Walls: Cultural Witness, Social Catalyst

Catalog description

Walls are at once a border, a witness, and an archive holding relationships with people, time and culture. Many walls hold significance in the grand narratives of our history. In preserving them nation-states imbue walls with a distinct political charge. What happens when we shift our focus to walls in the margins? Such as everyday walls from our neighborhoods, or walls demolished and forgotten. This course will examine walls from a range of approaches - including the art historical and the anthropological - and sensitize students to the material, political, aesthetic and philosophical resonances that a wall carries. The course will also engage with notions of ‘locality’ and develop pathways towards community engagement. This inquiry will be further informed by contemporary theory, urban art practice and ethnographic engagement. The course will conclude with students employing multi-disciplinary research methodologies towards articulating 'minor histories' of their chosen wall from their communities to create an artwork they will produce in the studio using traditional visual media, performance, installation, film, and text.