Photographic Cultures syllabus
WEEK 01: Tuesday 26 September 2006
Overview
Introduction to the unit and project.
Preparation of online working tools: everyone signs up for a blog at http://blogger.com and sets up a delicious bookmarks account at http://del.icio.us/
To browse and discuss:
What is a weblog? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog
What is a Photoblog? http://wiki.photoblogs.org/wiki/What_is_a_Photoblog
What is a vlog?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlog
Photoblog vs Moblog http://wiki.photoblogs.org/wiki/Photoblog_vs_Moblog
Photoblog vs Gallery vs Picture a Week/Day Sites
http://wiki.photoblogs.org/wiki/Photoblog_vs_Gallery
SonC’s Picture-A-Week Page
http://www.sonc.com/paw/
CSM vs html galleries/ Starting Your Own Photoblog
http://wiki.photoblogs.org/wiki/Starting_Your_Own_Photoblog
Photoblog Software http://wiki.photoblogs.org/wiki/Photoblog_Software
London photobloggers
http://london.photobloggers.org/
DUE on class 2 | POST ON your blog
Brief 1> Walking/Drifting: the invisible city
start work in class as part of your production time [small groups 3-5 ] // continue as homework
first E&C assignment: Walking/Drifting: the invisible city
statement 1 (500w) on what constitutes spatial photographic practice
+ photographic screen presentation (a collection of photos static or as video, animated gif, participatory photo project, tagged,etc) via online blog posting
WEEK 02: Tuesday 3 October 2006
Situationism: walking and the city as an urban drift
browsing for class and to view on your own:
The Naked City. A psychogeographical map
http://www.remue.net/IMG/jpg/Guy_Debord_1.jpg
Yayoi Kusama. Walking Piece, 1966 (Diaprojektion)
http://www.sammlung-goetz.de/content.php?lang=en&pn=exh&m=view&id=35&state=past
Adrian Piper. 1973 alter-ego, the Mythic Being, who became the basis of a series of performances and photo-based works http://events.uchicago.edu/campusevents/eventdetail.phtml?eventid=44713
http://collections.walkerart.org/item/object/8676
Valie Export. Body Configurations series http://www.fotohof.or.at/exibhist/detail.cfm?id=7
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/abrundung/
Francis Alys. I spend a lot of time walking around the city… The initial concept for a project often emerges during a walk.
http://www.lissongallery.com/artistDisplay.asp?ArtistID=21
Hamilton Fulton characterises himself as a ‘walking artist’.
http://www.hamish-fulton.com/index.htm
Janet Cardiff. An audio walk in Central Park
http://www.publicartfund.org/pafweb/projects/05/cardiff/cardiff-05.html
In Real Time. participatory work in which visitors walk through spaces in the Carnegie Library guided by an audio and visual narrative presented on a hand-held video camera and through headphones
http://www.cmoa.org/international/html/art/cardiff.htm
Alex Villar, upward mobility
http://www.iniva.org/assets/archive/images/large/VILL_ALEX_006.jpg
Drawing from interdisciplinary theoretical sources and employing video-performance, installation and photography, a practice that concentrates on matters of social space
http://www.re-title.com/artists/Alex-Villar.asp
the walking project – iprojethi yohambo
http://walksquawk.blogs.com/
An Exeter Mis-Guide .walks developed in conjunction with Exeter citizens, creating a variety of perspectives on the way we negotiate the city.
http://www.mis-guide.com/mg/mgexetermain.html
Platform. Critical Walks. Walks around contemporary corporate culture.
http://www.platformlondon.org/fitc.htm
Assignments to be read PRIOR to class meeting and be prepared to discuss them in class:
Walking in the City: Spatial Practices in Art, from the Mid-1960s to the Present
Familiarise yourself with the work of Valerie Tevere, Alex Villar, Simon Leung, and Kim Soo-ja and the way they engage with the historic strategies of resisting and negotiating regulated space developed by Valie Export, Yayoi Kusama and Adrian Piper.
http://www.apexart.org/exhibitions/dawseybrookhart.htm
Psychogeography
Guy Debord.Theory of the Dérive. Internationale Situationiste #2 (December 1958)
http://www.surrey.ac.uk/~pss1su/lecturenotes/documents/derive.html
describe the situationist methods of dérive (drifting) and distinguish it from the classical notions of the journey and the stroll.
Conflux is a festival for contemporary psychogeography, the investigation of everyday urban life through emerging artistic, technological and social practice. Read some of their projects’ descriptions.
http://confluxfestival.org/
DUE on class 3 | POST ON blog
Brief 2- researching: identify the situation and the users group for your intervention
statement 2 (300-500w): post it to your blog, with images and text- captions, tagging, commentary, technical, etc)
some helpful sites for your E&C research
Local History Library
http://www.southwark.gov.uk/DiscoverSouthwark/LocalStudiesLibrary
wikipedia. E&C
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_and_Castle
Elephant and Castle to get £1.5bn makeover
http://society.guardian.co.uk/urbandesign/story/0,,1152677,00.html
Elephant & Castle Shopping Centre Status: Regeneration threatens this ancient artifact.
http://www.geocities.com/londondestruction/elephant.html
Multiplex unveils Elephant skyscraper plan
http://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/1890
Elephant & Castle’s subways are to be removed and replaced with street level pedestrian crossings
http://www.into.org.uk/displayNews.cfm?NewsID=9977
Re-housing Programme. An introduction to the rehousing process
http://www.elephantandcastle.org.uk/home/heygateprogramme/rehousing-programme
Heygate Estate, Walworth, c. 1973
http://www.ideal-homes.org.uk/southwark/walworth/heygate-estate.htm
WEEK 03: Tuesday 10 october 2006
Photographic practice as public service and concrete intervention >
browsing for class and to view on your own:
Stephen Willats Brentford Towers 1985 an installation of photo and text panels inside the 22 storey tower block Harvey House in Brentford, West London/ multiclothing project
http://www.artangel.org.uk/pages/past/85/85_willats.htm
http://www.showstudio.com/projects/multiclothing/start.html
Alison Marchant – Charged Atmospheres
http://www.uwic.ac.uk/fineart-research/staffdocs/am/amtxt.htm
Big Hope: Erhardt Miklós / Dominic Hislop. insideout. 40 disposable cameras given to homeless people in Budapest. http://reroute.c3.hu/bighope/insideout/index.html
Whereyouare is an experiment in the collective documentation of neighborhoods.
http://whereyouare.org/
yellow arrow. Collective MAAP of the world
http://yellowarrow.net/index2.php
mapping britain’s hidden history
http://www.yourhistoryhere.com/
sosok: emergency kit for former biscuit town. View publication
http://www.msdm.org.uk/sos_ok/
http://www.msdm.org.uk/sos_ok/guide.html
Public services exhibition
http://www.msdm.org.uk/2005/10/public-services-exhibition-at-pavel.html
assignments to be read PRIOR to class meeting and be prepared to discuss them in class:
Docklands Community Poster Project 1981 – 1991
http://www.cspace.org.uk/cspace/archive/docklands/dock_arch.htm
Be prepared to discuss the intervention in the context of the urban redevelopement of the area
Case study: City Repair
http://www.inthefield.info/doublebook.html
Case Study: WochenKlausur Art and Sociopolitical Intervention
http://www.wochenklausur.at/texte/arbeitsweise_en.htm
browse through WochenKlausur’s projects and be prepared to discuss how the group develops and realizes proposals – small-scale but very concrete – for improving sociopolitical deficits.list their working principles. Discuss differences between representational and interventive strategies
exercise: create an E&C tag at whereyouare and upload images to flickr for it
study yellowarrow project and think how you could develop an alternative to E&C based on what you learnt from it & whereyouare
DUE on class 4 | POST ON blog
Brief 2- [CONTINUATION] researching: identify the situation and the users group for your intervention
statement 2 (300-500w): post it to your blog, with images and text- captions, tagging, commentary, technical, etc)
WEEK 04: Tuesday 17 october 2006
Space, borders, territories > conceptual tool kit for spatial photography
browsing for class and to view on your own:
Alan Sekula
http://www.lievengevaertcentre.be/sekula_symposium/index.htm
Olivo Barbieri. Model world.
http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=1760
Trevor Paglen. Expeditions to view clandestine military activity and document with photo the ways in which everyday landscapes are structured by hidden military activities.
http://www.paglen.com/pages/projects/nowhere/expeditions.htm
limit-photography” – landscape photos that simultaneously depict hidden presences while signifying the limits of vision. http://www.paglen.com/pages/projects/nowhere/photos_images.htm
Sean Snyder. Manifesta 2, posters made of collages of photographs from specific places in Luxembourg and Gibraltar. http://www.manifesta.org/manifesta2/e/artistes/snyder.html
“Two Oblique Representations of a Given Place (Pyongyang)” (2001-2004) http://www.populism2005.com/index.asp?sivu=38&menu1=8&menu2=20
territories> the frontiers of utopia and other acts on the ground
http://www.konsthall.malmo.se.oas.funcform.se/o.o.i.s/2646
Hetero Utopia: Mapping the Urban Terrain
http://commonroom.info/bcfnma/futuresonic2006/image/2006/08/hetero-utopia-mapping-urban-terrain.html
Guard families cope in two dimensions `Flat Daddy’ cutouts ease longing
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/08/30/guard_families_cope_in_two_dimensions/
assignments to be read PRIOR to class meeting and be prepared to discuss them in class:
Bo Grönlund (ed):
Lefebvre’s first ontological transformation of space
- Lived, Perceived and Conceived Space
http://hjem.get2net.dk/gronlund/Lived_space_etc.html
be prepared to discuss the differences between Lived space (Representational space), Perceived Space (Spatial practice), and Conceived Space (Representations of space), applying to your case study ( E&C)
CASE STUDY: Eyal Weizman. Introduction to The Politics of Verticality.2003. in photo-essays: the three-dimensional battle over the West Bank:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/conflict-politicsverticality/article_801.jsp
be prepared to discuss the three dimensional space of the conflict and the jerusalem as a model for other cities in conflict
DUE on class 5 | POST ON blog
Brief 3- mapping : articulate a photo-narrative / diagram about the perceived conditions and the imagined answer
statement 3 (300-500w): Document /discuss it in your blog
WEEK 05: Tuesday 24 october 2006
Site, identity, technology. Site-specific approaches to photographic work.
browsing for class and to view on your own:
Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin (Chicago project)
http://www.choppedliver.info/
Stefan Gec.NATURAL HISTORY.portraits of the first six firefighters to have died containing the disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear power Station.
http://www.stefangec.com/home.html
Alison Marchant – Charged Atmosphere
http://www.uwic.ac.uk/fineart-research/staffdocs/am/amtxt.htm
Krzysztof Wodiczko. Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch, Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn, New York, 1984-1985
http://www.imagearts.ryerson.ca/imagesandideas/pages/artistpicture.cfm?page=174
Edinburgh Projections1988 http://www.artangel.org.uk/pages/past/88/88_wodiczko.htm
Dis-Armor is an instrument that focus exclusively on the psycho-social situation of school-age youth, and refer specifically to the cultural and historical traditions of Japan
http://web.mit.edu/idg/disarmor.html
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s series of «Relational Architecture». Scan
http://www.lozano-hemmer.com/eproyecto.html
Ga Zhang. Peoples’ Portrait, connected cities,
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/peoples-portrait/
Giselle Beiguelman. Poetrica. Teleintervention. allowed to anyone submit messages, by the web and SMS to there electronic billboards located in São Paulo
http://www.poetrica.net/
Tim Etchell. Alphabet Billboard Cambridge. residents of the area, send images taken with picture-messaging phones provided exclusively for the project
http://www.junction.co.uk/PublicArtVE/etchells.html
Speakers Corner
http://www.speakerscorner.org.uk/
assignments to be read PRIOR to class meeting and be prepared to discuss them in class:
Steve Dietz. Public Sphere_s
http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/themes/public_sphere_s/public_sphere_s/1/
Comment the quote from Patricia Phillips: «A growing number of artists and agencies believe that the responsibility of public artists and agencies is not to create permanent objects for presentation in traditionally accepted public places but, instead, to assist in the construction of a public—to encourage through actions, ideas, and interventions, a participatory audience where none seemed to exist.» // In the chapter Space as Public Art, discuss: “Increasingly…the fabric of physical public spaces, not just what happens in them, is becoming hybrid, reactive, virtualized. This is happening with all of the traditional public spaces…”/// Discuss Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s series of «Relational Architecture» as examples of space as public art. Comment: «Since the 1970s, artists have used their work to address the way public space is increasingly being transformed by the influence of (mass) media and private commercial interests.
Wikipedia: Site-specific art
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Site-specific_art
be prepared to discuss the problems inherent to new art media practices when the authors are “parachuted” into historically and/or socially compex situations and examine jeremy deller’s battle of orgreave at the light of this criticism
DUE on class 6 | POST ON blog
Brief 3- [CONTINUATION] mapping : articulate a photo-narrative about the perceived conditions and the imagined answer
statement 3 (300-500w): Document /discuss it in your blog
WEEK 06: Tuesday 31 october 2006
Public space, surveillance and sousveillance photographic practices
browsing for class and to view on your own:
Orwellian projects
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/008935.php
Hasan M. Elahi. tracking transience
http://trackingtransience.net/
Bowville. Surveillance photography.
http://www.bowville.net
http://www.leoalmanac.org/gallery/locative/bowville/index.htm
VOPOS> The two members of 0100101110101101.ORG are the cell under control. http://0100101110101101.org/home/vopos/index.html
Jill Magid. For the Liverpool Art Biennal, worked with the operators of the city’s CCTV
http://www.evidencelocker.net/story.php
http://www.systemazure.com/
SVEN
http://deprogramming.us/sven/
Marie Sester’s «Access,» (2003) which lets website users anonymously track individuals in public spaces by pursuing them with a robotic spotlight.
http://www.accessproject.net/
Simveillance (San Jose)
http://www.simgallery.net/sv.html
STEVE MANN. Equiveillance, sousveillace, surveillance
http://wearcam.org/
assignments to be read PRIOR to class meeting and be prepared to discuss them in class:
Anders Albrechtslund and Linsey Dubbeld. The Plays and Arts of Surveillance: Studying Surveillance as Entertainment in Doing Surveillance Studies’ : Methodology Issue
http://www.surveillance-and-society.org/Articles3(2)/entertainment.pdf
be prepared to discuss the way artists are extending usual aspect sof surveillance and the resembance sof this to people’s use of webcams and phonecams
Sara Raza. Art in Security and Security in Art
http://www.elastic.org.uk/KISSS/saraRaza.html
Be prepared to comment on the use of photography in the projects analysedin the text
equiveillance/surveillance/ sousveillance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equiveillance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance
DUE on class 7 | POST ON blog
Brief 4 – interacting: participatory tools
research: think in terms of the images you have selected and choose a strategy to sort it. Discuss it in terms of authorship, editing, curating and what it means for you to work with found material. Continue to document /discuss this process in your blog. (300-500w)
CLASS PRESENTATION: present your research to the class and defend your argument as to why this site-specific intervention is a critical spatial practice.
WEEK 07: Tuesday 7 November 2006
Production time
Media lab work time
DUE on class 8 | POST ON blog
Brief 5 – Intervening: prepare your intervention and test it in the public arena
Development of your working design, text, images, etc. upload to blog as the online presentation/documentation of the project
WEEK 08: Tuesday 14 November 2006
Public art and photography> commissioning agencies, briefs, negotiations
browsing for class and to view on your own:
a-n The Artists Information Company
http://www.a-n.co.uk/cgi-bin/db2www.exe/home.d2w/input
Artquest. The Opportunities section lists deadlines dates for residencies, funding, commissions
http://www.artquest.org.uk/opportunities/index.html
PENINSULA is a programme of contemporary media arts commissions by Independent Photography.
http://www.peninsulaprojects.net/>
Public Art Development Trust.
http://www.padt.org.uk/
Roni Horn’s Another Water is a book about the surface of the River Thames
http://www.padt.org.uk/thrp/horn/hornes.html
Artangel -Towards a Promised Land – Wendy Ewald’s large-scale banner photographs of children newly arrived in Margate – with fifteen black and white portraits displayed along Margate’s Sea Wall.
http://www.themargateexodus.org.uk/tapl.php
Public Art Online. Public Art South West manages both the Public Art Online website and the website for PROJECT – engaging artists in the built environment.
http://www.publicartonline.org.uk/
Four Shores. Artists: Stephen Turner (lead artist), Ros Barber (poet), Simon Barker (architect) and Abbe Leigh Fletcher (filmmaker)
http://www.publicartonline.org.uk/case/four_shores/description.
Case Study: Electric Wharf. A team of artists was engaged between 2002 and 2006 with briefs to create temporary and permanent works of art
http://www.publicartonline.org.uk/case/electric_wharf/index.php
Up in the Air / Further Up in the Air- two ambitious programmes of artists residencies in Sheil Park, Liverpool
http://www.publicartonline.org.uk/case/up_in_air/index.php
assignments to be read PRIOR to class meeting and be prepared to discuss them in class:
Susan Jones. Financing yor work(8-21); Eddie Chambers and Yvonen Dean. Making proposals(41-59). In A-N: The Artists’ Guide to Planning and Financing Work.
DUE on class 9 | POST ON blog
Brief 7 – Documenting: share the results of your work.
Treating the documentation of your project. Selection of images and text
Development of your working design, text, images, etc. upload to blog as the online presentation/documentation of the project
WEEK 09: Tuesday 21 November 2006
Exhibiting site-specific work: collaboration, documentation, process, final product.
assignments to be read PRIOR to class meeting and be prepared to discuss them in class:
case study: Public Phenomena Archive – Visual research into informal uses of public space
browse throught the varied projects. Analyse PARK – Project by Deborah Stratman.
Deborah Stratman constructed her own mobile, parking lot attendant’s booth and documented the process in a photo-publication
download the booklet
http://www.temporaryservices.org/in_public_index.html
The project’s photo documentation
http://www.temporaryservices.org/parkmap1.html
text from booklet here
http://www.temporaryservices.org/parkbook.html
comment on the service in relation to land speculation and parking as an economic activity with spatial implications
Martha Rosler. Fragments of a metropolitan view point pp15-43 in If you lived here- the city in art, theory and social activism (READER]
Be prepared to discuss the several layers of the project from process to product and compare to your own journey, as a photographer writing about photography and the city.
DUE on class 10 | POST ON blog
Brief 7 [CONTINUATION]– Documenting: share the results of your work.
Project analysis: start reflecting on your work through writing. This text will accompany the documentation of your work.
WEEK 10: Tuesday 28 November 2006
Photographs and (con)texts: writing about site-specific photography.
assignments to be read PRIOR to class meeting and be prepared to discuss them in class:
Case study. Responding to and Researching Public Art in Milton Keynes
Grennan & Sperandio, and Open University Social Geography Department
http://www.artpointtrust.org.uk/projects/details.asp?projects_id=11
Doreen Massey & Gillian Rose. Personal Views: Public Art Research Project
http://www.artpointtrust.org.uk/projects/details.asp?projects_id=11
Be prepared to discuss the theory of two geographers Massey and Rose, namely the impact of public art commissions on the use and perception of public space, issues of identity and ownership, and public art’s relationship with the identity of the city.
The definition of public art in as intervention into social space: list its implications of a programme of public art
DUE on class 11 | POST ON blog
Brief 7 – Documenting: share the results of your work. [CONTINUATION]
Project analysis: reflecting on your work through writing. Organise all your previous writing reformatting if needed to follow Harvard convention. (1200-2000w)
WEEK 11: Tuesday 5 December 2006
FINAL PROJECT MEDIA LAB TIME
No reading assignment.
WEEK 12: Tuesday 12 December 2006
FINAL PROJECT ORAL PRESENTATIONS
