some possible connections/examples you see
(when in doubt, print this out and jot donw some notes. or draw a map, if you're spatially inclined.)

tip #1: return to the syllabus when anxious.

Right from the opening quotations you can reflect on what this course covers:

1. And so the arts are encroaching one upon another, and from a proper use of this encroachment will rise the art that is truly monumental."  – Wassily Kandinsky

suggests that one of the key themes of this course is the emergence of new forms of art -- forms that are not restricted or bound by traditional boundaries between artistic disciplines. Do you see evidence of these new forms anywhere? In what ways have we discussed the arts encroaching on one another? In what ways are some boundaries potentially blurred?

-- talked about this the first day in relation to the Gesamtkunstwerk: 'total work of art'
-- talked about the historical arguments for interdisciplinarity (disciplines have never been 'pure')

- suggested argument re how this approach might enrich your undertstanding

*

- in the second week, we looked at your own ideas about what interdisciplinarity might mean and your own examples of what this kind of art might look like.

-- you were asked to go out into the city and experience first-hand art that might be considered interdisciplinary and to critically analyse the art and the experience

2. ...Social Sculpture--how we mold and shape the world in which we live: SCULPTURE AS AN EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS; EVERYONE IS AN ARTIST...All around us the fundamentals of life are crying out to be shaped, or created.   -- Joseph Beuys

-- and what about the second quotation that appears on the syllabus? The idea of the social sculpture? This is also the terrain of arts and ideas. We'll look at artistic representations and performances as gendered and raced, at 'style', we'll consider play and culture jamming and spaces - designed, built, virtual, kinesthetic - ultimately art matters not only because it's about ideas, but because it's also about bodies, lived experience, social conditions -- poverty, war, the materials at hand, daily life, the work week, the factory floor and the regulation of our bodies and our intellects- this has *lots* to do with art, artists , the conditions under which we make art, the meaning of art produced in diffrent contexts. The course challenges you to puzzle through some of these connections.  

In terms of 'the social' , we turned our attention first to the Futurists:

-we talked about who they were, what they reacted against, how they saw themselves in relationhip to their culture: they pursued the new!
They wrote manifestos about art that can enhance our ideas about interdisciplinarity, too. They worked in groups -- artsist, dancers, thinkers, painters. Why might this be interesting for us in this course?.

We talked about the relationship between art and trauma --
the futurists welcomed WWI
-- after September 11th, we talked about the responses other artists have made
We discussed Stockhausen's comment, and we read a narrative poem writen by Auden on the eve of WW2. Different responses, different kinds of art. Different ways of imagining, building the 'social sculpture.' In the context of trauma, giref, uncertainty, we asked you: (how) does art matter?

***

Modernism: a cultural reaction to modernity

we had a one week break and when we returned, we discussed the article on the avant-garde and modernism and talked about surrealism and dada. What was going on at the time these new ideas came into play? what kind of art resulted? what kind of artists were involved?

what did ww2, psychoanalysis and something called Modernism have to do with art?

**

so artist have always reacted to social circumstances, though they've had different approaches and investment. war/trauma is clearly an overwhelming influence, so are changing times more generally (Modernity) but as we saw with the futurists, technology has influenced artmaking, too.

We spent two weeks talking about the coming of the machine age -- dystopic filmmaking about robots (metropolis), the fascination with moving dolls, machines that can do what people do
-- computers and computer art
-- another piece of the social sculpture: the factory, factory life, humans as cogs in the great wheel, daily life. What art emerged as a response to the factories? the Taylorization of our bodies?

-- Can resistance to the demands of the factory, this kind of regulation be 'art'?

last week we talked all too briefly about 'collagist practices of knowledge -- sampling, multimedia, cut and paste, hypertexts, frankenstein texts of all kinds.

I asked you to think about:

-- how collage/appropriation/digital sampling/mechanical reproduction/digital reproduction challenges or enhances our notions of who gets to be an artist? the boundaries of an artistic work the place of originality? the place of technology in/and art translation from one medium to another

3. Free your mind and your art will follow.

-- M. Dolinsky

this is huge, of course. the class is an invitation ot take risks, to takcle difficult texts.

- I hope that some of these ideas will really matter to you as artists and thinkers.

- I want you to discuss things in community -- hence the listserv and the tutorial groups.

-- I want you to think about how examining the social world: might be useful however you define yourself and what you are doing as an artist/thinker to shape the world

-- I want you to think about how artists collaborate, how they build communities, how new ideas are generated.

-- to the extent it's true that if you free your mind your art will follow, this class is maybe about changing your art

to the extent it's true that boundaries between your disicp[lines are fairly recent inventions, this course asks you to think about what is at stake in keeping things so separate -- and imagine what might result from dissolving boundaries

-- i want you to consider some shared intellectual and aritistic heritage, too

-- what's to come

***********************************************

ultimately, then:

1. throughout the course: I urge you to keep in mind points of contact between the arts, watch for blurred boundaries and imagine possibilities.

2. Think of the social sculpture, too-- the emphasis in this class on the way art matters not just becasue it's about ideas, but because it affects real lives and bodies.

3. try to have a good time. if you don't undertsand everything, find a point of connection with something you *do* know and undertsand. try.

-- a secret

-- the most important thing

-**********

some concrete strategies

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