IMAGE CONNEX

Assignment

Take one of the images you wrote about on Thursday (or if you were not there--create a number of disconnected images to choose from... they can be descriptions of landscapes or dream images or of everyday objects)...

Transform that image into another image... how you do this is the journey of the assignment.... a character can move from one to the other, time can change one landscape into another, an event can transform one to another, a character in one setting can remember another or desire to be elsewhere... there is no limit to HOW you make the transformation happen--don't be limited by realism.

Here is some inspiration: http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/11/headsgons-graphite-portraits-stefan-zsaitsits/

OUTSIDE IN- DUE APRIL 17th in CLASS

Write a critical assessment of:

1.) Your final project (as if it has been performed/presented already)

2.) Another piece of art you have made (your discretion)

3.) An imaginary piece of art you have yet to make/may never make (still--you are its creator)

4.) Your entire body of work from birth until death (in the form of an imagined obituary)



Your critical assessment may take the form of:

A.)  A series of blurbs--try at least 6-- (examples found on the back of any book jacket)

B.)  Reviews -- below are several sites in multiple genres to nose around in

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews

http://www.rogerebert.com

http://thinkingdance.net

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/07/george-bush-art-review_n_5105501.html

c.) As an informal (but professional) chat room conversation-- for those of you feeling of two-or-more-minds-- example here: 

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_chat_room/2013/06/mad_men_season_6_finale_has_don_draper_finally_had_his_breakthrough.html

d.) THIS GOES WITH OPTION FOUR ABOVE-- an obituary-- examples:

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/obituaries/

e.) an academic critique (think interpretation, high jargon, footnotes) or any other form you desire that keeps in the spirit of the assignment--  to look at your work as if from the outside-- speaking of yourself in the third person-- trying to engage that distance 

These can be as serious, as humorous, as long, as aspirational, as detailed, as mockumentary as you's like.  Due NEXT THURSDAY-- and I would like to collect these, thank you!

WORD AS MATERIAL

Assignment FOR THURSDAY APRIL 3rd:

1. Title your piece (poem, essay, meditation, story, musing) with a single word.
2. Go to www.oed.com on a St. Lawrence associated computer (let me know if you can't get on)
3. Research your word--its several meanings over times, the sample sentences from history, similar words that developed from the same root
4. Infect your piece with this new knowledge--make the word heavy with other ideas (than its singular "meaning"). Show how the word connects with tangentially related ideas/images/words.

TENTATIVE PIZZA AND SODA DATE--TUESDAY APRIL 29th 630-830 then head over to JAVA

Oh, and watch this for happiness: MAN'S 30-YEAR-OLD THEORY OF BIG BANG PROVED, HIS REACTION CAUGHT ON VIDEO

Happy April!

First lines of Eliot's The Waste Land and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales below:

The Waste Land (excerpt)

BY T. S. ELIOT

                                  FOR EZRA POUND
                                IL MIGLIOR FABBRO

              I. The Burial of the Dead

  April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee

With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,

And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,

And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.

Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.

And when we were children, staying at the arch-duke’s,

My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,

And I was frightened. He said, Marie,

Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.

In the mountains, there you feel free.

I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

MORE HERE

GENERAL PROLOGUE (excerpt)

           from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

1         Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
                  When April with its sweet-smelling showers
2         The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
                 Has pierced the drought of March to the root,
3         And bathed every veyne in swich licour
                 And bathed every vein (of the plants) in such liquid
4         Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
                 By which power the flower is created;
5         Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
                 When the West Wind also with its sweet breath,
6         Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
                 In every wood and field has breathed life into
7         The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
                 The tender new leaves, and the young sun
8         Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
                 Has run half its course in Aries,
9         And smale foweles maken melodye,
                 And small fowls make melody,
10         That slepen al the nyght with open ye
                 Those that sleep all the night with open eyes
11         (So priketh hem Nature in hir corages),
                 (So Nature incites them in their hearts),
12         Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
                 Then folk long to go on pilgrimages,
13         And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
                 And professional pilgrims to seek foreign shores,
14         To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
                 To distant shrines, known in various lands;
15         And specially from every shires ende
                 And specially from every shire's end
16         Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
                 Of England to Canterbury they travel,
17         The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
                 To seek the holy blessed martyr,
18         That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.
                 Who helped them when they were sick.

MORE HERE

TRANSLATION for March 27 (Thursday)

Continue/finish your translation--or start anew.  Again--make it into your own poem through editing (after the initial translation phase, you can pare it down or flesh it out to its best being)

READ THIS (linked--you can trust the pdf)...

Also, we will be updating each other on the project Thursday in our normal classroom before walking down to Kerri's class to see their work and show our own.  So please be ready to talk about where you are in the process and bring up sticky points for class brainstorming.

Assignment for March 18th

ASSIGNMENT:  VOLER—A FRENCH WORD FOR BOTH THEFT AND FLIGHT

Artistic Praxis:  Collection.  Get a shoebox.  Put into the shoebox 5 found items.  (They may relate to your final product but do not have to.)  Once they are in the shoebox, make them precious to you.  Spend time with them.  Get to know them.  Write about them in your notebooks.  You may choose to write about them as a piece, or short pieces about each of them in turn.

To turn in After Break:  Put the collection away.  Return to it after several days. Pretend these are the only items found in the hotel room of someone who has died (ways and means are up to you/or are irrelevant).  Write a speculative imagining of just who this person was—to do this effectively you must divorce yourself from the idea that it is you/these things are yours.

Musing: Read around in Dime Store Alchemy, Charles Simic (on the work of Joseph Cornell)

                 FORK             by Charles Simic

                 This strange thing must have crept  

                 Right out of hell.

                 It resembles a bird’s foot

                 Worn around the cannibal’s neck.

                 As you hold it in your hand,

                 As you stab with it into a piece of meat,

                 It is possible to imagine the rest of the bird:  

                 Its head which like your fist

                 Is large, bald, beakless, and blind.

Prompt (for the notebook):  Why did you choose your things?  Do you think what you collect defines you?  (Your movie, music, book, clothing collections, for example.)

Bring to class (AFTER BREAK):  Your boxes.

                

Manifestos!

ASSIGNMENT:  DEEP SONG AND URGENCY

Artistic Praxis:  Write a manifesto. Go to www.manifestos.net and nose around (not just poetry here, much art and politics).  Do a ton of nosing around.  Think about your own particular obsessions/commitments/desires.  A manifesto is a statement of need—a calling into being of a movement into the world.  If you can’t manage one—a passionate and bombastic proclamation about how what you believe could and should change the world (through politics, art, work, living, etc.)... then write a defense or an apology for your less dogmatic position. 

Whatever you write (even if it is a defense) should be a big statement, by which I mean a philosophy of making/being.  You can tie your statements to other passions (birdwatching/comics/whathaveyou) but be aware that such statements are intensely public statements of private practices and will be read as such.  You should be nailing your soul to the door of city hall, and daring others to refute or join you. 

   

Manifestos often have three sections:

    * An Intro which declares its context—a specific place and time. The description can itself be an explanation of the kind of art/life/work you are calling for. This section should identify what you are against and why.

    * Mission statement for your art in list form (often numbered).

    * Conclusion: how this would change the world—why others should enter into your utopian/dystopian vision.

Make others want to join you.  Make me.

Musings: “Play and Theory of the Duende” from In Search of Duende, Federico Garcia Lorca (p.56-72) 

Prompt:  Was this difficult?  Why, do you think, it was difficult?  And if it wasn’t—why do you think this was easy for you, in particular, as an artist?

LINKS TO TIME ISSUES

Great article about time in art: http://www.hoodedutilitarian.com/2012/08/dwyck-tempus-fugit-degas-comics/

The power of controlling time through movement (by a technical genius): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXO-jKksQkM

This one done with video (and technical geniuses): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4X5z8AQc3s

No video tricks here, nor (not too much) technical virtuosity: http://dailypicksandflicks.com/2013/10/07/world-orders-flawless-slow-motion-choreography-video/

Stop motion video wall art (playing with time differently): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuGaqLT-gO4&feature=player_embedded

Stop motion video body-bed art: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_HXUhShhmY&feature=player_embedded

Control of reading speed in a video poem by Thomas Lux: http://www.motionpoems.com/?p=11

And bodies/video/text in a book trailer with a limitation--present the flavor of a novel in 1.5 minutes (yes, just like a movie trailer... these things exist): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUvnmgCQgzE

FROM ALLY! David Sedaris reading Miranda July (with repetition!) http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/11/fiction-podcast-david-sedaris-reads-miranda-july.html

FROM MATT! A video game that limits elements to create an aesthetic communal experience. http://youtu.be/3RLFAc1kU9o 

FROM QUINN! All about time. http://www.wimp.com/illusiontime/