Working Post-Lifespan

Catalog description

Can an artwork engage an aspect of the future that has not yet come or a deep past that is not accessible? Can an artwork that is meant to unfold over generations form an ethical dimension to accompany it? This arts workshop asks students to think beyond their own lifespan through the development of projects that incorporate disparate disciplines. The late composer John Cage has an organ composition still underway in Halberstadt, Germany that will not conclude until the year 2640. Throughout the last two centuries, purveyors of Scholars Rocks (Gongshi) in China would discreetly chisel limestone boulders to take on dynamic forms like smoke or clouds, only to bury them in a lake for decades to let the natural elements finish them and remove marks of the hand – allowing a future generation to exhume them and delight in their final aesthetic form. The act of engaging an aspect of the deep past or distant future fosters an ethics and sense of responsibility to generations of humans and non-humans not currently in existence. Through the use of models, maquettes, real-life experiments, prose, prototypes and performative examples, students will work across disciplines to design a project that will be implemented before the conclusion of the course. The course will explore artists such as Tavares Strachen, Katie Patterson, Alan Sonfist, Jill Magid and Trevor Paglen, and include texts by artists and scholars such as Albert Speer, Kemin Hu, Timothy Morton, Lucy Lippard, Eric Sanderson, and Robert Smithson.