Syllabus

1

7-Jan

Intro. thematic arc, readings

What is experimental practice?

What is a performance event?   Why and how do we make events?

Show and tell: personal work.

2

15-Jan

Production of subjectivity. Psychology vs. phenomenology.

Is there a difference between art | craft?  How can there be art "all the way down"? How do we form ourselves? What's the magma of experience?

• Videos: Robert Irwin, "Immaterial Environments" Parsons The New School for Design, 2011.. "Prism, The Art of Robert Irwin"

• Guattari, Chaosmosis, chapters 1-2.

3

22-Jan

Production of subjectivity. Psychology vs. phenomenology.

• Guattari, Chaosmosis, chapters 1-2.

4

29-Jan

Representation

Meaning vs. information vs. semiotics. What's (not) a representation?   What's an object and predicate? What's alphabet, grammar, syntax; graph? algebraic. How do you make a representation that is not allegorical?

What are rules? How do people follow rules?

• Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. On graphical sign PI_192-212.pdf; On rules §143-242

Optional:

• Derrida, "Signature, Event, Context"

4

4-Feb

Process, Change, Evolution

How can we understand, make, act in the world as a matter of process rather than of situations, things, categories? Moving from nouns to verbs. How does the world evolve? Impulse or fully deterministic theories vs. finalism, teleology.

• Bergson, Henri , Creative Evolution, Introduction, Chapter 1 "The Evolution of Life – Mechanism and Teleology"

5

11-Feb

Process, Change, Evolution

How can we understand, make, act in the world as a matter of process rather than of situations, things, categories? Moving from nouns to verbs. How does the world evolve? Impulse or fully deterministic theories vs. finalism, teleology.

• Bergson, Henri , Creative Evolution, Introduction, Chapter 1 "The Evolution of Life – Mechanism and Teleology"

18-Feb

NO CLASS

6

25-Feb

Performance

What's performance, performative, event? Experimental performance vs. spectacle.  Presentation vs enactment. Art as vehicle. Art as vehicle.  What's an everyday, unmarked vs marked gesture, or event?

• Debord: Society of Spectacle (Ch 1)

• Artaud: Ch 7 - Theater and Cruelty, Ch. 8 - The Theater of Cruelty First Manifesto, Letters (pp. 84-104); Second Manifesto (pp. 122-126).

• Peter Brook: Empty Room (Ch 4, Holy Theatre),

• Jerzy Grotowski and Physical Action, Poor Theater, "Preface by Peter Brook," "He Wasn't Entirely Himself," " Statement of Principles ."

7

4-Mar

Performance

• Poetics of performative space.

• Debord: Society of Spectacle (Ch 1)

• Artaud: Ch 7 - Theater and Cruelty, Ch. 8 - The Theater of Cruelty First Manifesto, Letters (pp. 84-104); Second Manifesto (pp. 122-126).

• Peter Brook: Empty Room (Ch 4, Holy Theatre),

• Jerzy Grotowski and Physical Action, Poor Theater, "Preface by Peter Brook," "He Wasn't Entirely Himself," " Statement of Principles ."

8

11-Mar

Life, livingness, autopoiesis

What's living, conscious, intentional, reflective? What makes an event or an object, scripted, interactive, autonomous, live, responsive?

Intention and telos.

• Maturana and Varela, Autopoeisis and Cognition, chapters 1-2, 5. "On Machines, Living and Otherwise" (p. 73-85), "Dispensability of Teleonomy" (p. 85-96)

9

18-Mar

Life, livingness, autopoiesis

• Maturana and Varela, Autopoeisis and Cognition, chapters 2, 5. "Presence of Autopoiesis" (p. 112-123)

22-Mar

TRANSMUTATIONS LAUNCH: Les printemps erable & the technologies of performance.

10

25-Mar

Cosmopolitics and Ecology of Practices

Why [do, should] [you, we] make <things>? How can we collaborate in experimental practices that make best use of expertise, experience, individual initiative, mutual respect / amplification, and collective power?

•Cooley, Architect or Bee?, p. 7-70.

• Stengers: "Beyond Conversation: The Risks of Peace." Process and Difference, ed. Keller and Daniell,p. 235-55.

• Stengers: "Introductory Notes on an Ecology of Practices." Cultural Studies Review 11.1 (2005, p. 183-96.

11

1-Apr

Cosmopolitics and Ecology of Practices

• Stengers: "Beyond Conversation: The Risks of Peace." Process and Difference, ed. Keller and Daniell,p. 235-55.

• Stengers: "Introductory Notes on an Ecology of Practices." Cultural Studies Review 11.1 (2005, p. 183-96.

12

6-Apr

“Play” (Hexagram Blackbox)

13

8-Apr

SYMPOSIUM PREPARATION

WORKSHOP

14

15-Apr

SYMPOSIUM

PRESENTATIONS