Teaching as Art

A graduate level course offered at NYU ITP in Spring 2018

Mondays 3:20~6:10pm Conference room at ITP

Professor: Taeyoon Choi [email protected]

T.A.: Shira Feldman [email protected]

This class is for artists and creative technologists who want to teach. A good teacher is also a great student themself. They transform their curiosity into knowledge and share their learning processes with others. One can learn to become a better teacher by staying fearless about ‘not knowing’ something, embracing radically open ideas and connecting various expertise and knowledge. Teaching can be a form of artistic and creative practice in collaboration with a diverse community. Teachers can invent new forms of learning spaces, new kinds of collaboration and new senses of community.

In this class, students will learn about applying creative processes to teaching. Students will read about the history of artists in and out of academic institutions, Black Mountain College, as well as more recent experiments. Students are expected to engage in critical discussions about the topics.

• Week 1: Learning
• Week 2: Curriculum
• Week 3: Syllabus
• Week 4: Pedagogy
• Week 5: Inclusive Learning
• Week 6: Mid-term presentation
• Week 7: Unlearning
• Week 8: Platforms
• Week 9: Museum as a school
• Week 10: Community as a school
• Week 11: Final presentation #1
• Week 12: Final presentation #2

Full semester course based on a class of same title offered in Spring 2017

The class will use a dedicated Are.na channel to share related materials. The class will use a private email list to communicate.

Letters

Letter #1 12/26/2016

Letter #2 1/6/2017

Code of conduct

Students and teacher will respect each other as equals, will speak and write kindly to each other. They will challenge each other academically and artistically.

Students will be ready in class, five minutes before the start time. Two late arrivals after 5 minutes count as an absence, two absences will result in an immediate fail. There will be no exceptions.

Students will use this GitHub repository to find the latest syllabus and reading materials as well as to submit their assignments.

Students will submit their assignment every Sunday morning by 10am. Assignments submitted after 10am will not be reviewed before the class. Students may update their assignment after initial submission and after each class.

Reading assignment for next week:

• An excerpt from Democracy and Education by John Dewey
• Black Mountain College by Anni Albers
• On the Creation of Syllabi. from Notes on Dunce Cap by Jesse Ball. page 28~31
• The Experimenters, Chance and design at Black Mountain College by Eva Díaz

Week 1. Learner

January 22, 2018

Lecture 1. Learner

Notes 1.

Introduction of the course and the instructor's practice and Teaching philosophy. Questions about Learning.

Rotating roles:

• Teacher: Architect
• Facilitator: Builder
• Archivist: Inspector
• Student: Inhabitant

In-class exercise: Create a map that illustrates how you learn something.

Assignment: Autobiography as a learner: Write a 500 word essay to accompany the map.

How to submit your homework with a pull request.

Deadline: 1/28/2018. Sunday morning by 10am.

Week 2. Curriculum

January 29, 2018

Lecture.2 Curriculum

Slides

What is a curriculum? Artists as educators, performance artwork as curriculum

• Joseph Beuys & Fluxus

• Judy Chicago & Feminism

• Allan Kapprow & Happening

• Institut für Raumexperimente – Berlin

• Community is a curriculum

• Body is a curriculum

• Space is a curriculum

• Street is a curriculum

• Food is a curriculum

• Art is a curriculum

Required readings:

• Kojin Karatani. Architecture as Metaphor, Language, Number and Money. 1965 Chapter 4 Natural City. Page 29 on the book.
• Pablo Helguera. Education for Socially Engaged Art - Chapter 2 Community, p 9 - 17

Homework:

Design a curriculum for your young self, High School sophomore.

500 words/ 2 images

Week 3. Syllabus

February 5, 2017

Slides

1. Review of the assignments: create a curriculum, for yourself as a sophomore in high school. Follow the review worksheet.
2. Lecture on Syllabus
3. In class activity: Syllabus worksheet
4. Lecture on Art work as syllabus

Next week: Presentation of your syllabus As a presentation for the whole class, you will present your syllabus from the perspective of a teacher (or a schoolmaster). Your partner will give feedback from the perspective of a student in the school. and vice versa. It will be like role playing.

This week's homework assignment

• Design a syllabus for a 6-week long class in 'your high school.' Contextualize the class within the curriculum you designed. Focus on the learning outcomes (tangible takeaways) while thinking about the learning objectives. You can also update your curriculum from last week.
• The syllabus needs to include a class title, description, and schedule. Please follow the syllabus worksheet
• 500 words & 1 image
• Follow the file naming convention of firstname_last_name.md
• Please submit by 2.11 - Sunday 10am.
• In class next week we will return to our same partners and you will present your syllabus from the perspective of a teacher (or a schoolmaster.) Your partner will give feedback from the perspective of a student and vice versa. After, in partner-pairs, you will discuss your syllabus for the whole class.

As you know, we’ve been thinking of a classroom as a form of community - and community spaces as a form of classrooms. The assigned reading from last week asks us to think about the goals of socially engaged art. Please come to class prepared to discuss the following prompt: What is the goal of your syllabus, especially if you’re considering the class as a community?

For future classes, we will move our discussions more towards artists and artworks as educators. As an introduction to some of the artists we will be talking about please read/watch:

• Who is Joseph Beuys?
• National Galleries Joseph Beuys Learning Resource
• Lygia Clark - Breath with Me at MoMA Studios
• NYTimes review of Lygia Clark's show at MoMA
• Pablog Helguera, Education for Socially Engaged Art (2011)

Week 4. Pedagogy

February 12, 2018

Slides

Lecture about pedagogy, the craft of teaching. Traditional pedagogy and critical pedagogy, alternative education.

Midterm:

• Design a workshop inspired or informed by either Anni Albers, Joseph Beuys or Lygia Clark’s work.
• Workshop should intend to happen at a New York based museum
• Visitors/participants in your workshop are limited to 10 people are less
• Experience should be 1 hour or less
• Should be free or low cost - for participants and to produce as a workshop
• Site visit suggested - incorporate the community and environment itself into your workshop
• Write a syllabus for the workshop
• Presentation as 10 minute activation of workshop proposal - participatory with peers in class together.

Week 5 Inclusive learning

February 26, 2018

1. Homework review
2. Midterm proposal workshop
3. Interdependence activity
4. Discussion on the reading on Socially Engaged Art

Week 6 Midterm presentation

March 5, 2018

Students will present each for 10 minutes

and enjoy 1 week of no class. :)

Week 7 Unlearning

March 19, 2018

Lecture 5 Lecture about combining theory and practice in art and teaching, through unlearning and plasticity, appropriation and representation.

• Judith Butler
• Martha Nussbaum
• Sara Hendren
• Vicky Hanson

Required readings and viewings

• Unpresidented Times
• Cultural Appropriation Roundtable Artforum
• Art is Medicine
• More reading references

Week 8 Unlearning and platforms

March 26, 2018

Lecture 6 Accessible and inclusive learning spaces, Makerspaces, community spaces, libraries. Special focus on disability and access for Deaf, blind and wheelchair users.

• Unlearnign disability

Required readings for Jessica Lynne's visit next week

• A letter from an arts worker: Delana Dameron John
• A letter from an arts worker: Jessica Lynne
• For many returns

** Optional**

• Kelley Walker’s...
• Black Teens Are Breaking The Internet And Seeing None Of The Profits

Final assignment: Edit your syllabus for a museum workshop for your partner and other participants. Rehearse your teaching for them, in person and in museum or in ITP. Create a feedback form for the participant (student) to give you feedback on your teaching.

Week 9 Museum as a school

April 2, 2018

Lecture on museum education

Special guest: Jessica Lynne

• Capability and potentiality
• Open field at Walker
• Sheetal Prajapati at MoMA
• Shaun Leonardo at New Museum
• Art + Technology Lab at LACMA
• Machine Project at LACMA
• Triple Canopy at PS1
• Queens Museum Education department
• Christine Sun Kim at Whitney

Week 10 Community as a school

April 9, 2018

Part 1: Lecture on community learning initiatives

Part 2: Final project proposal and feedback

Museums, Managers of consciousness

• An excerpt from COULD BE NO.2: High School Special
• Making Lab
• Poetic Science Fair
• Night School, Museum as Hub
• Suzanne Lacy – LA & global
• Conflict Kitchen – Pittsburgh
• The concept of care - Bernard Stiegler
• Art of crossing the street

Week 11 Final presentation 1

April 16, 2018

Student presentations and feedback

• Zach

• Nathier

• Andrew

Week 12 Final presentation 2

April 23, 2018

Student presentations and feedback

• Kathy
• Oren
• Beverly
• Ridwan
• Michael
• Stevie
• Sam
• Nate

Instructor information

Taeyoon Choi is an artist and educator based in New York and Seoul. His art practice involves performance, electronics, drawings, and storytelling that often leads to intervention in public spaces. Choi collaborates with fellow artists, activists, and professionals from other fields to realize socially engaged projects and alternative pedagogy. He was an artist-in-residence at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. He has published books about urbanism and is currently working on a book of drawings about computation. Choi cofounded the School for Poetic Computation in 2013, where he continues to organize and teach. Recently, he's been focusing on unlearning the wall of disability and normalcy, and enhancing accessibility and diversity within art and technology. Choi serves on the board of advisors of the Processing Foundation.