Course Description
This course will investigate the ways in which artists have presented narratives in the public realm and the organizations that have made the presentation of those works central to their curatorial practices over the last 40 years. Focusing on recent works presented in New York’s public spaces by Creative Time, The Public Art Fund, the Percent for Art Program, Arts for Transit and other non-profits organizations, this course will look at what it meant to tell stories and open discourses that challenged or interrogated widely-held value systems, the events and the politics of their time. In addition to the specifics of current and other key works and projects, we will discuss the conditions that governed the development of public performance, temporary and permanent installations, the ways in which those works were influenced by public approval processes and governmental agencies, media coverage and community response. Each student’s final project will be an on-line proposal for an exhibition that conveys a “narrative“ developed in the context of this course, referencing other relevant works .
High Line- Narratives
ReplyDeleteBeing an artist, I was interested in observing the interactions of art in this public space. I focused on various aspects such as the artistically saturated location (Chelsea), the access of art to the public, artists' interactions with the space, types of art, meaning of artworks, and the engagement of the public with the art.
This week I decided to follow an earlier story development on the Rachel Maddow Show from late last month on Trump's policies that have been trying to undo Obama's Clean Power Plan and replace it with what they call the Affordable Clean Energy rule. The story follows how his policy changes will make pollution rules more relaxed and continue to keep coal-powered plants in business, in turn, only worsening the climate crisis. The statistics that come out of these policy changes are extremely negative to the American population, something that the Trump administration has either completely overlooked or has decided to ignore. The story continues to develop by unraveling the effects of this not only towards the environment and the people, but also the power and the continuing support of non-sustainable energy use by large corporations that back the Trump administration to be able to continue to work and grow with their negative outcomes. The progression of the story is interesting in that it presents the overarching issue and then slowly unravels the details and fine print through a discussion of the complexity and the multidimensionality of these issues and many more in politics. The fact that politics, social issues, and environmental factors do not have a straight answer makes these discussions winding and complicated but that does not mean they should not be deeply analyzed and talked about to still reach a resolution. It baffles me how much power and greed the president has and how he is using it so negatively in such a blatant and obvious way.
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