bonusassignment

I captured this image of street artist Dscreet in Shoreditch, London last summer on a street art tour with the London/Venice Biennale Field School. Seen here is Dscreet’s classic owl figure surrounded by the lyrics of Black Sabbath’s song Sympt… — I captured this piece by street artist Dscreet in Shoreditch, London last summer on a street art tour with the London/Venice Biennale Field School. Seen here is Dscreet’s classic owl figure surrounded by the lyrics of Black Sabbath’s song *Symptom of the Universe.*

Bonus Assignment | Street Art Mapping

May 29, 2020 in bonusassignment

In the Avant-Guardian Musings "Bonus Assignment" series, I will occasionally post creative prompts for students to explore and expand their understanding around a range of art history and visual culture studies topics. These assignments will be collected under the Resources section of my website, hashtagged #bonusassignment under Search, and available as an Open Education Resource for educators.

Modern and contemporary art historians have long had a love/hate relationship with graffiti and street art. There are many reasons for this, including the difficulty of categorizing a form of visual culture that has most often been linked to a legacy of vandalism, populism, and untrained artist practitioners. There is also the ephemeral, anonymous, and public nature of the practice, working against traditions and norms in the long history of art that seeks to isolate, collect, and elevate art into its own special sphere. Put more simply, graffiti and street art breaks the rules, conventions, and expectations of the art world. And, until recently, graffiti and street artists have found very little legitimacy with collectors, curators, and especially those who help shape the critical dialogue and discourse within academic art history.

The street artist Banksy is sometimes compared to Marcel Duchamp in terms of his avant-garde gestures and challenge to the institutions of art. In 2018, this Banksy work titled Girl With Balloon famously “shred itself” at the moment it was sold at a… — The street artist Banksy is sometimes compared to Marcel Duchamp in terms of his avant-garde gestures and challenge to the institutions of art. In 2018, this Banksy work titled *Girl With Balloon* famously “shred itself” at the moment it was sold at auction for $1.4 million.

But it is also precisely for these same reasons that many of us—especially those art historians like me who research and focus on urban space and the avant-garde—find graffiti and street art among the most radical, relevant, and compelling forms of contemporary art being produced today. It is a form of artistic expression that gains power through its high level of visibility to a broad cross-section of the public, challenging the notion of art’s elite status and separation from the everyday. For several years now, I have sought to include the history and influence of graffiti and street art in many of my courses (including developing one dedicated upper-level art history course on the topic that is now in regular rotation at KPU). I have also made many visits, on my own and with the field school, to cities and spaces where graffiti and street art have long and complicated histories.

The bonus assignment provides an opportunity to practice traditional art history research and analytical skills (examining FORM, CONTENT, and CONTEXT, along with analysis and evaluation of exhibitions) through a closer engagement with street art. Students will first be asked to tour and reflect upon virtual street art exhibitions from the Google Street Art Project, and then be directed to explore street art that has been crowd sourced and mapped from cities all over the world on the Street Art Cities website.

INSTRUCTIONS:

STEP ONE: Go to the Google Street Art Project Website and browse and do a virtual visit of the featured Online Exhibitions.

STEP TWO: Select any ONE of the featured street art exhibitions and write a reflective short review (500-750 words) about what you have encountered addressing the following questions:

Briefly describe what the exhibition is about (where it is located and its primary theme), identifying what drew you to the exhibition and why you ultimately chose to write about it. Please make sure to also provide a clear link to the chosen exhibition so that I can find it quickly while grading.
How is the street art presented? What kind of narrative is created about the works? How are they made to relate to one another, and why?
In terms of the actual artworks, describe what the chosen pieces have in common in terms of their FORM (how the artworks are put together visually/materially) and CONTENT (the stories imparted by the images).
Speculate on why you think this particular project was chosen by Google Street Art for inclusion in the larger website. Take into consideration the urban locale, the chosen themes of the exhibition, and the street artists featured.

The Google Street Art Project is one of the most comprehensive sites on the Internet inventorying curated street art exhibitions. Many of these public art events are largely ephemeral and tough to locate after the fact, so this is a resource that ha… — The Google Street Art Project is one of the most comprehensive sites on the Internet inventorying curated street art exhibitions. Many of these public art events are largely ephemeral and tough to locate after the fact, so this is a resource that has attempted to catalogue a very small cross-section of what can be experienced out in the urban environment all over the world.

STEP THREE: Please go to Street Art Cities and do a virtual visit of the Street Art Cities map. This website and app updates crowd-sourced street art discoveries daily. A nice place to start is on their homepage where the most recent uploads are featured.

Choose TWO CITIES from anywhere in the world that are on different continents (Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, South America) and pick one street art project from each of the two cities to put into comparison and contrast with one another. If you don’t know where to begin in the cities you choose, you can use the “Random” function to generate selections until you find something of interest to you.

Many crowd-sourced apps and websites have come and gone over the years that attempt to map street art from around the world. The Street Art Cities Map is among the most active, although more Eurocentric than the original Google Street Art Map (which… — Many crowd-sourced apps and websites have come and gone over the years that attempt to map street art from around the world. The Street Art Cities Map is among the most active, although more Eurocentric than the original Google Street Art Map (which has sadly been neglected in recent years).

STEP FOUR: Now, you can begin the process of inventorying the street art projects’ attributes using FORM, CONTENT, and CONTEXT to guide you. Take notes on your points of comparison and contrast, and make sure to consult the entry about basic information given to you by the “Details” section of each street art work. You can also do a small amount of online research concerning the city/country of the projects to help you speculate about the CONTEXT (the circumstances/history/background information concerning its production) of your chosen street art projects.

Write up your final comparison and contrast in a 500-750 word response, beginning with a short description identifying each project and where they are located, and then working through how they compare and contrast in terms of their FORM, CONTENT, and CONTEXT. Please make sure to provide either a screen grab image or links to the two chosen images so that I can find them quickly while grading.

Kenny Schachter, Shackled (2020) Jeff Koons's (blue) ball and chain gang. Courtesy of Kenny Schachter. — Kenny Schachter, *Shackled* (2020) Jeff Koons's (blue) ball and chain gang. Courtesy of Kenny Schachter.

Bonus Assignment | The Price of Everything (Art Doc Film Series)

May 06, 2020 in bonusassignment

Few things fall inside my wheelhouse better than a well executed documentary film about artists and/or the art world. Art docs satisfy my love of filmic representation and analysis while allowing me to unpack the myriad ways in which art historical subject matter is presented, shaped, and deployed as its own unique form of narrative and visual discourse. Most recently, I’ve been researching and analyzing a whole series of art documentaries for a paper I am working on that will be part of an edited book collection on the broader topic of cinema and art. One of my core arguments is that since at least around the time of the 2007-8 financial crisis, the documentary film format has been strategically deployed by a new generation of non-fiction filmmakers working to reveal, through filmic devices, the notion of problematic aesthetics, disjuncture, and black humour that permeates the contours of the contemporary art world.

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Of these select films, The Price of Everything (2018) has become arguably one of the more provocative and popular documentaries that I often screen in my contemporary art hIstory courses. Directed by Nathaniel Kahn, a filmmaker who’s famous father architect Louis Kahn was the subject of another of his excellent art docs My Architect (2003), the film is a searing and no-holds-barred look at the contemporary art world from a number of key perspectives— from artists, art collectors, gallerists, art critics, curators, auctioneers, and art historians to name just a few. The film also provides for provocative discussion and contemplation, at many levels, for emerging artists. Perhaps most importantly, the film tackles the thorny subject of art and money, and the subjective assessment of art’s “value,” a taboo or avoided topic in many art schools (and one that I LOVE).

The bonus assignment is based in part on a set of final exam questions and also draws on discussion prompts that I have created to allow students an engagement with the film before, during, and after viewing. The film is currently available for download through iTunes and HBO.

INSTRUCTIONS:

PART A) Before you watch the film, you will choose FOUR individuals to pay closer attention to when watching the film. TWO of the individuals must come from the “Artists” listed below, and TWO from the “Art World Insiders” listed below.

A) ARTISTS: Choose TWO artists to pay closer attention to when watching the film from among:

Larry Poons, Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter, Marilyn Minter, George Condo, Njideka Akunyili Crosby

For the two artists you pick from the above list, please do a quick and simple online search (use Google Image search to see a range of works) and choose one work of art from each of the artists that catches your eye and that you are drawn to purely for aesthetics or taste. Please do this without looking too closely at context related information (we will look more closely at this once you finish watching the film). I want your first impressions, and this will work better if you do a blind reading.

Record your findings and offer a FORM and CONTENT analysis in 100-150 words for each of the two chosen artworks (in complete sentences using your own words and ideas). Cut and paste the artworks into your final document so that I can see what you chose.

B) ART WORLD INSIDERS: Choose TWO art world insiders to pay closer attention to when watching the film from among:

Amy Cappellazzo, Jerry Saltz, Simon de Pury, Stefan Edlis, Holly Peterson, Jeffrey Deitch

For the two art world insiders you pick from the above list, please do a quick Google search to understand what their profession is and how their significance to the art world comes across in their web presence. Record your findings in 100-150 words for each individual, offering a quick analysis of what you think their influence and importance is to art world is (in complete sentences and using your own words and ideas).

PART B) While watching the film, keep the following question constantly in mind:

What ideas or information in the film were new or surprising to you?

Take notes and/or pause the film and record your honest and thoughtful reflections one sheet of paper (handwritten point form notes are perfectly ok for this question). There is no word limit on this, but I expect to see at least 350 words.

PART C) After watching the film, please answer the following FOUR questions:

QUESTION 1: How does watching this film influence you or potential audiences about “What is art?” or “What makes art valuable?” Have these ideas evolved for you since taking first taking an art history course? If so, how? If not, why not? Please answer in a rich paragraph below (aiming for 200-350 words).
QUESTION 2: This film is in part about the process of artists making art, and capturing this process on film is notoriously difficult. Yet, this film has won awards based on the filmmaker’s ability to represent aspects of art-making that few people will ever see. Select 1-2 scenes that particularly illuminated this process of successfully showing how art is made, and describe how the filmmaker revealed subtle and non-verbal processes that heighten audience experience. Please answer in a rich paragraph below (aiming for 200-350 words).
QUESTION 3: Go back to the two artists you were drawn to look at before the film screening. All of the artists quoted in the film have varying opinions on whether they should make art they believe will sell, regardless of whether that is the art they want to make. Describe what the attitude of your two chosen artists was, and reflect on whether what you learned about them changed your opinion about their art practice. Would you want to change the artist you are drawn to learning more about their practice and beliefs? If so, why? If not, what did you learn to reinforce your first blind reading. Please answer in a rich paragraph below (aiming for 200-350 words).
QUESTION 4: Go back to the two art world insiders you were drawn to look at for this film in Question #1. For each individual, reflect on why you think the filmmaker chose to focus on them for the purposes of the film, and describe what perspective, attitude, and/or statement(s) you strongly agreed with for each one and/or which perspective, attitude, and/or statement(s) you had a strong reaction against? Please answer in a rich paragraph below (aiming for 200-350 words).

Kenneth Goldsmith’s book Wasting Time on the Internet (2016) argues for another kind of productive and creative engagement with the online world. — Kenneth Goldsmith’s book *Wasting Time on the Internet* (2016) argues for another kind of productive and creative engagement with the online world.

Bonus Assignment | Wasting Time on the Internet

April 16, 2020 in bonusassignment

It would only seem fitting that I begin my foray back to musings on this blog with an idea sparked by Kenneth Goldsmith. Poet, conceptual artist, and founder of UbuWeb-- an early proponent of open access and web-based educational resources for avant-garde works, writings, and films-- Goldsmith is the individual who inspired me to begin Avant-Guardian Musings back in 2010. In my very first blog post, I spoke about how I had come to believe that through opening access to alternative spaces of dialogue beyond the university classroom, new fields of radicality and potential could emerge to break down traditional barriers.

Goldsmith has continued to evolve his message and approach to thinking about accessible learning with an avant-garde mindset. Back in 2014, he sparked controversy by proposing and teaching a course at the University of Pennsylvania called “Wasting Time On the Internet.” Writing about his rationale for the creative writing class in The New Yorker, Goldsmith explained how the framework, mechanisms, and spatial/temporal elements of the Internet are tailor made for avant-garde experimentation:

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“The Surrealists’ ideal state for making art was the twilight between wakefulness and sleep, when they would dredge up images from the murky subconscious and throw them onto the page or canvas. Proposing sleepwalking as an optimal widespread societal condition, André Breton once asked, “When will we have sleeping logicians, sleeping philosophers?” It seems that the Surrealist vision of a dream culture has been fully realized in today’s technologies. We are awash in a new, electronic collective unconscious; strapped to several devices, we’re half awake, half asleep. We speak on the phone while surfing the Web, partially hearing what’s being said to us while simultaneously answering e-mails and checking status updates. We’ve become very good at being distracted. From a creative point of view, this is reason to celebrate. The vast amount of the Web’s language is perfect raw material for literature. Disjunctive, compressed, decontextualized, and, most important, cut-and-pastable, it’s easily reassembled into works of art.”

To his credit, Goldsmith found a way to create the course and went on to publish a fantastic manifesto-like book with the same name, accumulating many of his own reflections, ideas, and luckily for us, actual assignments and directives to re-create aspects of his course. Over the years, I have borrowed ideas from the book’s Appendix: 101 Ways to Waste Time on the Internet in a number of my new media and visual culture courses. But now, as we collectively isolate at home in the midst of a global pandemic, I figure what better time to spark creativity, critical thinking, and new perspectives around something we are all doing—“wasting time” on the Internet.

INSTRUCTIONS:

1) Select 1-2 of the tasks listed in the curated list below. I have chosen strategically from the original “101 Ways” list. Choose a task that you know will be a challenge and moves you out of your comfort zone. Trust me, it will be more of a benefit to the outcome of the assignment.

2) Execute the task(s) as faithfully as possible. While doing the task(s), or immediately afterwards (all will depend on the nature of your instructions), keep careful track of your thoughts, reflections, and the outcomes of your experiment. Ideally you can capture this more spontaneously via video or audio diary, captioned photographs/screen shots, and taking written/typed notes.

3) Take a few days to think and reflect further on the outcomes of your task(s). Assemble your findings from above into a document, video, visual presentation, or art work. To accompany your final submission, write a rich paragraph discussing how you understand the task(s) challenges/subverts/upends/disturbs the unspoken “rules” of the Internet/social media and its social norms. Include discussion about how your chosen task generates new perspectives or exposes problems/issues/inequalities/shortcomings of the Internet/social media.

Curated List of “101 Ways to Waste Time on the Internet”

2. Instagram something with the intention of it being taken down by Instagram. Take a screenshot of it; keep a record of it. Instagram the screenshot. Screenshot that Instagram. If it is taken down again, repeat the process until all you’re posting is a screenshot of a screenshot of a screenshot . . . of the original photo.

7. Go on Netflix, and look at the first suggestion for your Top Picks. If you’ve already seen it, then pick the next suggestion. Read a generic Wikipedia article about the show/movie, and write a Facebook status using what you’ve learned (develop an opinion or a question or a statement). The status should not mention that you haven’t seen the show/movie. Tag at least one person in the status.

29. Take an article you vehemently disagree with, post it as your Facebook status, and then say how you align yourself with everything it’s saying. Like this status. Share it. Post it on other people’s walls. Do the same thing on Twitter.

32. With a partner, watch a short video in turns with one both recording the other with a camera as well as taking notes on the other’s affective response. Put the original video, and the two reaction videos side by side in a new video.

41. Ask each other about passwords. Talk about how you picked your password. Ask how other people picked their passwords. Share your password if you want and explain what you like and don’t like about it.

54. Clog as much as you can. Clog online forums for your school or work. Post a series of blank posts on your Facebook feed, send a bunch of blank e-mails to everyone you know, open a bunch of blank tabs, and just clog everything. CLOG. What does it feel like to apply force to the Internet?

71. Pick a genre of music you don’t usually listen to or that you dislike. Listen to five minutes of it without doing anything else. Once you pick a song, you have to listen to the whole thing. Don’t touch the computer as you listen. After the five minutes, write about what you felt/were thinking about. How did it feel to do nothing but listen to something you don’t like?

73. Exchange phones with a partner and text someone from that phone whatever you feel like.

80. Look through your Facebook messages and go back as far as you can. Find the oldest message to which you never responded. Write back. Make the responses really long and detailed. Make it super awkward. Don’t explain why you’re writing back now or apologize for not writing back earlier.

98. For fifteen minutes, see who can tally the largest dollar amount by putting things in their Amazon shopping cart. The one with the most at the end of the time wins. Delete everything in your cart. Or don’t.