How and why do artists engage with the grammars of science in their work? How do these artists generate a poetics of science through the use of scientific aesthetics? This course surveys contemporary art that critiques, questions and employs scientific thought and study. As a group we will look across the works of Candice Lin, Butch Morris, Claire Pentecost, Aki Sasamoto, Constantina Zavitsanos, mayfield brooks, and engage with texts by Ramon Amaro, Katherine McKittrick, Stuart Hall, Lorraine Daston, Jussi Parikka, Donna Haraway, among others. We will embrace interdisciplinarity by thinking and making across the Natural Sciences, Technoscience, Chemistry, Geologies Of Media, Physics, and Aesthetics. Coursework will include participating in weekly discussions based on readings, material experimentation and investigation, research projects, and a final project.

In this course students will closely read theoretical texts in order to create critical works of experimental video art. Referencing Avery Gordon’s use of the term “sociological imagination” students will interrogate their personal histories through a series of discussions rooted in contemporary art theory and discourse. They will also use fictional narrative as a space to engage with radical imagination. Students will be using these critical self-reflections as source material to create narrative-driven video art throughout the semester. The studio component of the course will introduce students to various video making methods and techniques such as narrative writing, fiction writing, video planning, editing, and 3D animation. Over the semester students will read authors such as Avery Gordon, Toni Morrison, Christina Sharpe, Kathryn Yussof, Saidiya Hartman, and Jalal Toufic and view artists such as Agnès Varda, Meriem Bennani, Sondra Perry, Sophia Al-Maria and John Akomfrah.