IMA 78065: Language to be Looked at

Spring 2023, Thursday 2:10 pm to 5 pm

Room: 543 Hunter North

Instructor: Andrew Demirjian

Office: 520G Hunter North
Office hours:

Tuesday 1 pm - 3 pm (via Zoom)

Wednesday 3 – 4 pm (in person)

and by appointment

Please contact me via email if you want to meet during office hours (I may have other students scheduled)

Email: ademirji@hunter.cuny.edu

Link to Google Drive (in-class files)

NEW SYLLABUS as of March 31st

Student-led Discussion document

This course is a critical and creative exploration of language as a visual and sonic medium. We will examine historical movements, theoretical positions, critical writings and analyze the aesthetic approaches of a wide range of artists who work with language as an essential part of their creative output. Students will develop a substantial new artwork for their portfolio based on theoretical, aesthetic and technical information learned throughout the course. The course is designed to provide multiple methodologies, systems and frameworks for engaging with language as an artistic expression. We will delve into creative approaches to working with large quantities of non-fiction textual materials from archival corpora to thousands of Tweets.

An interdisciplinary set of practices that work with words will be covered including sound poems, conceptual writing, language in conceptual art, video poems, the manipulation of books, web poetry, erasure, the cut-up method, post-internet poetry, textual scores, social media interventions and electronic literature. In addition, we will explore and engage with collaborative writing techniques, examining methodologies that foster collective authorship. Examples of possible creative projects students in the course might create include video poems with expressive use of typography, a text-centered audio/visual installation, a series of sound poems, a computer program that produces a novel or a continually evolving re-combinatory poem to name just a few possibilities.

Required Readings:

Due dates for excerpts listed in the syllabus

Books:

Bergvall et al., eds. I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing By Women

Marjorie Perloff, Unoriginal Genius: Poetry by Other Means in the New Century

Articles:

Three excerpts from Conceptual Writing by Women: Inger Christensen, Marcella Durand, Anne Portugal

“Six Selections from the Oulipo” by Queneau & Lescure (just the first two pieces ‘One Hundred Thousand Billion Poems’ & ‘A Brief History of the Oulipo’

“Think Again” by Charles Harrison

“The Aesthetics of Erasure” by Benson & Sweeney

Pro Forma: Language/Text/Visual Art vol. 1, "Templates for Walking Theatre (2000 - 2003)" by Luis Jacob

“The Time of Digital Poetry” by N. Katherine Hayles from New Media Poetics: Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories

“Conceptual Computing and Digital Writing” by Nick Montfort

“Leaking Subjects and Bounding Boxes: On Training AI” by Elisa Giardina Papa

Millennium Film Journal review of We Send our Signal by Elizabeth Lowe

Turning the Whole Thing Around by David Beech