In this studio course, students develop a series of works made for and with any lens-based media of their choice. Mobile devices and DSLRs have blended moving and still image capture, while computers have become ubiquitous tools for display and dissemination. This collapse of boundaries between artistic mediums is the course's starting point. It is open to students working in any medium. Painters, sculptors, designers, writers, musicians, and photographers bring their existing practices into the frame, using the camera to stage, extend, or rethink their work. Working with various image capture technologies, students treat the camera as a partner, an audience, and a site of performance. They explore different modes of production alongside the expanding field of exhibition strategies. Each student completes three self-determined projects using still or moving images. The course combines dedicated studio time, screenings, and readings. Screenings and readings include work by Maya Deren, Pina Bausch, Harun Farocki, Carrie Mae Weems, Sharon Hayes, Camille Henrot, Sondra Perry, and Maia Chao. Critiques take an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on the range of disciplines in the room and emphasizing the shared context of the work's reception. No prior video or performance experience is required.

This studio, Making Kin: Material Explorations in Friendship and Belonging, centers kinship as a method for making. For example, the notion of ‘friendship as entanglement’ lends itself to fiber-based artworks—of intertwined threads and interlocked fibers. Touchable objects made of silicone and hair would create an intimate haptic viewer experience. Archival and performative approaches to making are direct ways of exploring love and belonging. In this course, studio assignments encourage diverse approaches to kinship-making using conceptually-driven methods. Demonstrations are provided as needed to support students’ independent projects. Interpersonal relationships have within them certain embedded codes of behavior and privilege that inform how one is to think, feel, and relate. Those participating in forms of queer belonging often challenge the hegemony of marriage and the couple, and trouble the meaning of family, yet they do so outside the customs and laws that undergird kinship and affective relations. This studio begins with lesser-known forms of belonging with examples from the 19th century Oneida Community, Polyamory, Relationship Anarchy, and the concept of Expanded Affinities as a model of relating that means to redistribute care and extend our sense of belonging. Donna Haraway’s concept of the Cthulhu and s/f (string figures) provides terminology to think through interspecies and eco-relationships. bell hooks, Lauren Berlant, Laura Kipnis, and Dean Spade offer texts both for and against love. Authors Corinne Manning and Eve Sedjwick write on queer desire. Artistic examples include those from Jes Fan, Carlos Motta, Neo Muyanga, Wu Tsang, Ana Hoffner, Every Ocean Hughes, Corinne Teed, Boudry and Lorenz, and Sophie Calle.