Advanced Social Practice: Public Text as Free Speech

Catalog description

Public Text as Free Speech is a project-based class that teaches students how to create impactful artworks in the public realm using language as the primary medium. Throughout history, artists have used public language as a powerful means of resistance against oppressive regimes, a tool for political commentary, and a vital platform for free expression. Text-based public art can be found in various forms, including graffiti, billboards, wheat-paste posters, handout flyers, DIY signs, light projections, and even experimental adaptations of utilitarian items like street signs, historic markers, and wayfinding signage. The class includes field trips and workshops with local sign painters, designers, print shops, and artists to build students' skill-set for using language as a means for directly engaging with and impacting the world around them. The class critically examines how the meaning of text-based public art is influenced not only by its language, design, and form, but also by the physical, social, and political context of any public space and its audience. For this kind of publicly-engaged work artists must develop a unique set of social and material skills. They must demonstrate an awareness of local histories and a nuanced understanding of the ethics of working with the public and the relationship between polemics and poetics.