Course Info: HACU-0250
| Course | HACU-0250 Approaching Aftermath |
| Long Title | Approaching Aftermath: An Installation and Creative Writing Workshop |
| Term | 2019F |
| Note(s) |
Prerequisites Required Textbook information |
| Meeting Info | Emily Dickinson HallüJerome Liebling Center 2ü120 on WüT from 1:00-3:50ü7:00-9:00 |
| Faculty | thuy leüKara Lynch |
| Capacity | 32 |
| Available | 13 |
| Waitlist | 0 |
| Distribution(s) | |
| Cumulative Skill(s) | Independent Work |
| Additional Info | Lab fee: $35. Field trip fee: approximately $20. Prerequisites: Prior workshop experience and one intro media production course or equivalent, e.g. any introductory course in digital, visual, media, or performing arts and/or creative writing; 1 critical or cultural studies course; recommended: one 200-level course in either the humanities or social sciences. In this course, students can generally expect to spend 6 to 8 hours weekly on work and preparation outside of class time. |
| Description | In this workshop, students will explore the idea and implications of aftermath. Utilizing aftermath as a framework, students will consider what remains-how the past persists in the present, how the future is shadowed, and the ways in which no framework is stable. This intensive theory/practice workshop in Installation and Creative Writing is designed for Division II students interested in developing practices that engage questions of site, space, time, experience and the senses within specific historical contexts. Students will develop their skills in reading, writing, looking and translating between abstract concepts and concrete forms of artistic expression. As we consider the afterlife of slavery and settler colonialism in the U.S. we use Reconstruction as a focus of attention, consider speeches, poetry, archives, and legislative amendments, and look to the work of Cauleen Smith as a practice from which to launch our own research projects. Weekly exercises will hone critical skills and support students in their self-directed research project/presentation and a weekly lab session provided a forum for small group critique. This course encourages students to broaden their perspective of artistic process and practice as we challenge traditional modes of production and presentation collectively. This will be a challenging course for serious students in creative writing, media, visual, and performing arts. As examples of how an artist might approach the built environment through their creative process, we visited the Emily Dickinson homestead in Amherst, MA and Cauleen Smith's solo exhibition "We Already Have What We Need" and public procession, "H-E-L-L-O …There’s No Place Like Home…Somewhere Over the Rainbow…We Atone" at MassMoCA in North Adams, MA. Each student developed writing through in-class prompts and outside assignments as they contemplated keywords, proposed artist manifestos, and responded to course material and the work of their peers. In conversation with writing, reading, and research around individual and collective aftermaths, participants in this course developed site-sensitive installations of ARCS [altar, relic, collectanea, shrine] in multiple iterations. All participants had equitable access to space and the opportunity to translate their research and installations into dorm rooms, lounges, and hallways on two floors in the Merrill Dorm at Hampshire College. They presented their projects to the public on December 13 in an open house. |