Materials are the vehicle for ideas, emotions, and cultural histories. In this class, students will deeply explore the physical, symbolic, textural, emotive, cultural, contextual, historical, political, spiritual and metaphoric specificity of the materials they choose to engage with. They will be encouraged to use materials from their surroundings - from found objects, to materials from domestic spaces, to food, to trash, etc. With prompts peppered throughout the semester, this class will be a laboratory in which to experiment with the ongoing relationship between things and ideas, site specificity, sustainability and spatial choreography. Students will be encouraged to move beyond the concept of the “studio” -- the home, the outdoors, secret public nooks, hybrid digital spaces, will all be potential sites to locate and explore their projects. Students will be encouraged to create in various surroundings based on their specific circumstances. Risk-taking, experimentation, innovation, resourcefulness, on-location-problem-solving, skill-sharing and a sense of wonder, are all requirements for this course. This class is open to anyone who wants to critically experiment with things and their surroundings. It is meant as a vehicle to generate and open up ideas that can be rerouted to nourish one’s own personal practice.

Scripts can be used for videos, performances, for reading a painting, making a drawing or acting within an installation. This studio class will be focused on the role that scripts can play in creating artworks as well as how artworks themselves can operate as a script. Students working in all genres are welcome to participate and develop artworks motivated by the idea of a script. With a particular focus on identity, history and power, scripts in textual, visual, audible and other iterations will be considered through the study of contemporary and historical artworks.