Sara Black

In the last generation, art has claimed new territory. This expanded field involves not only art viewing contexts, but spaces of daily life and practice, socio-political spheres, and draws regularly from non-art disciplines. The motivations and methods utilized in this work are diverse yet highly contested. In this studio seminar course we will pack our proverbial bags and take a trip into the grossly expanded field of socially engaged art and social practice.

Using the Columbus building?s living laboratory as a classroom and research site, students will consider ways that humans, fungi, plants, insects, animals, microorganisms, objects and architecture are enmeshed in complex ecological systems together. We will use literal explorations of decomposition and material transformation through the practices of vermiculture (worm composting) and myco-remediation (mushroom remediation) and with a metaphoric sensibility, consider the promise of cohabitation, cooperation and survival on a damaged planet. The Nonhuman Turn, a cross-disciplinary movement within the arts, humanities, and social sciences, will inform our research. Students can expect to engage in: readings, field trips, presentations, the collaborative production of artworks, the design and development of habitat for worms, microorganisms and reishi mushrooms, and a good amount of growing, eating and composting of plants.

Design for Nonhuman Kinds is a course series that asks students to think ¿outside the human,¿ by decentering human perception and subjectivity in favor of animal knowledge and experience. Design for Nonhuman Kinds challenges students to design and build forms that enrich the lives of animals in captivity by engaging their behaviors, cognitive thought processes and perceptions. In an era of climate collapse, mass extinction and a greater recognition of the ways humans and non-human beings co-constitute one another, we are beginning to recognize the limitations of anthropocentric thinking and making. This interdisciplinary course encourages design inclusivity and speculative thinking. Students will work with scientists, sanctuary staff, as well as contemporary theorists to study animal subjectivity and the relationship between design inclusivity for disabled persons and animals. Students will work in teams to design and build appropriate forms for animal enrichment. Courses included extensive collaboration with The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee in which students designed and built prototypes for African and Asian elephants, and collaboration with the Center for the Great Apes in Florida in which students design and build prototypes for orangutans and chimpanzees. Future courses will introduce various plant and animal species.

COURSE GOALS:
The investigation is experimental, in that it addresses design inclusivity and thinking outside of the human; interdisciplinary, as it will draw from the histories and practices of both disciplines relying on speculative and even metaphoric thinking alongside concrete design and build strategies; and practical, as we will be working with an existing organization allowing students the opportunity to work in a partnership capacity outside of the school. This course asks students to think in a `non-anthropo-normative¿ manner, a challenge posited by very contemporary theoretical frameworks (the nonhuman turn, the animal turn, disability studies) that have had a strong influence on art and design. Yet, as the process involves responding to a specific scenario and making objects whose material properties are responsive to the scenario, students will have an opportunity to grow familiar with complex materials and forms. This is a critical maker¿s course.
Please contact the instructor for details on joining the class.

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.