I couldn’t resist sharing this essay on the Philip Glass house.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/12/garden/bedtime-under-glass.html?_r=0

Here are two pieces from NPR marking the 100th year of the Armory Show, the one where abstract art enters the US.

New York Historical Society Exhibit

Another take on the same topic.

On Tuesday (November 5) Adam, Alex, Kirsten and HiMi will continue the conversation about feminist art.  We will not have the opportunity to watch all of the clips they wanted to share during our 75-minute class, so here they are:

marina: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cCFDSzDnUk

marina and ulay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgeF7tOks4s

marina and ulay: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-j0Ey2O4HU

ana mendieta (sacrificial chicken): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6mOKIJ17FQ

ana mendieta (blood sign): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QccOqJ2WG8k

Below are some of the questions they formulated to guide our conversation.  Perhaps thinking about them as you watch the videos will help our class discussion on Tuesday:

What makes these artists/their art feminist?

How does the male gaze interact with these pieces?

Discuss the audiences reactions to these performances…

What are your reactions to them?

Why performance art?

Who decides that this is feminist?

Was this art classified as feminist during the time, or have we labelled it that way now?

We have discussed at great length how modernist city planning has been masculinist (in principle and perspective).  Here is an essay which highlights how different city planning would be if it was not masculinist.

Here is the New York Times article I mentioned which highlights the prevalence of the male gaze in today’s cinema.

This youtube video may also help you understand Laura Mulvey‘s arguments better.

Finally, here is a link to the Yoko Ono performance art piece.

We have posted some information on these movements in the Keywords/Clarifications section of the website.

Archaeology v Genealogy

Archaeologists try to explain what was going on in one selected historical time; they look at objects from a particular time period: the pottery, building materials, books, instruments, and artwork of a particular stratum. Archaeologists try to make sense of how all of those various artifacts fit together. Foucault’s archaeological approach to history is similar. He examined several different things that occurred at the same time. For example, he studied artifacts of eighteenth-century European linguistics, economics, and science. Then he tried to figure out how those artifacts made sense together.  When he conducted archaeological studies, Foucault was particularly interested in knowledge, and he used the term episteme to refer to the knowledge system of a particular time. The episteme is the pattern that can be seen across various disciplines like economics, linguistics, and science. An episteme forms the basis for distinguishing true knowledge from false knowledge:  In sum, archaeology is the study of a cross-section of artifacts in a particular time. It is unlike mainstream history because it analyzes a variety of artifacts in one time period rather than tracing the development of one thing over a period of years.

Although our readings make a sharp distinction between archaeology and genealogy, genealogies are based on archaeologies. While archaeology works to understand how artifacts fit together in a historical moment, genealogy works to figure out what kind of people would fit into that set of artifacts. Foucault’s genealogies are generally based on archaeological-type studies. That is, he examined a cross-section of artifacts (archaeology), and then asked questions like:

1. What kind of people would live in such a way?
2. Given those artifacts and epistemes, how did people think of themselves in the world?

There are three major features that distinguish Foucault’s historical work from mainstream approaches to history. First, Foucault’s historical work challenges both continuist and discontinuist historical accounts. Continuous histories emphasize how much things stay the same, and discontinuous histories emphasize how much things change.

In cases when mainstream histories assume continuity, Foucault’s history was likely to emphasize differences, and when mainstream histories assume discontinuity, Foucault’s history was likely to show similarities.  For example, mainstream histories usually portray modernity as a continuation of the Enlightenment. These mainstream histories emphasize the continuous developments in reason, science, and democracy around the world. In his critical spirit, Foucault’s history challenged that continuity. He emphasized how modern institutionalization and industrialization constituted a break from earlier Enlightenment debates between rationalism and empiricism.

Please note that this timeline is largely about European colonization of African countries in the 19th century; we have not included the Ottoman occupation of North Africa in an earlier era.

Here’s a film on Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Mask:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9ryJepaQxc

We have placed the DVD on reserve at the Davis Library

We also recommend you watching Steven Soderbergh’s film Che.  It too is on reserve.  It is four hours long but it provides some explanation of his actions.  You can also see it here:

The Global 60s: Exploding Visual Cultures

Fall 2013

Tu, Th 1:30-2:45 pm