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

UCSD Dept of Communication
Winter 2011
Wednesdays: 2 PM- 4:50 PM
Professor:  Brian Goldfarb
Office Hours: Wed 11:00-12pm, Thurs 12:30-1:30 ( MCC 241)
Contact: bgoldfarb at ucsd dot edu

Overview:

This course is designed to provide graduate students with the opportunity to explore and experiment with the communication/presentation form of their research and to think closely about audience and constituents for their work. Course participants will develop a project relating to one of the areas in which they have been conducting academic research, and consider how a non-academic format might add to or change the value of this work.

We will look at a diverse set of examples of public media, performance, art installations/events, and activist interventions and discuss the challenges and opportunities they present for those engaged in academic or intellectual work. These discussions will help to inform course participants in their decisions regarding formats, sites, and audiences for their projects. We will also consider approaches to documentation and distribution of work in non-traditional academic formats.

A central goal of this course is to gain a broader understanding of 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 frames we use to understand the value and impact of our work. 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
    Hans Haacke, MOMA Poll (1970) from the exhibition 'Information' at NYC's Museum of Modern Art. The artist posited this SYSTEM as art: a query, a response algorithm, and its visual feedback.
    Question: Would the fact that Governor Rockefeller has not denounced President Nixon's Indochina policy be a reason for you not to vote for him in November ?
    Answer: If 'yes' please cast your ballot into the left box if 'no' into the right box.

Course Schedule:

Notes: This schedule is provisional and will be updated througout the course. Please check back 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 (Jan 5) : Introduction / What is a public intellectual?
  • Defining publics and conceiving interventions
  • Voice: fighting with/fighting for
  • Modes of activism: making public, organizing, consciousness raising, facilitation, etc
  • Spaces and temporalitites of intervention
WEEK 2 (Jan 12):

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"
  • Marcia McKenzie, "Scholarship as Intervention: Critique, Collaboration and the Research Imagination"
WEEK 3 (Jan 19):

Readings:

  • Linda Alcoff, "The Problem of Speaking for Others"
  • Diane Elam, "Speak for Yourself"
  • Dwight Conquergood, "Performance as a Moral Act"
  • Dwight Conquergood, "Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical Research"


WEEK 4 (Jan 26):

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.
  • Arjun Appadurai, “Grassroots Globalization & the Research Imagination”

WEEK 5 (Feb 2):

Readings:

WEEK 6 (Feb 9):

  • Michel de Certeau, "Part I" The Practice of Everyday Life

WEEK 7 (Feb 16):

Readings:

  • Chantal Mouffe, "Artistic Activism and Agonistic Spaces" in the online journal Art and Research: http://www.artandresearch.org.uk/v1n2/mouffe.html
  • Grant Kester, "Dialogical Aesthetics: A Critical Framework For Littoral Art" (Attached)
  • Saskia Sassen, "Making Public Interventions in Today's Massive Cities" (Attached)
WEEK 8 (Feb 23)
  • Greg Sholette Interviewed by Dipti Desai, "History that disturbs the present: An interview about REPOhistory"
  • 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 (March 2):

Readings:

  • Selections from: Stephen Duncombe, The Cultural Resistance Reader
WEEK 10 ( March 9):

Readings:

  • Appadurai, Arjun, Deep Democracy: Urban Governmentality and the Horizon of Politics, 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

Additional Readings:

  • Firts Mondays: Special Issue #4: Urban Screens: Discovering the potential of outdoor screens for urban society
  • Wallace Heim, "Slow activism: homelands, love and the lightbulb"
  • Peter Caster, "Staging Prisons: Performance, Activism, and Social Bodies"
  • Selections from: Tom Finkelpearl, Dialogues in Public Art
  • Leanne Levy, "The Skinny On This is My Body: Fimmaking as Empowerment Intervention and Activsm"
  • Julie Fiala, "Collaborative Ethics"
  • Marc Bousquet and Katherine Wills, eds, The Politics of Information: The Electronic Mediation of Social Change
  • Mary Flanagan, "Locating Play and Politics: Real World Games & Activism"
  • Maria St. John, "Making Home/Making “Stranger”: An Interview with Cheryl Dunye
  • Mayo Fuster Morell, "Action research: mapping the nexus of research and political action"
  • Catherine Eschle and Bice Maiguashca, "Bridging the Academic/Activist Divide: Feminist Activism and the Teaching of Global Politic"
  • Steven Epstein, "The Construction of Lay Expertise: AIDS Activism and the Forging of Credibility in the Reform of Clinical Trials"
  • What is Radical Politics Today? Edited by Jonathan Pugh
  • Fernando Gonalves, "Communication, sociability and activism in Brazilian art groups"
  • Giovanna Di Chiro, "Local Actions, Global Visions: Remaking Environmental Expertise"
  • Megan Boler, Digital Media and Democracy
  • Elizabeth Losh, Virtual Politik
  • Geert Lovink, Dark Fiber: Tracking Critical Internet Culture (MIT Press, 2002)
  • Donatella della Porta [et. al.], Globalization From Below: Transnational Activists and Protest Network
  • Selections from: J.A. Thackara, In the Bubble