A History of Social Practice and Art- Jen Delos Reyes
This course traces a history of social practice in art and investigates 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. Through group activities, discussions, student led seminars and participatory projects the class will work together to address the some of following subjects and issues in addition to topics selected by the class:
• Social relationship between artist and audience
• Group Work
• Participation
• Collaboration
• “Community”
• Authorship
• Antagonisms
• Collectives
• Performative installation
• Interventions
• Service Work
• Do-Gooderism
• Social relationship between artists, institutions and curators: Institutional Critique
• The Outsider- artist as solution
• Art and Everyday Experience
• Generosity and Exchange
• Dialogue and social art
Museum Museum Seminar- Mark Dion
The Museum Museum Seminar will be a nimble idiosyncratic investigation into those marvelous institutions mandated to expand knowledge through encounters with things. Participants will first become acquainted with origins of museums in the form of curiosity cabinets of the 16th and 17th centuries and then move on to explore the universal museums of the enlightenment followed by the disciplined collections of modern museums. An examination of the interventions of contemporary artists into museum culture will also prove central to the class. Numerous field trips to museums in the region provide case studies as well as assist in the building of esprit de corps amongst the group, and provide ample contact time with faculty. This is not a seminar for the anemic, for diligent conceptual and physical work should be anticipated, as the group strives to construct and actualize a museum. This museum will be completed and opened to the public in May. Exactly what the museum will collect and display and around which principles it is to be ordered are yet to be determined, however, I do have some ideas.
M. Dion 2009
A selected class bibliography includes:
Remote Proximity: Nature in Contemporary Art, Volker Adolphs, Kunstmuseum Bonn. 2009.
Cabinet of Curiousities: Mark Dion and the University as Installation, Colleen Sheehy, University of Minnesota Press. 2006.
Museums and the Shaping of Knowledge, Eileen Hooper-Greenhill. Routledge. 1992.
Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, Lawrence Weschler, Vintage. 1995.