COGR 280: Advanced Workshop in Communication Media: Interventions in Public Spaces and Institutions

UCSD Dept of Communication
Spring 2009
Fridays: 1 PM- 3:50 PM
Professor:  Brian Goldfarb
Office Hours: Wed 10:30-12pm, room MCC 205
Contact: bgoldfarb at ucsd . edu

Overview:

This course is designed to provide graduate students with the opportunity to explore and experiment in a communication form other than the conventional academic oral presentation or paper. This term we will be considering the challenges and opportunities presented by public media, performance and art interventions. Participants will develop projects that apply ideas drawn from their research or broader academic interests to the development of events, installations or media pieces that are designed for specific sites and publics. Alongside hands-on production, we will be viewing and discussing a range of work in this area.

A central goal of this course is to articulate and reflect on the various ways in which intellectuals can articulate their ideas through public discourse and action. Seminars will focus on how publics, communities, and audiences are articulated; and what we tend to count or value as action/intervention. We will be considering how activism, dissent, organizing and related concepts have been understood and how they have motivated recent and historical media, art, and performance practices.

Details/Logistics:

  • We will meet weekly for seminar style discussion of readings and the work of participants
  • Throughout the quarter students will share and discuss their work in progress
  • Participants are encouraged to work in small groups
  • Projects may be executed in any medium, and should be conceived as capable of execution within the ten week term of the course.
 
    haacke survey

Course Schedule:

Notes: Weekly readings and media will be on e-reserves or available through the course WebCT site.

week: 1  |  2  |  3  |  4  | 5  |  6  |  7  |  8  |  9  |  10

WEEK 1 (April 3) : Introduction
  • Defining publics and conceiving interventions

  • Voice: fighting with/fighting for
  • Modes of activism: making public, organizing, consciousness raising, facilitation, etc

  • Spaces of intervention
  • Temporalities

 

WEEK 2 (April 10):

Readings:

  • Jane M. Gaines, "Political Mimesis," Collecting Visible Evidence, eds., Jayne Gaines and Michael Renov (University of Minnesota, 1999), 84-102
  • Diana Taylor, "The DNA of Performance"

 

WEEK 3 (April 17):

Readings:

  • Wyatt Galusky, "Identifying with Information: Citizen Empowerment, the Internet and the Environmental Anti-Toxins Movement", in Michael
    MacCaughey and Michael Ayers, CyberActivism (Routledge, 2003),
    185-205.
  • Tiziana Terranova, "Demonstrating the Globe: Virtual Action in the Networked Society," in Virtual Globalization, ed., David Holmes (London and
    New York: Routledge, 2001) 95-113.
  • Geert Lovink, Dark Fiber: Tracking Critical Internet Culture (MIT Press, 2002)
  • Anita Ramasastry, "The Law and Politics of Internet Activism"


WEEK 4 (April 24):

Readings:

WEEK 5 (May 1):

Readings:

  • Donatella della Porta [et. al.], Globalization From Below: Transnational Activists and Protest Network [Net Version available from UCSD library]. Permanent link for this record: http://roger.ucsd.edu/record=b5814840~S9
  • Diane Elam, "Speak for Yourself"
WEEK 6 (May 8):

WEEK 7 (May 15):

Readings:

  • Selctions from: Agusto Boal, Legislative Theatre : using performance to make politics
  • Selections from: Agusto Boal, The Aesthetics of the Oppressed
WEEK 8 (May 22)
  • The Citizen Artist: 20 Years of Art in the Public Arena. An Anthology from High Performance Magazine 1978-1998
  • Selected Readings from the MakeWorld Festival

WEEK 9 (May 29):

Readings:

  • Selections from: Stephen Duncombe, The Cultural Resistance Reader
WEEK 10 ( June 5):

Readings:

  • Appadurai, Arjun, ÒDeep Democracy: Urban Governmentality and the Horizon of PoliticsÓ, in Public Culture, 14 (1), pp. 27-47.
  • Fawzia Afzal-Khan, "Street Theatre in Pakistani Punjab: The Case of Ajoka, Lok Rehas, and the Woman Question"
  • Selection from: Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Friction