Public Pedagogy: Mining the Museum
University Studies Capstone Creative Industries Social Design
Instructor Jen Delos Reyes, Art and Social Practice Faculty
Course Description:
For this Creative Industries Public Pedagogy Capstone students will explore the concept of the museum as a site of public knowledge. Over the 10 week course students will examine the structures of museums by engaging intensely with two community partners: The Portland Art Museum and The Museum Museum. By asking key question such as: what are museums for? what is a curator? what is an audience? we will prepare ourselves to be able to engage fully in a dialogue with our collaborators. Students will be asked to examine their learning and see the various ways they can connect to their community, contextualize their learning publicly and mobilize themselves and others to share information using the idea of the public museum as a starting point. Students will also work directly with both partners to work on projects that address the institution and the public including audience research and mounting exhibitions.
image: Silver with slave chains in same display case from Fred Wilson’s “Mining the Museum”-1992
A History of Art and Social Practice: Making Things, Making Things Better, Making Things Worse
Spring Quarter, 2010
Instructor: Jen Delos Reyes
Wednesdays 900-1150
ART 410, section 003
TOP: Hst of Art in Social Prac. CRN 44405
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
This course will trace a history of social practice in art and investigate as a group the current critiques, debates and issues surrounding its current state in relation to its historical context. The course will examine social practice from 1920 to present and touch on the key movements and artists including Dada, Neo-Concretism, Situationism, Fluxus, Happenings, Social Sculpture, New Genre Public Art, art and activism, network art, Social Aesthetics, post-studio practices, and Relational Aesthetics. This course will place a strong emphasis on contemporary examples of social practice art and the themes of making things, making things better, making things worse, as connected to the Open Engagement conference. Students will have a direct dialogue to the international conference on Art and Social Practice that will take place at PSU from May 14-17. The students in this class will generate writing that will comprise the conference catalogue, and have direct contact with the artists coming to the conference. Through group activities, discussions, student led seminars and participatory projects the class will work together to address the some of following questions, can socially engaged art do more harm than good? Are there ethical responsibilities for social art? Does socially engaged art have to do civic or public good? Can there be transdisciplinary approaches to contemporary art making that would contribute to issues such as sustainability?
As part of The Incidental Person at Apex Art Helen Reed and Hannah Jickling created The Incidental Pancake, February 18-22, 2010, Bubby’s Pie Company, 120 Hudson Street in Tribeca, NY, NY.
We are looking forward to The Pancake Placement Group (PPG) presenting a version of The Incidental Pancake here in Portland Oregon as part of a pancake breakfast conversation with artist Mark Dion.
The Incidental Pancake, is a microbial enterprise designed to collaborate with multiple hosts. The PPG will introduce their 111-year old Yukon Goldrush sourdough culture into pancake batter. This particular strain of sourdough developed in some of the most remote conditions in the world. In sub-zero temperatures this culture survived and sustained thousands of would-be gold miners, dreaming of striking it rich in the Klondike. As The Incidental Pancake is consumed, so too is it’s social and cultural history in the Yukon.
Art and Social Practice faculty, Jen Delos Reyes and former student Eric Steen are both featured in Lateral Learning: A Book About Community, Pedagogy, Disaster and Art, Curated by Paul Butler and published by Vantage.
Current student Zach Springer just launched a new website for his project Build Something Together.
Check it out, pass it along, build something together!
http://buildsomethingtogether.com/
Congratulations to our recent graduate Eric Steen who just got a full-time teaching position at the University of Colorado Springs!
Please read our feature below on Eric to get a sense of all of the things he has been up to since graduation.
We are proud of you Eric!
1. Project residency at the Market Gallery in Scotland.
For my residency I am creating two main events: The Pub School and the Market Gallery Pub. The Pub School is a weekly class that will explore Glasgow’s beer culture through workshops, pub crawls, performances, tasting sessions, and more. The Market Gallery Pub is a one night pub in Glasgow that will serve homebrewed beers made by people from all over Scotland. The event will be open to the public and all homebrewers are welcome to participate. Unlike most beer fests that have booths, this event will transform the gallery into a pub where bartenders and servers will take orders and pour beers. This event is also part of the programming for the Glasgow International Festival for Visual Art.
2. Teaching Job
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
Starts in the Fall, 2010
Info: Full-Time (but non-tenure track) position teaching Foundation and Upper Level Classes. Participation in the development of non-media specific foundation classes and an expansive approach to new media is essential. One of the classes I’ll be teaching, is one I’m building myself – New Media and Participatory Art
3. Teaching Job
Ox-Bow School of the Arts, Saugatuck Michigan
July 18-31
Title: Art in Social Contexts
In this class we will explore multiple facets of socially engaged art with the towns of Saugatuck and Douglas as our backdrop. Students will be asked to conduct multiple forms of field research in town that engage them with the town`s history, communities, and landscape. Assignments will ask students to use their research and interests to create socially engaged projects with themes that many social artists utilize such as: service, intervention, participation, and dialog among others. An emphasis will be placed on the process rather than product or outcome as many important questions arise from the process of working with other people. We will also discuss the shift of the role from maker to facilitator along with the aesthetics of social practices.
4. Group exhibition
The Mythical State of Jefferson
@ Schneider Art Museum at Southern Oregon University in Ashland, OR
Using the State of Jefferson secession movement as a point of departure for talking about democracy, regional politics, and “taking matters into your own hands.” I’m making a beer with one hell of a historical background that reminds me of the renewed regional political struggle of the State of Jefferson. A little info is on my blog now.
This past Monday we were lucky to have Paul Ramirez Jonas with us here at PSU for our Monday night lecture series.
He gave a warm, eloquent, funny and intelligent talk about his work that he prepared just for us, who he referred to as “his people”—Art and Social Practice artists.
To express his gratitude Paul sent us the amazing list of questions below that he wrote on the plane back to New York following his visit.
How can we say thank you for such a generous and inspiring visit? Not hardly enough.
Thank you Paul.
******
Questions
1. How many viewers are enough?
2. Is one viewer enough?
3. Are ten viewers enough?
4. Are a hundred viewers enough?
5. Are a thousand viewers enough?
6. Are a hundred thousand viewers enough?
7. Are a million viewers too many?
8. Can art change the world?
9. Can art change one viewer?
10. What is success?
11. Am I an author?
12. Am I a reader?
13. If I am a reader, don’t i have more in common with the public than with the artists?
14. If I am only a reader of pre-existing texts, who are the authors?
15. Can there be an author-public?
16. Conversely, can there be a public-author?
17. Can a work make itself?
18. Can a text write itself?
19. Who gets to inscribe public space permanently?
20. Whose voice is it in a monument?
21. Whose words?
22. How long does an artwork have to last to be permanent?
23. How long can an artwork last and still be ephemeral?
24. Is there a temporal dimension to the world wide web?
25. Is there a temporal dimension to ideas?
26. Where do ideas go when they die?
Where do actions go when they are over?
27. Who am I?
28. Am I you?
29. How much of me is in you?
30. How different am I from you?
31. If we are 99% alike, is my artwork your artwork?
32. Whose words?
33. Whose voice?
34. Can we make things with words?
35. Can apathy be emancipatory?
36. Can participation be meaningless?
37. Can there be passive engagement?
38. Why didn’t Gandhi change the whole world?
39. Can I believe in democracy if I don’t believe in equality?
40. How can we reconcile equality with individuality? Aren’t they in opposition?
41. Can I make publics?
42. Is making publics enough?
43. Are these desperate times?
44. If reading is more creative than writing, what is voice?
45. Is reading out loud enough engagement?
46. Where is the line between interaction and emancipation?
47. How can making art be part of democracy?
48. Can democracy exist only in discussion but not in action?
49. Where the post-modernists wrong?
50. Is it better to have faith even while we know we are doomed?
51. How can one advocate for faith when one has none?
52. In other words, what is the difference between hope and faith?
53. What is the difference between publishing and broadcasting?
54. Are pedestals methods of publishing or of broadcasting?
55. How about frames?
56. How about screens?
57. This or that?
58. This and that?
59. If the state speaks through stone and bronze, what is our material?
60. How can I become we?
61. What is a public?
62. What is its shape?
63. Can our stories ever enter history?
64. If our stories enter history, en masse, is that the end of history?
65. Why can’t I accept death?
66. Why will my work outlive me?
67. What do I do with that resentment?
68. Are we a life form? Or is our culture the life form, while we are mere organs that sustain it?
69. Can organs be authors?
70. Are we autonomous?
71. Are we individuals?
72. Are we a community?
73. Is a community alive or dead?
74. How about sourdough?
75. what is a public?
76. Why are humans such horrible creatures?
77. Can you be a democrat and a misanthrope as well?
78. Why be funny?
79. How can I stop being funny?
80. Is it true that God makes one out of every 10 jews funny?
81. Is that to make it more bearable for the other 9?
82. Am I sincere?
83. Can I grow?
84. Can I erase myself?
85. Can the artwork make itself?
86. How long is forever?
87. What materials are eveready for new impressions?
88. Can words be mirrors?
89. Can we really make things with words?
90. Can we make mirrors?
91. Is making coercive?
92. Always?
93. Without modernism, what is rigor in the arts?
94. What is public?
95. What is to make public?
96. Why is it that we never speak of democracy in relation to making art?
97. Do we believe that all viewers equal in front of the work?
98. Do all viewers have the same rights in relation to the work?
99. Are we equal in front of an artwork?
100. Are we brothers in front of an artwork?
101. Are we free in front of an artwork?
102. Do we have rights in front of an artwork?
103. What are these rights? Are they inalienable?
104. Can we breathe together in front of an artwork?
105. Can we only be bound through culture, texts, objects, i.e. by what we make?
One thing is for sure… a text may have no author, but it cannot read itself.
1 substitution, 3 additions and one elaboration
Social Practice CV (This will replace the current CV requirement)
Create a 1 page CV for social practice art. This is not a standard resume and should include the following information: What things have you done that would help you in socially engaged work? What life experiences do you have that you think would be an asset in this approach to art making?
Include – objectives, skills, assets, experiences, or anything else that has prepared you for being a social practice artist.
1.Video Tour of the Highlights in Your Neighborhood.
Create a short video (3 min maximum) of what you consider to be the highlights of your neighborhood. Video quality is not an issue, Cell phone/web cam videos are acceptable. Please upload your finished video to YouTube.com and send us the link in your application.
2. Ask a stranger the significance of the clothes they are wearing. Create a short video (3 min maximum) you having a stranger describe for you the significance of the clothes they are wearing. Video quality is not an issue, Cell phone/web cam videos are acceptable. Please upload your finished video to YouTube.com and send us the link in your application.
3. Demonstrate a talent. Create a short video (3 min maximum) where you demonstrate a talent. Video quality is not an issue, Cell phone/web cam videos are acceptable. Please upload your finished video to YouTube.com and send us the link in your application.
The PSU MFA Art and Social Practice concentration has been invited to be a part of an upcoming exhibition at apexart titled The Incidental Person.
Curated by Antony Hudek, the show runs from January 6 to February 20, 2010.
The show will feature new work by Art and Social Practice students and faculty as well as a series of events that will happen in the apexart space as well as outside of the gallery.
For more information on the The Incidental Person please read Hudek’s curatorial statement.
Opening reception: January 6, 6-8 pm
Image: Barbara Steveni and John Latham, Artist Placement Group (APG)
