MONDAY:

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

Intro to Conceptual Art and art forms we explore in Experimental Studio:

ASSIGNMENT:

Make a KILOMETRE

Due: Monday Sept. 16th for 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

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?

TUESDAY

Finish all critiques for Conceptual Portrait

THURSDAY

Final assignment:

Experimental Studio SART 2800 

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 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
• a button made with unexpected materials

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 use up to 15-20 buttons for your final project, plus a few tests.

*See schedule for work time and critique dates.

Lecture:

Artist Buttons

Demo with Nathan on Button making – design templates and button machine

TUESDAY

Artist spotlight from Art 21 – Christine Sun Kim

https://art21.org/watch/art-in-the-twenty-first-century/s11/christine-sun-kim-in-friends-strangers/

Christine Sun Kim

Discussions with instructor

In-class work time

THURSDAY

Critique for 6 students

Discussions with instructor

In-class work time

Tuesday:

Continue looking at Conceptual Portrait examples

Brainstorm and discussion of ideas

Thursday:

Artist spotlight from Art 21 – Christine Sun Kim

https://art21.org/watch/art-in-the-twenty-first-century/s11/christine-sun-kim-in-friends-strangers/

Discussions with instructor

In-class work time

Tuesday:

Audio Art critique

Thursday:

Complete Audio Art critique

CONCEPTUAL PORTRAITS: Systems, Series, Stand-Ins

Make a CONCEPTUAL PORTRAIT*

– Uncommon documentation of an aspect of life

– A collection of objects to make a portrait

– A material stand-in for an abstract concept

-Results of an experiment performed to learn about something

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.”

Some artist references:

Christian Marclay Mel Bochner On Kawara The Bechers Hiroshi Sugimoto John Baldessari Kelly Mark Germaine Koh Sandy Plotnikoff Spring Hurlbut

Felix Gonzales Torres Micah Lexier Germaine Koh Sophie Calle Tom Friedman Douglas Gordon Roula Partheniou Hannah Black Dean Baldwin Katie Patterson

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.

Tuesday:

No class meeting. Note make-up class: Sat. Oct. 21 in Toronto Field Trip

Thursday:

Artist talk from Evgenia

Sound exercise

Audio Editing demo with Nathan

Discussion of ideas in development