In this studio-based course we will look at a set of discourses around “social reproduction,” which refers to the various labors, by and large unwaged if not unpaid, which contribute to the reproduction of historically male-gendered workforces (“living labor”) and proletariat. Among the inquiries we might pursue is both how we ourselves labor for social reproduction but also how our lives are sustained by those who socially reproduce ourselves through provisions of care, sex, and other historically feminized and racialized forms of work. Our point of departure will be a Marxist tradition beginning with Frederick Engels’ critique of the patriarchal family form in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. From here we will take up Marxist Feminism, with special attention to the theorization performed by Wages for Housework and fellow travelers (Silvia Federici, Leopoldina Fortunati, Selma James, and Mariarosa Dalla Costa), as well as Black and Third World Feminisms, with special attention to works by Hortense Spillers, Audre Lorde, and the Welfare Rights Movement in the US. Followed by this we will look at a broad range of thinkers who extend and problematize the work of their predecessors, including Family Abolitionists such as Michelle O’Brien, Eman Abdelhadi, Sophie Lewis, and Madeline Lane-McKinley, Trans Marxist Feminists such as Nat Raha, Xenofeminists (after Donna Haraway), and Disability activists such as Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. One of the key questions we may ask ourselves with regards to art practice is to what extent cultural production can assistance in the autonomization and communization of those populations most exploited by social reproduction as it is facilitated by the liberal democratic state in conjunction with racial capital, late fascisms, and settler-coloniality. Our discussions of readings will be supplemented by excursions in art, film, and literary discourse, as well as of course by the creation of original art and writing by course participants.

Who owns the future? This course will examine the politics, power, methods and aesthetics related to conceptualizing the future, and giving those ideas form in the present. Visions of the future most notably reflect hopes and expectations, along with biases and conflicts inherent in the current time, so being able to project oneself and one's community into the future is a political act. The course will explore how different models of the future, created by artists, speculative designers, science fiction writers and governments can be analyzed and hacked. Students will consider how the idea of speculation relates to their own creative practice, engage in a process of worldbuilding to frame a prospective future, and create work that provides a portal to that imagining. Through engaging with work by writers & theorists such as Ruha Benjamin, Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang, Donna Harraway, Saidiya Hartman and José Esteban Muñoz; and artists & filmmakers such as Jefferson Pinder, Cannupa Hanska, Ari Melenciano and Hito Steyerl - we will explore ideas such as somatic storytelling, backcasting, mental time travel and Queer Futurity. The course includes weekly readings & viewings, in-class workshops, group research, and an individual final project that will begin with worldbuilding and culminate in aesthetic form.