PART ONE: May 5 // 5-630 pm EST
PART TWO: May 12 // 5-630 pm EST
This course will be held over Zoom.
Archiving Use is a 2-part course open to all levels of thinkers and makers who want to rethink use and usefulness during this crisis. Provoked by the appeal to ‘make use’ out of this time of social distancing, which might also be thought of as a demand to get back to work, this course will ask an open question: how can use be a tactic, an ethic, and an orientation for making in this moment? We will consider methods that can help us elevate justice-oriented claims about this moment that elide and refuse capitalist utility and individualist efficiency — bowing to slow time, the wayward, and hope-filled refusals for an otherwise.
The first part of the course will survey examples of work from visual art, political organizing, and performance that were made against productivity. We will consider mediums too, those labeled ‘obsolete’ — analog forms like VHS tapes, 35mm film, cassette tapes — to consider what potentials, promises, and secrets these ‘useless’ forms still hold.
The second part of the course will be a workshop for those who want to make and share work in a group setting, provoked by the explorations of the first part of the course. We will share work and engage in a peer-driven conversation attending to the present landscape of our platforms — TikToks, web-based live streaming, IG feeds and filters, Youtube, VHS archives, our rooms, notebooks — what each of them might say and how mediums imagine audience and viewership.
Ideas that will be explored include:
The conditions necessary to value uselessness
Archiving and framing idleness
The right to inactivity as a public health goal
Undervalued care work, house work, and social reproductive work
Community spread and universal guilt
Isolation, community care, and conviviality
Disability, privilege, and the sense of safety
Weaponizing/Mobilizing culture towards essential work and workers
Crisis and unlearning capitalism
Against Nihilism: Uselessness and Social Responsibility
Artist Bio:
Rudy Gerson makes time-based work at the intersection of performance, sculpture, and immersive design. Currently, he is studying for his in Performance and Interactive Media Arts (PIMA).