 17, 2021

WATCH (before class): Janine Antoni

For our discussion we will be looking at and interpreting several of Antoni’s works. 

Moor - all the different materials and lives are subject to the same treatment--braiding. What meaning does the braid form suggest?

Eureka - This piece re-enacts Archimede’s discovery of the formula for calculating volume. The body was very much the “tool” used in that thought process/discovery, just as Antoni uses her body to make the work. Why do you think she chooses lard? What association does that material carry? 

Loving Care - How we choose to make something has EVERYTHING to do with its meaning. Let’s analyze Antoni’s choice of material (hair dye), gesture (swishing her hair across the floor) and title (hair care product); what ideas are produced from these three choices? 

Saddle - in class

Lick & Lather - in class

START TO THINK ABOUT: Umbilicus

ZOOM: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2208648525

Week 5

Monday, February 22, 2021

VIEW: design thoughts

ZOOM: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2208648525

Meet to discuss your Umbilicus ideas during class time. Post finished project to Instagram by 10pm Tuesday

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

DISCUSS: Umbilicus projects due.

ZOOM: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2208648525

Week 6

Monday, March 1, 2021

WATCH: Gabriel Orozco Art 21

QUESTIONS: Gabriel Orozco doesn’t have a studio, instead, he walks through the world with his camera, his curiosity and his awareness. When he lands on a project he finds the space to accomplish it (like his re-configuration of the Citroen or his work in clay). He says the studio feels like an “isolated, artificial” bubble to him and he prefers to be “closer to reality”. 

“I try to be intimate with everything I can. To be intimate you have to open yourself, trust what is around you, and you generate signs of intimacy with these things.” What is this intimacy??? What does he mean???

“I don’t have a technique; I have many, many different ways to work.” 

GO remakes the Citroen car “on its own logic.” What logic do you think he means here?

The Citroen is “charged with significance because it’s a cultural object.” Is there another car that comes to mind for you as having this kind of cultural weight? 

GO loves games and loves to re-invent them (his chess game with all horses, his ping pong table with the pond in the middle, the billiard table shaped like an oval with the pendulum) and he says you can interpret them as you like--perhaps related to the story from Hindu mythology about the origin of the world taking place in a pond, or you can think about it in a totally different way. Why does he seem so open to all these possible interpretations, even ones in which the game is admittedly more “boring” as a result of his interventions?

GO claims that the thinking process is related to the body in so many ways, and that “all actions generate stimulus in the brain.” Some slow down thinking, some accelerate it.

START TO THINK ABOUT: Body + Object Gestures

Wednesday, March 3, 2021

Discuss Gabriel Orozco and workshop Body + Object Gestures

ZOOM: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2208648525

Week 7

Monday, March 8, 2021

NO CLASS - SPRING BREAK!!!!!

Wednesday, March 10, 2021

Body + Object Gestures due!!!!!!!

ZOOM:   https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2208648525

Week 8

Monday, March 15, 2021

WATCH: Allora & Calzadilla

QUESTIONS:

How does the collaborative model of art making that A&C embody change your thinking about the creative process?

A&C characterize their way of working as “formulating a response” to some idea, situation or problem. Their research is as extensive and labor intensive intellectually as it is physically. Theirs is a more contemporary way of inhabiting the creative process; ideas drive the work as much as, if not more than, materials. 

Yet, they are also highly attuned to materials, and their myriad “connotations”. They give the example of chalk, which has material, ideological, and practical dimensions, which they are able to harness in the work they elaborated in the city plaza in Peru. As that sculptural artwork unfolds, the large chalks break apart and are used by many people to write many things. Then, suddenly, the chalk is “arrested” and taken away by the police. How do you process this event? What comes up?

Politics also plays a big role in the content of A&C’s work. Their work is a means to think through different situations (the closing of the bomb test site in Vieques, for example). They aren’t so much in search of answers to political problems, but rather ways to visualize them in meaningful, affecting ways (as seen in the piece Under Discussion, in which a person rides a motorized table through the water around the island).  What is the work that you have made that has the most political “volume”? How could you take a work you’ve made and add more political content?

A&C also avail themselves of humor in their work. Often they juxtapose two things that are absolutely unrelated at first glance (trumpet/muffler, motor/table, pig/car axle). A&C actively seek out paradox, contradiction and absurdity, using what they call “ideological glue” to make creative connections.

In class Wednesday we will consider the connotations of milk. Cow’s milk. It will be nice to have some on hand to experiment with (it can be almond milk or soy or whatever, it doesn’t matter). Spend a few minutes thinking about milk as an art material. What associations can you make with the material alone?

Wednesday, March 17, 2021

ZOOM:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2208648525

start to work on Moo projects. We will do some activities to get you going.

Week 9

Monday, March 22, 2021

NO CLASS

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

ZOOM: Wednesday 1pm  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2208648525

We will critique your Moo Projects and look ahead to work made by Minerva Cuevas.

Week 10

Monday, March 29, 2021

WATCH: Minerva Cuevas

QUESTIONS:

Minerva Cuevas is an artist with a decidedly political bent. Her work is about as well as enacts forms of social justice. Her works manipulating barcodes, student ID’s, and subway tickets are forms of “micro sabotage”. What is exactly so provocative about these works? Where is the line between art and non-art?

Cuevas says we live in a visual society but are blind. She re-works the visual codes within objects to make things visible again. Let’s do this!!! This impulse lives at the heart of this class.

In the exhibition “feast and famine” Cuevas says the most important work is the dripping chocolate piece, in which each drip accounts for 1 person dying of starvation, somewhere in the world. Let’s really sit with this piece and discuss its use of materials, its gesture, its form and see what meanings it produces. We’ll do this in class, but you should also spend time on your own wrapping your head around this work prior to our discussion.

Finally, Cuevas' work takes place in Mexico, against a rich culture of protest and civic engagement. She claims that “art is totally connected to social change.” What does she mean by this? Do you see this in the US? Explain.

Start working on Product Placement Projects. Schedule a time for feedback if you want it.

Wednesday, March 31, 2021

ZOOM:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2208648525

Discuss Minerva Cuevas works and ideas. Workshop Product Placement Projects.

Week 11

Monday, April 5, 2021

NO CLASS

Wednesday, April 7, 2021

NO CLASS - SPRING BREAK!!!!!

Week 12

Monday, April 12, 2021

NO CLASS

Wednesday, April 14, 2021

ZOOM:   https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2208648525

DISCUSS: Product Placement works

Week 13

Monday, April 19, 2021

NO CLASS

WATCH: Latoya Ruby Fraizer Art 21 and this video on the history of Performance art.

QUESTIONS: Latoya Ruby Frasier says, “I never believed what I was seeing because what I was experiencing was totally different.” This sentence in some ways gets at one of the primary impulses behind contemporary art making: to offer up something that isn’t currently a part of the culture around you. This can take the shape of a new idea, a new way of thinking about something, or the assertion of a non-dominant position or perspective. But what LRF says goes even further. She suggests that the images around her were in some way duplicitous and/or reflected another reality far different from and even opposite her own. This brings us back to the tension that the story of Zeuxius and Parahassius tries to elucidate: the nature of reality isn’t something we can accurately say that we know, much less agree upon. 

What are LRF’s main objections to the Levi’s campaign’s use of her hometown, Braddock, PA in their advertising campaign?

LRF is a photographer by training. Yet she chooses to take a different approach to the issues she sees at stake within the Levi’s campaign, to which she vehemently objects. She conceives of a performance piece that she believes will function differently than a photograph can in making her critique and bringing the issues to light. In what ways do you think she has succeeded? In what ways do you think she has failed?

LRF is always “asking questions” through her work. Near the end of the video she comments that now she wants to go back to Braddock and “really do something”. This implies perhaps that taking photographs or making a performance isn’t doing something. What do you think she means by that, and do you agree/disagree?

This Art 21 video details how LRF departs from her conventional art making (photography) and switches to another medium altogether, performance. The second video, A Case for Performance Art, gives insight into the historical antecedents and origin of this new genre in which art isn’t an image on the wall or an object in front of you, it’s an action within life.  This is again, one of the impetuses for the kind of art making we’ve been involved in all semester. Of all of the projects that you’ve completed, or witnessed each other make, which one most has this character?

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

ZOOM:   https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2208648525

DISCUSS: LaToya Ruby Frazier work and questions. Start #sayitwithyourbody projects.

Week 14

Monday, April 26, 2021

NO CLASS

Wednesday, April 28, 2021

DISCUSS: #sayitwithyourbody projects due.

ZOOM:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2208648525,

Week 15

Monday, May 3, 2021

NO CLASS

WATCH: Theaster Gates Art 21

QUESTIONS:

TG says, “I think I have been given a gift to be able to see things--not just the thing in front of me, but the thing inside the thing.” This feels similar to Latoya Ruby Frasier’s sentiment that what she was seeing in the world was contrary to her experience, but with perhaps a more positive spin. What do you think contributes to the development of this kind of vision?

TG believes that the world is ripe for re-shaping, re-imagining, and that artists are exactly the ones to give birth to the radical ideas that will transform society. What is the most radical idea you think TG comes up with?

TG imagines that “culture could triumph over violence” and over time, make it stop. Can you point to a place (museum, art work, community organization, digital space, etc.) where you have see this happening? Have you ever experienced such a thing, even at a smaller scale?

TG makes a case for art that “doesn’t really have any boundaries”. Thinking back over all of the artists that we have studied and emulated in this class, who else do you see working in this boundary-less kind of way? 

Wednesday, May 5, 2021

DISCUSS: Theaster Gates work and questions

Keep working on developing #sayitwithyourbody gestures/videos. Post three re-makes of your classmates’ gestures.

ZOOM:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2208648525

Week 16

Monday, May 10, 2021

LAST DAY OF CLASS!!!!! Final renderings of the #sayitwithyourbody projects are due!!!!

PLEASE POST TO INSTAGRAM WELL BEFORE CLASS BEGINS. THANK YOU.

ZOOM:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/2208648525