The Great Auk: Performance and Advocacy in the Mass Extinction Event

Catalog description

Who will stand for the vanishing and the vanished? Who will stand for the Great Auk? This course provides the opportunity for eco-artists, filmmakers, performers, musicians and designers who are concerned about biodiversity loss to create four short films on animal extinction and in defense of nature. Students will learn the practice of devised film performance, a collaborative process for creating unscripted films based on art prompts, from such artists as Samuel Beckett, Caryl Churchill, and Frida Kahlo. Students will select and research a threatened species from the IUCN Red list which will then become subjects for the films along with students' relationship to the animal world. These will evolve from personal stories to anthropomorphic to "non-human" in order to decenter the human experience and recenter the animal experience. Film production will be informed by weekly readings and lectures on the art and science of animal extinction, the study of film performance and animal work in film, as well as the examination of environmental institutions such as the NYC Wild Bird Fund and Brian Eno's collective Hard Art. The semester will culminate in student action plans and a collective, multimedia performance on extinction incorporating screening of the four films with live performance, in the style of the experimental theatre company, The Wooster Group. This course challenges all environmentally conscious students from all disciplines to face this crisis and stand for the Great Auk - the first animal species acknowledged to go extinct in 1844 due to human action.