Art Making Change: Syllabus and Discussions

May 1, 2014

CLASS DESCRIPTION:
Art transforms hearts, minds, and social movements. This class explores history around movement art. Art is used for social movements: from posters to protest signs, t-shirts to buttons, book covers to zine art. What are the overarching principles that tie this art together? Examining recurrent themes, production methods, and makers of political art helps us understand the ways images and messages play roles in social movement strategies and resistance cultures.
In this four-week class we’ll:
– work with with materials on-site at the Interference Archive to follow your own art-research path on one image, group, or icon,
– learn about types of art and organizations that make “political art”,
– engage in discussions about the creation and dissemination of political art and visual culture,
– and as a class co-create a digital collection of images, increasing movement documentation.
CLASS MEETINGS: 7-9pm, April 28, May 5, May 12, May 19 at Interference Archive
LISTSRV: artmakingchange1@googlegroups.com ||  https://groups.google.com/d/forum/artmakingchange1
SYLLABUS: https://interferencearchive.org/art-making-change-syllabus/

Week 1 [discussed in class]: POLITICAL ART / WHAT IS AN ARCHIVE / WHAT IS THIS COMMUNITY ARCHIVE?

After-class discussion question: Why does it or doesn’t it matter what kind of space politicized art is in? Does being archived change the nature of the things in the archive? Does the kind of archive actually matter?
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Read for Week 2: WHAT FRAMEWORKS DICTATE ARCHIVAL COLLECTING? WHO’s MAKING THIS AND WHY? WHY IS THIS WORK HERE?

  • Cook, Terry. “Archives as Media of Communication”
    http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/innis-mcluhan/030003-4040-e.html

    “Archivists need, Taylor concluded, to “work to ensure that those who draw sustenance and insight from archives feed on a balanced diet of media and are aware of the effects.” Media of recording and communication are not “passive wrappings, but active processes,” which rendered the context of records as important as their content.”

After-class discussion question: Art-making communities and Infrastructures of Resonance + your first stab at selecting something to work on in this class.
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Read for Week 3: SELECTING, FOCUSING, COLLECTING DATA: Metadata, Copyleft, Producing knowledge & WRITING ABOUT POLITICAL ART, TALKING ABOUT MOVEMENTS

  • “Contributions to a Visual Culture Glossary” and whatever else interests you in: 31 Readings on Art, Activism & Participation [in the month of January]: An Art & Activism Reader: http://www.wearethethinktank.org/2007/02/reader-volume-i/  [I like Participatory Art by Suzana Milevska for the concepts, though it’s a bit off-topic]

After-class discussion question: What are you writing on? Share a draft.

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For Week 4:

  • Work on a draft of your research / write-up item. Focus on both writing about what you know about the thing[s] for a description as well as gathering metadata about them.

After-class discussion question: After documenting the piece you did, has your perception changed about art? About archives?
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EXAMPLES OF COMMUNITY ARCHIVES
*current*
“All of Us or None of Us Archive.” Oakland Museum, gift of Michael Rossman.
http://collections.museumca.org/?q=category/2011-schema/history/political-posters&page=10
Radical Archives of Philadelphia:
www.phillyradicalarchives.org
Lesbian Herstory Archives:
www.lesbianherstoryarchives.org
Riot Girl Collection:
www.nyu.edu/library/bobst/research/fales/riotgrrrltest.html
Puerto Rican Diaspora Archives:
centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/archives
Queer Zine Archive Project
http://www.qzap.org/
Women’s Zine Library @ Barnard, NYC
Political Zine Library @ ABC No Rio, NYC
Carol Queen archive & library @ Center for Sex & Culture, SF
*historical*
Black Community Archive, London [1994]
Working Class Movement Library, London [1976]
GENERAL READINGS — feel free to add your own in the comments!
ACTIVIST ARTS
Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the age of Enterprise Culture
Sholette, Gregory, 2011.
http://www.darkmatterarchives.net/
POLITICAL ORGANIZING
A Guidebook of Alternative Nows, ed. Amber Hickey
http://www.alternativenows.net/
ARCHIVES
Community Archives Development Group (CADG) (2006) The impact of community archives.
http://www.communityarchives.org.uk/category_id__63_path__0p4p.aspx
Archvies Next
http://www.archivesnext.com/
“Whose memories, whose archives? Independent community archives, autonomy and the mainstream” Andrew Flinn, Mary Stevens, Elizabeth Shepherd
Abstract: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10502-009-9105-2#page-1
Cook, Terry. “Archives as Media of Communication”
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/innis-mcluhan/030003-4040-e.html
“Towards a Radical Archive: De Balie’s Eric Kluitenberg.”
Institute of Network Cultures Weblog. Currie, Morgan. Posted September 9, 2010.
http://networkcultures.org/wpmu/Weblog/2010/09/09/towards-a-radical-archive-de-balies-eric-kluitenberg/
“The Activism Files” By Maya Lau, N.Y. Times July, 2013
https://interferencearchive.org/ny-times-july-19-2013/
OPEN SOURCE
Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity
Lessig, Lawrence. (2005)
New York: Penguin (http://www.free-culture.cc/)
Open Access
Cambridge MA: MIT Press
Suber, Peter. (2012) (http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/open-access)
ALT-AC or NONINSTITUTIONAL LEARNING
Invisible Culture.
http://ivc.lib.rochester.edu/
ARTS
“How Many Artists Are There?”
Princeton University’s Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies
http://www.princeton.edu/~artspol/quickfacts/artists/artistemploy.html
ARCHIVING
“Archival Theory and Digital Historiography: Selection, Search, and Metadata as Archival
Processes for Assessing Historical Contextualization”
Joshua Sternfeld. American Archivist, Wednesday, November 23, 2011
http://archivists.metapress.com/content/644851p6gmg432h0/
Gilliland, Anne. “Neutrality, Social Justice and the Obligations of Archival Educators and
Education in the Twenty-first Century,” Archival Science 11 nos. 3-4 (2011): 193-209.
COPYRIGHT/COPYLEFT & PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE
Anderson, Jane. (Colonial) Archives and (Copyright) Law
Nomorepotlucks no.4. 2010.
http://nomorepotlucks.org/article/copie-no4/colonial-archives-and-copyright-law
Creative Commons
http://us.creativecommons.org/
Digital Library Of The Commons Repository
(http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/)
What is CopyLeft
(http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/)
Question Copyright
(http://questioncopyright.org/)