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.