EN 350-01C: Creative Writing for Installation and Performance
Room: Goldstein 5 Credits: 3
Instructor Information: Dr. David Steiling
email: dsteilin@ringling.edu
website: www.ringling.edu/~dsteiling
Course Objectives: Makers of images can be powerful communicators. The goal of the Liberal Arts Program is to educate future artists and designers to be responsible global citizens, citizens aware of their power to effect social change. To accomplish this, courses in Liberal Arts help students become familiar with multi-cultural world views, beliefs, customs, literature and art forms. We also strive to increase student awareness of the impact that humans have on the planet and its resources, as well as the long-term effect that habitat quality and bio-diversity have on the quality of our lives.
Courses in Creative Writing are specifically designed to encourage writing by Ringling students in contexts related to their studio interests. Emphasis in these courses will be on providing an experience of the creative process through writing as an art form. Assignments will often explore the intersection and collaboration between word and image.
In this course, students will have an opportunity to develop their skills in writing for works of installation and performance. The course will be taught in a workshop format which will include writing and performance in-class as well as the preparation of works outside of class. We will undertake to explore, among other topics, the development of personas, scripting for multiple characters, procedural writing with audience collaborators, writing manifestoes, performance/installation critique, as well as performance and installation in the context of community and public arts. Students will have the opportunity to study and critique a number of seminal works in the history of modern and contemporary inter-arts. The course will also explore elements of performance and installation theory as well as issues of ethics and documentation. The emphasis in this course is on the creation of texts and concepts that are site and occasion specific including interaction with audience/collaborators in service or community settings.
Students are expected to complete the required writing assignment for each week. Students will work toward the completion of a final class project which will be an individual or collaborative installation/performance to be produced for an audience.
Grading Policy: The results of the weekly written assignments will account for 20% of the final grade. The final project in installation and/or performance will account for 40% of the grade, and 40% of the final grade will be based on the student’s participation in class workshop sessions. Any student who requires it will be given an individual educational plan appropriate to their needs and abilities in order to satisfactorily complete the course.
Disabilities Accommodation: Students who require other modifications to the course assignments, including adjustments because of reading ability or perceptual issues (whether those issues are documented or not) should see the instructor at the beginning of the course to discuss appropriate modifications. The Ringling College of Art and Design makes reasonable accommodations for qualified people with documented disabilities. If you have a learning disability, a chronic illness, or a physical or psychiatric disability that may have some impact on your work for this class and for which you may need accommodations, please notify the Director of the Academic Resource Center (Room 227 Ulla Searing Student Center; 359-7627) preferably before the end of the drop/add period so that appropriate adjustments can be made.
Health and Safety Statement: Ringling College of Art and Design is committed to providing students, faculty and staff with a safe and healthful learning and work environment and to complying with all applicable safety laws, regulations and safe work practices. Rules and safety guidelines for maintaining a safe working environment in this class will be provided to you at the beginning of the course (i.e., students must wear close-toed shoes, students must wear protective eyewear, students may not eat or drink in the studio, etc.).
Attendance: The instructor reserves the right to lower a student’s grade if absences exceed two (2).
Notebook Computers: Students who have a school-issued notebook or one of your own are asked to bring them to class unless otherwise notified in advance. Each week students will be asked to write in class on various problems and exercises.
Student Learning Outcomes: Student Learning outcomes in this course address competency goals for Creative Writing at the synthesis level, providing an opportunity for student writing
1. to excel at capturing the aesthetic potential of the genre,
2. to communicate powerful ideas and emotions or
3. to exhibit a strong sense of individual writing style.
Students in this class will author a number of works of narrative and non-narrative prose and poetry.
Where appropriate, student projects will reinforce student competencies in collaboration.
Course Outline
Cosmix Project: This semester we have the exceptional opportunity to be able to engage in a special collaborative project in installation and performance with the South Florida Museum/Bishop Planetarium. This project is described in its evolving form at the Cosmix website. Assignments in this class will focus on the develop of this project and exploration of the various forms of writing useful in a large installation/performance event. Because of the rapidly evolving nature of project-based learning, this syllabus may be revised during the semester.
Warm ups: Class sessions in this course will place some emphasis on building simple performance technique in respect to the delivery of text. To best facilitate and prepare for those excercises, it is highly recommended that all students in the class attend the scheduled warm-ups that have been designed for the class by the fitness center. Warm-ups start at 11:30 in the fitness center and last for approx. 30 minutes. The warm-ups are low impact and adaptable to all abilities and flexibilities.
This semester this course will feature the participation of a visiting artist, Anna DeMers (http://www.tctheatre.com/ ) a interdisciplinary theater artist in the last semester of her MFA studies at Sarah Lawrence College in New York City. She will be working with us in class helping us to prepare pieces for the planetarium event as well as collaborating with us directly in the performance itself.
Week 1 Jan. 9: Course Introduction. Brief introduction to writing for performance and installation. Review of course objectives, expectations and approaches. In'class Writing exercise. Assign: Standing in the Four Directions.
Week 2 Jan. 16: Warm up. “Standing in the four directions” statements performed. Develop sessions on Four Directions statements with Anna DeMers. Assign: Manifesti.
Week 3 Jan. 23: Field Trip Site Survey visit to the Planetarium/South Florida Museum to become oriented to the site.
Week 4 Jan. 30: Warm up. Manifesti considered. Reduction of manifesti to power point slides. Writing exercise in creating characters. Assign: Build a puppet or mask and write a speech for it to say using the character system explored in class.
Week 5 Feb. 6: Warm up. Writing exercise--building scenes through character interaction. Frozen Grand Central. Assign: Preliminary proposal, a description of your 1-3 minute pieces is due. Also make something that is parrt of or goes with the piece you are proposing.
Week 6 Feb. 13: Warm up. Preliminary proposals reviewed. Presentation on Renaissance Performance and Installation Art. Writing exercise: Writing Loops.
Week 7 Feb. 20: Warm up. Stories reviewed. Writing exercise, group collaboration. Presentation on Pataphysics and Furturist Performance Art. Writing Sound Poems. Assign: Project Proposals. Write for group collaborations.
Week 8 Feb. 27: Warm up. Presentation on Dada and Surrealist Performance Art along with Fluxus, Black Mountain and Happenings. Individual review of proposals. Begin collaborations.
Week 9 March 12: Warm up. Writing exercise. Assign: Make a parade standard. Prepare a greeting, an invocation or a ballyhoo.
Week 10 March 19: Warm up. Individual pieces in workshop with Anna DeMers.
Week 11 March 26: Warm up. Individual and group pieces in workshop with Anna DeMers.
Week 12 April 2: Construction of the performance event on site at the planetarium, full rehearsal.
Week 13 April 9: Warm up. Event post-mortem. Writing exercise. Introduction to Second Life and Second Life tools.
Week 14 April 16: Review of Second Life documentation projects..
Week 15 April 23: Final review of Second Life projects, course conclusion..
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Professor Steiling