MONDAY

Reminder: Pay for Field Trip on Eventrbrite

Meet Friday 9:30 at Bus Loop! See itinerary for details

*Reading notes due on blog

Sal and Ava – 2023

Assignment: One Feat, Three Ways video project

Video Art: One FEAT, Three Ways*

You will work with a partner to make three videos less than 2-minutes each in length each.

Your videos should be shot at the studio in controlled, illuminated conditions.

Pick your FEAT. You will repeat variations on your “FEAT” in each video below.

Your FEAT should be an everyday gesture or activity that you can push to its limits. Push yourself to your limits. Push a material to its limits. Do not take ANY risks with your safety – subtle, quiet, funny risks are better and more interesting anyway. Just watching someone smiling as long as they can as hard as you can is fascinating and even painful to watch for its duration.

Examples of gestures from past students include: Eating something, Juggling, Kissing, Blowing up a Balloon, Smiling, Holding an Awkward Pose, Reaching for Things out of Reach… etc.

It might be an absurd thing – something pointless, or an impossible feat that you can’t actually do   

The object is to try to do the thing, not to “act” – and what happens… happens!

You, your partner, or someone else may perform. Maintain your concentration and explore how a simple gesture becomes interesting when performed with commitment and intention.

NOTE: Add a title to each video, and videos should be approximately 1-2 minutes in length.

Video #1: The One-Shot 

The video will consist of “one shot” – there will be no editing, other than a black screen to mark the beginning and end of the video. You may focus on camera function, unusual points of view, and framing. You will also add titles and end credits to your videos.

Video #2: The Sequence

The object of this video exercise is to shoot a series of shots with the intention to edit them into a sequence. It may require 5 minutes, an hour, a day, or a week, and you can show it in a series of stills or a time lapse.  Edit your footage to be less than two minutes.

Video #3: The Loop

The object of this video exercise is to create a video that is meant to be played over and over again indefinitely, without stopping. Consider the content of the video when you are shooting your feat, and use looping to complete the meaning of the work. Don’t make a short GIF type video – think of a longer loop – something that could play in a gallery on repeat without end.

Edit your loop footage to be less than 2 minutes long, and then play on a loop for the critique.

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Videos will be graded by the degree to which students demonstrate:

• Understanding of the key concepts in the assignment
• Clarity and originality of ideas
• Investment of time and contributions to the group
• Focus in performance and intentionality about everything in the frame
• Technical success using lighting and professional camera equipment in works, and technical success using editing software and exporting gallery-quality video
• Presentation and openness to feedback during critique

Students are also expected to post a final work (including any revisions after critique) to the class blog with a title, artist names, and a short description of the work within ONE WEEK of the critique for final marks.

Videos will not receive a grade until a work is posted on the class blog.

Video Artist references:

• Yoko Ono
• Bruce Nauman
• Adrian Piper
• Pipilotti Rist
• Michelle Pearson Clarke
• Lee Walton
• William Wegman
• Jon Sasaki
• Camille Turner
• Marina Abramovic
• Kelly Mark
• Euan MacDonald
• Wood and Harrison
• Erwin Wurm
• Maria Hupfield
• Student examples

**Be safe and respectful to yourself and others at all times! Talk with me if you have any questions about your project. Never perform unsafe activities for your projects in this or any class in Studio Art.

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Lecture: Simple Instruction Videos

Simple/instruction based video art

Reading and exercise:

Turning the Gestures of Everyday Life into Art, Katja Heitmann

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/21/arts/dance/gesture-archive-art.html

Movement workshop:

(from Yoga, and dance)

Habits of of movement exchange:

1. Describe the habitual movements/unconscious gestures, tics etc. of 3 people you know well. How do individual body parts move, and how does the whole body interact? What about facial expressions, and emotional valence of the movement? How does body type inform the movement?
2. WARM UP EXERCISE all together – breathing, bouncing on knees, shaking it out, breathing together.
3. Teach your partner one of the choreographies. Rehearse, and record 30 seconds of video of each performance.
4. CHANGE PARTNERS. Repeat – Teach another partner another choreography. Rehearse, and record 30 seconds of video of each performance.
5. CHANGE PARTNERS. Repeat – Teach another partner another choreography. Rehearse, and record 30 seconds of video of each performance.

At the end, you should have three, 30-second videos of other students performing an archive of movements. Use this footage for your editing workshop.

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WEDNESDAY

Field Trip Reminders: Make a short blog post describing and reflecting on TWO artworks you were interested in from the field trip including images. Please pay for your trip on the Field Trip Eventbrite Link.

More examples of student videos:

(SEE DESKTOP for 1 minute examples – lemons, hugging, denim…)

Avery – Bubble Gum videos

https://experimentalstudio.ca/extendedpracticeslevel1/2023/01/17/avery/

Zoe –

Ways to Draw a Circle

Discuss ideas with partners, and with Diane

Camera and Lighting Demo with Nathan

STUDIO BOOKINGS, DISCUSS IDEAS AND WORK TIME

See Nathan to book studios and lighting, and for technical and camera assistance.

Talk to Rachelle for bookings in the Photo studio – in 406

MONDAY

Critique of KILOMETRE assignment

WEDNESDAY

Finish Kilometre critiques

FIELD TRIP Itinerary and LINK TO PAY:

Lecture: Early Video Art and Self-Performance

https://experimentalstudio.ca/extendedpracticeslevel1/2023/01/17/intro-to-video-art/

HOMEWORK:

Examples of works by Pipilotti Rist:

Read the article The World’s Most Colourful Video Artist –

Randy Kennedy, from The New York Times Magazine, 2009.

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/magazine/15rist-t.html?smid=url-share

For a PDF of the article click here –

Create a short blog post responding to the reading, and reflecting on these questions:

1. Post an image from one of Rist’s videos that you are most interested in. Summarize the action of the video. Who is performing, and how? Describe the images – including framing, colours, and movement. How did she shoot and edit the video? Describe the sound and how it interacts/enhances/competes with the images. How is it installed in a gallery – in terms of projection/scale/presentation in a context of other things? How does the work strike you?
2. Rist has had a long career in video art making – how do you relate it to the kinds of video that you might see all the time on Tik Tok or You Tube, in our time? Reflect on her performances and also – on her ideas (particularly about women’s bodies, and sexuality, exposure, behaving strangely or subversively…) and how they play out from examples in her works.
3. Experiment: While still at school – put on your sweater/shirt INSIDE OUT. How does this change how you feel? Is it changing how other’s are treating you? If you can wear your sweater/shirt inside out all day – make a few notes about the results of this very small change in your presentation in public. Is this a performance? Why?

MONDAY:

Introductions

Course description and assignments

Tour of lab and equipment

Class Blog – invites are coming tomorrow!

Demo: How to Make a Blog Post

Lecture: Intro to Conceptual Art

Intro to Conceptual Art and art forms we explore in Experimental Studio:

ASSIGNMENT:

Make a KILOMETRE

Due: Monday Sept. 16th for critique in class

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Bring in a KILOMETRE to show the class and discuss next week.

Document a kilometre. Walk it. Sculpt it. Talk it. Write it. Draw it. Video record it. Perform it. Get your mom to perform it. Conjure a kilometre in any media.

It could be a walk down the street, a path down an intestine, a line going up into the air, a kilometre’s worth of rocks. It can be a kilometre made of chewing gum. Made of telephone conversations. Made of complaints. Made of a walk with a cat. Made with light. It can be a distance between two points. It can be imagined, traced, documented, listed, performed, evidenced on the bottom of your shoe, rolled up into a ball.

Make sure to measure your kilometre in some way, and be prepared to discuss your process, and justify how it is precisely a kilometre.

Consider your materials, and just how your specific kilometre gives us a new way to think about or experience this abstract concept of measurement.

You have up to 5 minutes next week to present your kilometre to the class.

Bring it, or show us documentation of it.

IT MUST BE PRECISELY A KILOMETRE – EXPLAIN HOW YOU KNOW IT IS ONE.

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WEDNESDAY

Brief introduction to Marina Abramovic

https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/243/3113 – See a selection of images from iconic performances featured in the film and the MOMA exhibition.

Watch the film: The Artist is Present, Marina Abramovic

“Seductive, fearless, and outrageous, Marina Abramovic has been redefining what art is for nearly 40 years. Using her own body as a vehicle, pushing herself beyond her limits and at times risking her life in the process she creates performances that challenge, shock, and move us.

This film follows Marina as she prepares for what may be the most important moment of her life: a major new retrospective of her work, taking place at The Museum of Modern Art. To be given a retrospective at one of the world’s premier museums is the most exhilarating sort of milestone. For Marina, it is far more: it is the chance to finally silence the question she has been hearing over and over again for four decades: But why is this art?”( From Film Summary)

Questions for discussion:

1. What are some of your first impressions of Marina Abramovic’s performance works, based on the documentary? Use an image/example of one or two works2. to describe aspects you admire, and aspects you might agree are problematic?
2. What have you learned about features of performance art based on Abramovic’s work? Name a few key features according to her precedents. Include an image to illustrate. Consider her quote “When you perform it is a knife and your blood, when you act it is a fake knife and ketchup.”
3. Discuss the ways performance art resists many museum and commercial artworld conventions. How does Abramovic solve/negotiate some of these challenges, and do you find these compromises add to, or undermine the ideas at play in her work?

TUESDAY

Finish all critiques for Conceptual Portrait

THURSDAY

Final assignment:

Experimental Studio SART 2800 

Make your own ARTIST BUTTONS*

Since the 1950’s artists have been making inexpensive, accessible works in a series/edition intended for wider distribution than singular objects in museums. These have served to critique commercial/market aspects of the art world, and the myth of an expensive “original”. Artist multiples have been made as prints, small, manufactured sculptures, pins, artist books, magazines, postcards, t-shirts, zines and other commercially reproducible media. They are sometimes given away for free, traded or sold for low cost in bookstores, independent art galleries, libraries, convenience stores, activists’ gatherings, and more.

Artist multiples are sometimes playful and mischievous – exploring new and surprising manifestations of commercial media – and often convey ideas and meaning against expected commercial, social, and political goals.

Develop some ideas for unique, artist buttons and post your thoughts and drawings/designs on the blog.

Consider how artists use conceptual strategies to make buttons into art including:

• a button that acknowledges its own button-ness/materiality, is self-conscious and knows it’s a button
• buttons that work together to create a final work
• a button that creates social interaction
• a button that gives instructions/provokes
• a button that reveals things usually hidden
• a button or series that completes a sculpture
• a button that speaks to the body directly, that knows it’s on a body
• a button that creates a performance act by wearing it
• a button made with unexpected materials

In class we will learn to use the button maker together with the appropriate materials. Create a single design, or a series of buttons.

Consider fonts, design, colours, images to make a professional quality artist multiple. You may use up to 15-20 buttons for your final project, plus a few tests.

*See schedule for work time and critique dates.

Lecture:

Artist Buttons

Demo with Nathan on Button making – design templates and button machine