Spring Class - Collective Art Practice
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Performance on June 4, 2008
More info about this performance here: PublicPerformances
Collective Art Practice - Performative and Networked Approaches to Challenging Power
This class will take place in the Spring 2008 quarter at UCSD, on Wednesday nights from 5-8pm. It will be a VIS198 Directed Study Group. The class is supported by an Open Classroom grant from UCIRA and is receiving support from CRCA
Class Overview
This class begins with the assumption that the contemporary world is an assemblage, a network of networks, a nested set of groupings at varying scales which are constantly in flux, temporary and shifting. Building on this assumption, the contemporary form of power has an assemblage structure, so does the contemporary form of resistance. A question follows the assumption, given this decentered, constantly shifting form of power, what are artists doing in response to challenge power?
One part of a response to this question will occupy the majority of this class: collective art practice. The class will look briefly at the history of collective art practice, its motivations and its trajectory, situating it within contemporary art practice. It will go on to look in more detail at contemporary art collectives and their motivations, their ties to contemporary politics of globalization and efforts to maintain an egalitarian or non-hierarchical collective practice.
This class has three main foci:
- to introduce students to collective practices
- to facilitate student understanding of social issues embodied in the san diego / tijuana borderlands
- to explore online space as public space, its limitations and possibilities
Class Structure
The form of the class will follow the value of egalitarian collective practice. Students will choose from a range of topics and will participate in shaping the project structure of the class. Using pedagogical practices from readings by Paulo Freire and bell hooks, the class will attempt to use a horizontal structure, where students are empowered to take part in the facilitation of discussions as well as help decide the content of the course. By allowing students to consider the structure of the class itself as a topic for critical thinking, they will be empowered to re-imagine education and take ownership for the outcome of the class, moving beyond their individual desires for high grades and creating a collective sense of responsibility. In addition, this will demonstrate the self-referential nature of contemporary art in which assumption, infrastructure,medium and apparatus are all subjects of critical thinking and investigation. If we want to promote critical thinking that steps out of the frame, shouldn't we encourage students to do the same with regard to the very educational situation they find themselves in?
Throughout the class, students will meet art and activist collectives from the San Diego/Tijuana border region and discuss their approaches to collective practice and their motivations for using it. Two of these collective presentations will take place in Tijuana, in order to facilitate collaboration with students at the Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC) in Tijuana. The presenting groups may include: Groundwork Books at UCSD, The Boredom Patrol of the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, Grrrl Zines A Go-Go, Bulbo.tv, Lui Velazquez, San Diego Indymedia, Colectivo Zapatista and Sharing Is Sexy.org.
The main goal will be for students to create collective projects responding to social issues existing in the San Diego / Tijuana border region building on this understanding of collective practice and, ideally, begin long term sustainable collectives within which to continue the practice. The projects will be collaborative engagements with real-world issues, consisting of performance in the online public space of Second Life. Students will consider the nature of public space, the lack of physical space and the opportunities for online spaces to be public spaces.
Topics which will be included in the course:
- Network culture and networked art practices
- Open Source methodologies of practice
- Pedagogy, horizontal, non-hierarchical, egalitarian learning, where everyone is a teacher and student
- Contemporary political movements using collective values
- Social Software, Wikis and Social Networking Sites
- Online Public Space, Gaming, Second Life
- Borders, Migration and Corporate Globalization
Some possible discussion topics for students to choose from collectively will be:
- Inbetweenness, Hybridity, Queer, Chicana/o, Mestizaje (at, matthew,TJG)
- Transnational corporations and transnational resistance (at, kn)
- Sexuality Studies and Erotic Art Practice (matthew, TJG)
- Infrastructure, Structure, Hierarchy, Network, Protocol, who's in control? ()
- Social Sculpture, Society is the Sculpture ()
- Independent Media: At the Border of Art and Activism (at, kn)
- Community Radio, Pirate Radio, net.radio, audio art and music as a weapon (at, kn, matthew)
- DIY, Self-Publishing, Craftivism (at, kn, matthew, TJG)
- Hip-Hop culture, participatory practice, remix and appropriation (at, matthew, TJG)
If any of these topics interest you, and you are taking the class, click "edit" on the line with Class Structure, or at the top of the page, and put your initials in the parentheses, separated by commas like (mc, mr). We can use these to direct the discussions better towards our collective interests. Many of these will be touched on, but we can spend more time on them if there is shared interest in the group.
The Class
Who's in This Class? - Add a bit about yourself here.
Collective Statement
Our purpose is to explore the existence, creation, and fluidity of construction of borders utilizing Second Life space.
This includes but is not limited to:
- Tijuana
- Border Issues
- Sex Trafficking
- War on Drugs
- Drugs
- Wealth Gap
- Border Architecture
- Invisibility of Multiple Borders
- Racialization of the border
- Arbitrary nature of border
- Discipline
- Citizenship
- Flux
- Movement of Physical bodies and ideas
- Privelage
- Power
Syllabus
The syllabus is still in process and being developed.
Week 1 - April 2: A Class Without A Teacher? Critical Pedagogy and Intro to Collective Practice
Readings: Selections from
bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress http://bang.calit2.net/freeskool/files/teaching-to-transgress-intro.pdf
Jo Freeman, The Tyranny of Structurelessness http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm or (pdf) http://struggle.ws/pdfs/tyranny.pdf
On Conflict and Consensus, At Least Ch 3, but Ch 1 is good too http://www.consensus.net/ocaccontents.html
Optional: Henry Giroux, Border Crossings: Cultural Workers and the Politics of Education
Presenters: Members of the Groundwork Books Collective
Week 2 - April 9: A Rich Legacy of Collective Practice
Readings: Selections from
AT A DISTANCE "Fluxus Practice"
Collectivism After Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination After 1945
A New Philosophy of Society, Manuel Delanda, Intro
Presenters: Brett Stalbaum, Ricardo Dominguez
Project Due: Login to class wiki and add a page about yourself and your work.
Week 3 - April 16: Social Sculpture, society is the sculpture, collectively creating change
Readings: Selections from
A New Philosophy of Society, Manuel Delanda, Ch. 1
Christoph Spehr, “Free Cooperation”
http://0100101110101101.org/home/portraits/essay.html
http://0100101110101101.org/home/performances/interview.html
http://0100101110101101.org/home/performances/video.html
Presenters: The Boredom Patrol of the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army
Project Due: Form collective groups.
Week 4 - April 23: Transnational corporations, transnational resistance
Readings: Selections from
Horizontalism, Marina Sitrin
The Sixth Declaration of the Selva Lacandon - http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=8218
(original here, seems to be down http://www.ezln.org/documentos/2005/sexta1.en.htm)
Intro to the No Borders Camp:
http://noborderscamp.org/en/camp-introduction-introduci-n-de-campamento
Perpetual Restart. On the Hybrid Praxis of no one is illegal:
http://eipcp.net/transversal/1202/homann/en
Presenters: Members of Colectivo Zapatista and Simon Sedillo of El Enemigo Comun
Project Due: write a group statement of intention and post it in the class wiki or somewhere online.
Week 5 - April 30: Gaming Theory, "In Game" Resistance
Readings: Selections from
Desktop Theater: Keyboard Catharsis and the Masking of Roundheads, Adriene Jenik
Celia Pearce and Artemesia, "Communities of Play: The social Construction of Identity in Persistent Online Game Worlds", SecondPerson: Role Playing and Story in Games and Playable Media, http://egg.lcc.gatech.edu/publications/PearceSP_Final.pdf
Second Front, http://slfront.blogspot.com/
The Cute Cat Theory
http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2008/03/08/the-cute-cat-theory-talk-at-etech/
Presenters: Adriene Jenik
Optional reading:
Why Youth (Heart) Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life - http://www.danah.org/papers/WhyYouthHeart.pdf
Profiles as Conversation: Networked Identity Performance on Friendster - http://www.danah.org/papers/HICSS2006.pdf
Week 6 - May 7: Autonomous Space in the Borderlands
The Electronic Disturbance, Nomadic Power and Cultural Resistance, http://www.critical-art.net/books/ted/ted2.pdf
Border Postcard: Chronicles from the Edge
http://www.aia.org/cod_lajolla_042404_teddycruz
Resistance Against the Wall: A Report from the No Borders Camp
http://noborderscamp.org/en/resistance-against-wall-report-no-borders-camp
Trip to Tijuana to see the Lui Velazquez art space and meet with students from the Autonomous University of Baja California (UABC).
Readings: Selections from Okupa! [rough cut] online video: http://deletetheborder.org/node/2239
Presenters: Members of the Lui Velazquez space, Claudia Algara
Project Due: Do a first performance in online public space using Second Life.
Week 7 - May 14: Collective Practice in the Borderlands
Read selections from Borderlands / La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldua
Presenters: Teddy Cruz, Architect and Associate Professor in the Visual Arts Department at UCSD.
Felipe Zuñiga, MFA Candidate, UCSD, part of Lui Velazquez
Ignacio Lopez, Discos Invisibles
Begin final project. For your final project, you must use Second Life as a site for a collective performance engaging with the social, political and aesthetic issues presented in this class. Your performance may involve one or more performers in virtual space and one or more performers in physical space. Your performance will be presented in class and, if you choose, at a public presentation the last week of class. Possible issues for consideration are public space, exclusion/inclusion/flows, national/social/ideological borders, identity as a social process, material/immaterial property, to name a few.
Discuss and work on final projects.
Week 8 - May 21: Gender, Sexuality and Erotic Art Practice
Readings:
On How Porn Can Teach Us All to Share by Sophie Le-Phat Ho
C'lick Me - A Netporn Studies Reader - read the introduction and optionally read this chapter: Ten Fragments on a Cartography of Post-Pornographic Politics by Tim Stüttgen
(high res or low res versions here) http://www.networkcultures.org/clickme/index.php?onderdeelID=18&paginaID=80
Presenters: Member of the Sharing Is Sexy.org collective
Discuss and work on final projects.
Week 9 - May 28: DIY, Self-Publishing, Craftivism
Readings: Selections from
Greenzine, Christy Road
Radical Pet, Margarat Nee
Cyclette, Kim Riot
MAKE and CRAFT magazines
Craftivism.com
Taking Back the Knit: Creating Communities Via Needlecraft, Betsy Greer
Presenters: Grrrl Zines A Go-Go
Week 10 - June 4th: Present final projects in class
Other Readings and Resources
Group Work, Temporary Services
Homes not jails!: [a novel], Michael Steinberg
The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric Raymond
Stolen Sharpie Revolution: A DIY Zine Resource, Alex Wrekk
Autonomous Media: Activating Resistance & Dissent, Frederic Dubois
Unleashing the Collective Phantoms: Essays in Reverse Imagineering, Brian Holmes
Ethno-Techno, La Pocha Nostra
Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Publics and Counterpublics, Michael Warner
Joseph Beuys: The Reader
the abc of tactical media, David Garcia and Geert Lovink - http://www.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-9705/msg00096.html
Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What? - http://www.danah.org/papers/KnowledgeTree.pdf
Velvet Strike, http://www.opensorcery.net/velvet-strike/
Gamer Theory, http://www.futureofthebook.org/gamertheory/
Not For Rent: Conversations with Creative Activists in the U.K., Stacy Wakefield
Porn Studies, Linda Williams
Imaging Her Erotics, Carolee Schneeman
Cyberfeminism, Next Protocols, Claudia Reiche and Verena Kuni
C'LICK ME: A NETPORN STUDIES READER, Edited by Katrien Jacobs, Marije Janssen, Matteo Pasquinelli
Videos:
"Get Rid of Yourself", Burnadette Corporation
"Couple in a Cage", Guillermo Gomez Pena and Coco Fusco
On Network Culture, Open Source Methodologies:
Protocol, Alexander Galloway
Exploit, Alexander Galloway
Assignments
Assignment One: Do a first performance in online public space using Second Life.
Documentation:
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y71/faffs/secondlife-postcard3.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y71/faffs/secondlife-postcard.jpg
For our first performance, we decided to play some of the theater games that our collective uses to warm up for class. These games come from the traditions of teatro campasino, theater of the oppressed, and other radical theater projects (Boal). The exercises are designed to change and challenge participants' relationships to their bodies and their voices, to one another, and to the world around them. On a more theoretical level, the games can be said to produce, momentarily, spaces where implicit power relations become explicit. The practice of actions designed to produce other worlds is linked rhetorically to many liberation struggles including the Zapatistas. What's more, the exercises have the effect of producing relationships of trust between participants. Many modern western social movements, from the civil rights movement to the more recent anti-globalization movements have employed collective structuring that relies on the strengths and commitments of all participants in a horizontal structure. We are new to second life, so a big challenge for us was figuring out a good location to play/practice/perform these games that would be public but also not too crowded. We first tried a dance club, but the dancing scripts that our avatars kept performing took up so much cpu that it became impossable to communicate with each other or anyone else around. Freebe island, a sort of virtual mall in second life, became our first public state. Playing theater games in second life proved to be quite challenging. The subtleties of movement which make theater games interesting, the gestures and expressions, are much more crude in second life, in general, but are also surprisingly fluid in certain instances such as in animated script based dancing. This performance, for me, raises questions about the possibility of relating to the avatar as a body, as described in the article we read about the Uru migration away from Myst. -matthew
