On, With and Against

In the interest of modeling risk taking and drawing connections between my creative interests and intellectual history, I created this presentation: Kara Walker, Adrian Piper, African-American music aesthetics, legacy, history, race, gender, place and memory.

Aha! I have conquered the annoying WordPress/Prezi plug-in issue. Now you can see the somewhat disorganized lecture on Cyborgs and Body Artists that I gave on Monday. The group did a fantastic job with some tricky material. Kudos! We’ll be sticking with Harraway for another week, and perhaps adding to the presentation when we’ve finished.

The group was asked to read Walter Benjamin’s influential “The Work of Art in the Age of its Mechanical Reproducibility” this week. In order to help guide us through this work, I decided to give a brief lecture on some key concepts in ideology, discourses and cultural institutions. It’s always interesting to attempt to “explain Marx” in less than an hour, given that I am nothing like an expert. However, I think I was able to share some useful terms and ideas. I also did this “Collaborative Lecture” exercise as a way to help a group of students work their way through a tricky text. The basic idea is that I choose 4-5 key terms or quotes from the text, split the room into groups to explore the different ideas by looking closely at the text, and then report out on findings to the room. Those findings get discussed and shared. In the past I’ve done this sort of lecture using PowerPoint, but since I’m asking students to learn Prezi this quarter, I decided to use it myself for this presentation. I think I did ok, though I haven’t fully explored the possibilities of the tool. So far what I like best about it is that you can organize slides/ideas in any visual way that makes sense to you, rather than just in a linear fashion.

I think that the lecture went well. I gained some new insights into the essay with the help of students, and I think everyone came away with an understanding of the key points of the essay why it is important. I hope that my clumsy treatment of Marx was at least somewhat useful as well.

Benjamin Presentation

This week we’re talking about strategies of appropriation taken up by film/video artists. Homework for tonight was to watch Todd Haynes’ never released, first feature film, Superstar, The Karen Carpenter Story. I adore this film for a variety of reasons. Most critically, even though it is mostly known for the controversy surrounding its release, it is actually a very sad/poignant/thoughtful look at body image and fame. How on earth do we care so much about those damned dolls?!?!