Colleen

I terribly apologize for the quality of this picture... but here are a few things that I am passionate about.

Christine's Project 1

Chelsea's Project 1

Cori Dahl Project 1

The Case for Working With Your Hands

Here is a link to the NY Times article "The Case for Working With Your Hands."

The only organizing principle: asking questions...

This is an exerpt from a critical essay by Patricia Hampl (titled "Memory's Movies") about "Sherman's March," a piece by Ross McElwee done in the late 80's. He is interviewing one of his main characters (and also his artistic muse) Charlene...

"She [Charlene] warns him about trying to connect things too neatly. In a sense she is warning McElwee about breaking faith with the essential fragmentation of memory, its natural state of decay. Charlene is encouraging severe allegiance to the inevitable isolation of separate moments in a life and in history. In film terms, she is telling him to frame (and thereby honor) all the separate takes.

'You never solve everything Ross,' [Charlene] tells him, warning against his desires to discover (or fabricate) more clarity or more sense than life can offer... Remembering is not the point. Memory seeks coherence... the only possible organizing principle: asking questions, noting confusions and absences, counting the emotional silver."

To learn more about Ross McElwee and his films/documentaries/video essays, you can find excerpts on YouTube. There are also films available at the library for check-out.

Project 1...

Project 1: Questions to ask while hunting/assembling/gathering:

-What am I passionate about?

-What interests me? 

After collecting, think about your selection process, how/why do you make the choices you make?

-Why do I like what I like?

-What other areas do my interests tie?

Consider our discussion in class today and the images, videos, etc. we looked at about Dada, Fluxus, and Intermedia. Your Project 1 will be a sort of Collage or Assemblage...  looking forward to seeing what you bring.

Project 1: Hunting and Gathering

hunt-ing (verb) – a search for something; usually related to the hunt for wild animals

gath-er-ing (verb) – to come together, assemble, or accumulate; to pick up from the ground; to collect scattered things; to draw together or towards oneself

Compile a series of images, texts, sounds, word lists, etc. that will inform your work this semester. The form/format you bring them to class in is up to, but it should be a pastiche of materials and sources that speak to you and represent entry points for further exploration throughout the semester.

Consider the following:

Relationships between Self / Environment / Others (consider: actions, thoughts, habits, desires, beliefs, culture, perception, technology, objects, nature, physical structures, landscape, stuff, political systems, power, lines of communication, signs, symbols, assumptions, ritual, myth, history, time…) What engages you? What are you curious about? What fills you with wonder? What do you want to explore or know more about? What sources are you drawn to for material? (Digital media? Magazines? Photographs? Stream of consciousness writing? Politics or the nightly news? A specific place? Nature? Micro systems? Macro systems?) What is your point of view, i.e., what is your relationship to the things you are looking at/into? What might be some questions that guide your research and artmaking this semester?

We are engaged in pure research—consider everything potential fodder for your creative work.

Welcome!

Greetings Intermedia Class!