Week 1

MONDAY:

IMAGINE PEACE, Yoko Ono, London, 2022.

Introductions

Course description and assignments

Tour of lab and equipment

Class Blog – invites are coming tomorrow!

Demo: How to Make a Blog Post

Lecture: Intro to Conceptual Art

https://experimentalstudio.ca/extendedpracticeslevel1/2023/01/07/intro-to-conceptual-art/embed/#?secret=uBhT6y3NGc#?secret=uUsHZnE7Zb
Installation view of Big Heartedness, Be My Neighbour, Pippilotti Rist, Los Angeles, 2022.

ASSIGNMENT: Make a KILOMETRE

Due: Monday for a critique in class

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Bring in a KILOMETRE to show the class and discuss next week.

Document a kilometre. Walk it. Sculpt it. Talk it. Write it. Draw it. Video record it. Perform it. Get your mom to perform it. Conjure a kilometre in any media.

It could be a walk down the street, a path down an intestine, a line going up into the air, a kilometre’s worth of rocks. It can be a kilometre made of chewing gum. Made of telephone conversations. Made of complaints. Made of a walk with a cat. Made with light. It can be a distance between two points. It can be imagined, traced, documented, listed, performed, evidenced on the bottom of your shoe, rolled up into a ball.

Make sure to measure your kilometre in some way, and be prepared to discuss your process, and justify how it is precisely a kilometre.

Consider your materials, and just how your specific kilometre gives us a new way to think about or experience this abstract concept of measurement.

You have up to 5 minutes next week to present your kilometre to the class.

Bring it, or show us documentation of it.

IT MUST BE PRECISELY A KILOMETRE – EXPLAIN HOW YOU KNOW IT IS ONE.

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WEDNESDAY

Brief introduction to Marina Abramovic

Rest Energy, Marina Abramovic and Ulay, 1980.

https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/243/3113 – See a selection of images from iconic performances featured in the film and the MOMA exhibition.

Watch the film: The Artist is Present, Marina Abramovic

“Seductive, fearless, and outrageous, Marina Abramovic has been redefining what art is for nearly 40 years. Using her own body as a vehicle, pushing herself beyond her limits and at times risking her life in the process she creates performances that challenge, shock, and move us.

This film follows Marina as she prepares for what may be the most important moment of her life: a major new retrospective of her work, taking place at The Museum of Modern Art. To be given a retrospective at one of the world’s premier museums is the most exhilarating sort of milestone. For Marina, it is far more: it is the chance to finally silence the question she has been hearing over and over again for four decades: But why is this art?”( From Film Summary)

Questions for discussion:

  1. What are some of your first impressions of Marina Abramovic’s performance works, based on the documentary? Use an image/example of one or two works2. to describe aspects you admire, and aspects you might agree are problematic?
  2. What have you learned about features of performance art based on Abramovic’s work? Name a few key features according to her precedents. Include an image to illustrate. Consider her quote “When you perform it is a knife and your blood, when you act it is a fake knife and ketchup.”
  3. Discuss the ways performance art resists many museum and commercial artworld conventions. How does Abramovic solve/negotiate some of these challenges, and do you find these compromises add to, or undermine the ideas at play in her work?

Performance

Yoko


Bruguera

Intro to Video Art:

Button Party and Final Deadlines

FINAL WORK ON BLOG DUE WEDNESDAY APRIL 9 BY NOON:


ALL final work including good documentation images/video/audio and a description for these last assignments. This is the final deadline for all works in Experimental 1.

Conceptual Portrait

Open Studios Blog Post

Artist Button Project

Bravo to all, and hope to see you all in Experimental 2!

Tattoo piece by Sam Kelly, Experimental 2/3, 2025.

Week 12

MONDAY

Look at artist multiple examples from the lab and Diane’s personal collections.

Work time in class – discuss ideas, finalize designs, printing, button making, and everything!
Students will receive materials for 20 buttons in class to work with, and will have to hand in approximately 10 buttons as their final work.

All work must be completed for the beginning of Wednesday’s class for a button critique and documentation party. Share buttons, and model for each other!

WEDNESDAY

Critique on Buttons project – we go around the table!

Documentation area and time to share and model buttons, and pose for photographs.

Students are also welcome between 11:30-2 pm to join Experimental 2/3 class as they will be applying temporary art tattoos, you are welcome to come by!

BLOG posts with documentation of your buttons in ideal presentations, with a description and title will be due on the blog – along with ALL other blog assignments and art projects WEDNESDAY April 9th at noon.

This is the final deadline for all work in this class. No late works will be accepted after this date.

Congratulations!

Week 11

MONDAY:

Conceptual Portrait Critiques

Finish blog posts by next week!

WEDNESDAY:

Artist Buttons Lecture and Assignment:

Artist Buttons

ASSIGNMENT: Make your own ARTIST BUTTONS*

Since the 1950’s artists have been making inexpensive, accessible works in a series/edition intended for wider distribution than singular objects in museums. These have served to critique commercial/market aspects of the art world, and the myth of an expensive “original”. Artist multiples have been made as prints, small manufactured sculptures, pins, artist books, magazines, postcards, t-shirts, zines and other commercially reproducible media. They are sometimes given away for free, traded or sold for low cost in bookstores, independent art galleries, libraries, convenience stores, activists’ gatherings, and more.

Artist multiples are sometimes playful and mischievous – exploring new and surprising manifestations of commercial media – and often convey ideas and meaning against expected commercial, social, and political goals.

Develop some ideas for unique, artist buttons and post your thoughts and drawings/designs on the blog.

Consider how artists use conceptual strategies to make buttons into art including:

  • a button series that features an unexpected collection
  • a button that acknowledges its own button-ness/materiality, is self-conscious and knows it’s a button
  • buttons that work together to create a final work
  • a button that creates social interaction
  • a button that gives instructions/provokes
  • a button that reveals things usually hidden
  • a button or series that completes a sculpture
  • a button that speaks to the body directly, that knows it’s on a body
  • a button that creates a performance act by wearing it

In class we will learn to use the button maker together with the appropriate materials. Create a single design, or a series of buttons.

Consider fonts, design, colours, images to make a professional quality artist multiple. You may make up to 15-20 buttons for your final project, plus a few tests.

*See schedule for work time and critique dates.

TOXIC ALGAE BLOOMS – Payton Curtis, Student buttons

“For my artist multiple I chose to report on the toxic algae blooms that plague Lake Erie. This semester in Limnology class we read “The Devil’s Element” by Dan Egan. I strongly encourage YOU to read this book. If you think you can escape the consequences of the corruption of our freshwater you are mistaken. People get so caught up in their own shit that they fail to realize we are animals inhabiting the natural world. It is only a matter of time until the natural world reminds us of our vulnerability.

We are not escaping the algae plague. I could sit here and tell you how excess phosphorous inputs are promoting the cyanobacteria responsible for the toxic blue-green algae blooms… or I could show you. I could show you the green sludge that ebbs and flows in Lake Erie. I could show you the swim bans and the notice signs. I could show you what the fish exposed to this water look like. I could show you all of this and hope it terrifies you into action. In all honesty it felt like even after putting all the buttons on I could not draw enough attention to this issue.

The buttons are a method of raising awareness of the issue but also a method of holding people accountable as contributors to the problem. We are all implicated in this assault on Lake Erie. By putting on the button that has “TOXIC” written on it the wearer appears to be the toxic element. Wearing the button becomes a confession. WE are the toxic ones, WE are the problem in the freshwater crisis and WE will also be part of the solution.

The QR codes printed on some of the buttons are a link to the Lake Erie Foundation website https://lakeeriefoundation.org/saving-lake-erie/. While this link is technically associated with the American states effected by the Lake Erie issue I thought the link was still appropriate as an informational resource. Additionally, the book the pins are inspired by has an American author and references state policies.

Other interesting links that were in consideration: the Canadian governments action plan https://www.canada.ca/en/canada-water-agency/freshwater-ecosystem-initiatives/great-lakes/great-lakes-protection/action-plan-reduce-phosphorus-lake-erie.html and messaging from Environmental Defence https://environmentaldefence.ca/save-lake-erie/

I think sharing the QR codes was a great addition to the project. After a consultation with Diane we acknowledged the need for an empowering element to the piece. We are responsible for making Lake Erie toxic, now we must be part of the solution. Finding a solution starts with taking accountability and educating ourselves. The links are encouraging people to investigate and prompting self-led education.” Payton Curtis, 2024

Week 10

MONDAY

More examples of Conceptual Portraits

Work time in class

All groups must SHOW work in progress

Editing and in-progress support with Diane and Nathan

WEDNESDAY

OPEN STUDIOS – 2-530 pm and/or 7:30-9 pm Students must visit MFA studios/Captstone studios during this period. Nathan will be present to support technical questions if you would like to work on your projects in the lab.

BLOG assignment: Capture a few images of student work from Open Studios and comment on the experience of visiting the artists, studios and the works on your blog.

Diane will be leading Candice Hopkins around Open Studios and hosting the visiting speaker lecture. I’ll see you walking around – let’s high five!

Open studios 2025 information:

We look forward to welcoming everyone to Guelph for MFA Open Studios 2025! 🌟

MFA Open Studios is a free event open to the public where you can meet and greet our MFA students, see their current projects in their studios, and attend the Studio Art Lecture in Contemporary Art given this year by curator and writer @candicebhopkins!

Leading up to the MFA Open Studios and the Studio Art Lecture in Contemporary Art on March 19, we will introduce our first and second year candidates! Stay tuned to learn more about their diverse practices! 👀

Open Studios is on Wednesday March 19, 2025. The event will run from 2:00 pm to 5:30 pm and 7:30 pm to 9:00 pm.

Please visit the link in our bio for more information about the event including complimentary parking and registration for free tickets to the lecture.

Week 9

MONDAY

Complete audio critiques

Final audio blog posts due by next week!

LECTURE:

CONCEPTUAL PORTRAITS: Systems, Series, Stand-Ins

Assignment:

Make a CONCEPTUAL PORTRAIT*

Works can be in prints, slide-show images, video, audio, or found object sculptures and installations. Consider using text in your work when needed. Maximum limit for time-based works is 3 minutes.

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“In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work… all planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes the machine that makes the art.”

Sol Lewitt, from Peter Osborne, Conceptual Art, Phaidon, Themes & Movements

“The system is the work of art; the visual work of art is the proof of the System. The visual aspect can’t be understood without understanding the system. It isn’t what it looks like but what it is that is of basic importance. “

Sol Lewitt

For this open media project you will create a representation of someone or something – in a non-literal way. You will create your conceptual portrait by using a system – like a rule, a formula, a series of tasks, or an experiment to plan and create the work.

Your work will not be narrative or decorative – it will include only what is necessary to convey your information, follow your task, or show the results of your experiment.

 Let the system be the “machine that makes the art.” For example the work might be:

  • An uncommon documentation of an aspect of life, using a series of images or forms of data
  • A collection of objects to make a portrait/ represent an abstract concept
  • Show the results of an experiment performed, to learn surprising truths about something

Consider, how does your series, collection, or system convey an idea, or make us understand something in a new way?

On the Blog: DRAFT a proposal of your ideas for discussion in the next class

Write about an artist reference from the lecture that informs your thinking – use images and prepare to discuss your proposal in our next class meeting:

*See schedule for work time and critique dates.

WEDNESDAY

More examples of conceptual portraits.

Brainstorm ideas roundtable and discussion

Work time