Ideas for the term, trying to get a schedule, lectures to do, etc. together...
how are permaculture practices useful as an art prompt? as a metaphor for artistic practice?
The big question: what is worth knowing about climate change/carbon levels/sustainability???
(from page 61 in Teaching as a Subversive Activity)
- what do you fear the most?
- what do you want to know about climate change? about sea level rise? about carbon sequestration? about carbon offset? about the carbon cycle?
- how do you use your artist practice to investigate climate change or sea level rise or whatever else?
- how do you use your artist practice to explain these things?
- how do you use your practice to research these things?
- where do your materials come from?
- what is the "ecology" of your practice?
- how are our actiones all connected?
- what do you want to sustain? (sustainability means nothing without something you declare to be sustained)
- what is an action you can change in your life that does somethin about climate change? carbon reduction? etc.?
- what do you think is worth knowing? how might you make art about that? art/design for dissemnating what you learn?
- what can you/we do today?
- what is "appropriate artwork" (ala appropriat technology)
- who is doing this work already?
- whose work inspires you? what inspires you?
- with whom should you/we partner? ally?
- is everyting connected?
Who is the best librarian to partner with for the term?
Asking questions and finding answers which hopefully lead to more question asking.
There is a syllabus. It says these various things about grades and whatever else because, well, it sort of legally has to... But. there are no grades in this class. You will receive an A or an F. There are projet prompts; or rather questions for you to formulate answers; and hopefully more questions; for/to... The goal will be to ask as many questions as is possible. If ntohign other than learning is accomplished, so be it. Questions asked. Questions answered. this is how one learns. Learning to learn. Practicing these things makes you a better learner and is what really creates new knowledge; new ideas; new forms. The old ways of doing things aren't working. So let's throw it away and just do anything else. Speculate. Critique. Investigate. Invent. Ecological Invention... Since we all know different things already we will hopefully have a lot of different questions (and a lot of different answers (which may be in the form of new questions)). Can we grade each other on goodness of questions? If you don't know something any questions that lead you to figuring that out are good questions right??? the only way to fail is:
- Asking no questions.
- Producing no outcomes.
- Missing 4+ classes.
(is a grade a measure of growth? a measure of success? a measure of failure? a measure of meeting an expectation? a bias? a measure of rule following? a measure of rule breaking?)
Otherwise... let's roll.
A rough idea so far...
- what can an individual do?
- what is climage change?
- what is sustainability?
- how is this class about climate, energy, food, social justice, sustainability? (or rather how can all those things be framed as social justice issues; and how is sustainability a recipe for doing something about them from a new, more equal context?)
- what is the carbon cycle? (how does the carbon cycle work???)
- which artists are tackling this already in their work?
- who else can we look to for help? information? advice? "solutions"? (where else?)
- I Heart Huckabees
- What is entropy?
- If everything is connected, then why is shit so fucked up?
- What are we going to do?
- what is a material ecology? (what is your material ecology? what ecology does your practice function in/create?)
- Where do your materials come from
- what are alternate materials or practices?
- Appropriate technologies?
- Hippie modernism?
- Sue Spaid? help here someplace?
Should I just do this as a 15 week massive change style project (mini massive change/ mini change?). Basically we would work all term towards an exhibition about revealing what is hidden regarding CO2 emissions or something like that? Different ways we can really do something right now -- AND HAVE TO START DOING THINGS RIGHT NOW! Where can we hold an exhibition? does it need to be off campus? what about someplace like Union? What about the inner harbor? The aquarium? the Science Musuem?
Behavior change. decide on a behavior aspect to drastically change. something extreme. somehow connect w/ climate change. you have to revist this every 3-4 weeks and present how its going. make a piece and/or a presentation that somehow documents your lifestyle/behavior change.
- how to bring everyone to the same level
- standardize our language for the term to more easily have discussions and critique
- species loss?
- habitat destruction?
- climate crisis?
- people's impacts?
- baseline information: field based language???
- make sure it is clear (what is the "it" in this sentence)?
speculative -- are you engaged?
students do want to be active. the want to do something! how does one's art/design practice DO!
radical change
how are you contributing to the problem you are critiquing
do not limit things -- is it worth trying to get everyone to focus on a single thing? how to keep it big and wide and open but still all related?
adapt their work to what they have to say (they being the students?)
HaHa: hydroponic vegetable project. take an art space start growing vegetables; help a group in need -- is that still artist practice?
expansive. critical. engaged.
what do we want
what is our relatinship to carbon? co2? what is our relationship to nature?
Aesthetics and Ethics.
Not all approaches to climate change are alike nor equal.
what actually changes culture? to go with climate change we need a drastic culture change. how does an art practice affect this?
something that doesn't ask something from us? that is probably a problem
is this just about sequestration?
how about connecting to the world?
I see something; I try to understand it; I give it form; I give visibility to something that was previously invisible.
how to connect to what is going on. how to connect others to what is going on.
focus on problems; not media. (not the medium).
shouldn't be a separate issue. how to be frame as just part of everything (sustainability shoulnd't be a separate issue; sequestering carbon shouldn't be a separate issue)
see the implciation of climate change in places that aren't yet acknowledged. What are we not acknowledgeing what is not yet seen and how can we make that seen.
new spaces for activism. new ways to describe and visualize the problem. why is this so intractable?
it is hard to be active/hard to be an activist -- what can we do about that?
naturalize the economy
what kinds of extremes can we unearth? visulaize? participate in? invent?
potential project: wikipedia updating/entering?