Ginger Krebs

In this course we will focus on the development of artistic research skills for students already engaged in a practice. Students take this required course in order to experience and develop a variety of research methodologies, both conventional and alternative, which include utilizing collections and archives in the School and the extended community.

Students will undertake various types of research activities: a) collecting and classification, b) mapping and diagramming, c) systems of measurement, d) social interaction, e) information search systems, f) recording and representation, and g) drawing and other notational systems.

Faculty directed, open-media, interdisciplinary, idea based assignments are designed to help students recognize work habits, biases, strengths, and weaknesses. Through this course work students will be able to identify the most productive research methods and making strategies to bolster their emerging studio practice. Critique as an evaluative process used in art and design schools, is a focus in this course. Various methods and models of critique are used in order to give students the tools to discuss their own work and the work of others.

In this course we'll consider bodily phenomena, including the psychology of pain, meat production, and water treatment infrastructure. We'll reflect on metaphysical phenomena that arise from the enigma of living as bodies, like avatars and spiritual iconography, the uncanny, and cuteness. And we'll direct our research 'inward', notating sensory phenomena, tracking habits and experimenting with different modes of perception. We perceive the world through the filter of our bodies, and project them - not only their shape but also the feelings and myths that accompany them - onto everything we see. Among other things this makes bodies a rich source of metaphor for art making. How might the physiology of a nerve impulse suggest an editing structure for an animation? What would a vertigo-inspired drawing look like? We'll direct our research toward both art and science, reading case studies of neurologic disorders by Oliver Sacks, and looking at artworks by Tracey Emin, Chen Zhen, Juliana Huxtable, Mika Rottenberg, Wim Delvoye and more. Students will be supported to pursue their individual interests through regular observational assignments, a research presentation and two large-scale projects.

Body As Site is a laboratory for body-based research. Students will be guided to expand the range of ways they move and the kinds of presence they can bring to live art by experimenting with balance, breath, vision, speed, continuity/interruption, and more. The class also introduces research and compositional strategies for generating and developing movement for performance. Working back and forth between improvisational and choreographic modes, students will develop projects that further their individual interests and goals.

Course work includes compositional games like the Viewpoints and somatic practices like contact improvisation and butoh. We will look at work by artists including Milka Djordjevich, Tatsumi Hijikata, Tere O?Connor, Okwui Okpokwasili and Jacolby Satterwhite, and documentaries like Paris Is Burning, Pina and Rize. Occasionally short readings will be assigned by writers like Eugenio Barba, Coco Fusco or Susan Rethorst.

Students will build performances by responding to objects, sites, rhythms, human collaborators and local live performances. By the end of the semester, students will have presented three substantial performances for critique, and produced many in-class ?micro-performances?- nearly one per week.

Artists have interacted privately and publicly in a variety of performative forms with 'stuff' such as food, sculptures, costumes, found objects, natural materials and mass-produced objects. This course investigates the ways in which material can be at the center of performance works. Through a series of assignments, students research materials from scientific, historical, phenomenological, metaphoric, symbolic, sociological and political perspectives; and produce personal and collaborative pieces in a variety of sites and settings.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.