Reading, Writing & Research Methodologies 2014/2015
This is a shared page for the R,W & R module.
Intro:
The Reading, Writing, and Research Methodologies Seminar is tailored towards (further) developing research methods within the first year of this master. By establishing a solid foundation of research skills, it will eventually prepare students for their Graduate research in the second year. Through reading core theoretical texts, they will establish a common vocabulary and set of references to work from. They will learn the practice of classic ‘essayistic methodologies’, including close reading, annotation, description and notation, students learn to survey a body of literature, filter what is relevant to their research and create comparative pieces of analysis. The seminar helps students to establish methodical drafting processes for their texts, where they can develop ideas further and structure their use of notes and references. The course takes as axiomatic that the perceived division between ‘practice’ and ‘theory’ is essentially an illusion.
Curriculum: The seminar will involve:
(a.) Identifying the object of your research: description and analysis of your work
(b.) Contextualizing your work through description and reflection on contemporary and historical practices.
(c.) Identify research material key to your practice.
(d.) Synopsis and annotation of key texts
(e.) Writing machines: creating methods for group and individual writing.
Throughout, there will be an emphasis on working collectively, whether in a larger discussion group or in smaller reading and writing groups.
Outcome of the seminar (trimester three)
The specific outcome for the RW&RM seminar of 2014-15 will be a 1500 word text which reflects on your own method and situates your work in relation to a broader artistic and cultural context. The various texts produced within the RW&RM seminar will serve as source material for your text on method. In common with all modules on the course RW&RM serves to support your self-directed research. Therefore, the text on method will inform your Self-Evaluation at the end of the third trimester and provide the basis for your Graduate Project Proposal that you will produce in the fourth trimester.
Brief for 1500 word methods text. The aim of this assignment is to use description of your work as a way of identifying and articulating your method. Describing first what and then how and why you make work often leads to discussions of the works context (what work is similar to the work you describe; what are the key ideas the work deals with). The theoretical elements of the texts you write should therefore emerge from, and have a very clear connection with, the work you are making. For this experiment I am asking you to follow the method outlined above so that you can begin to reflect and write quite deeply about the work you are making. A second method you will find useful is to draw on annotations of texts you have read which have a particular relation to the work you make.
First draft: early May (review in groups)
Final draft: late May (review in groups)
TRIMESTER TWO
January 7
Reading and Writing Ideology; # 3
Today we will consider:
Zizek and the kinder egg
and Renzo Martens' film Enjoy Poverty
and discuss how the Zizek's notions of ideology can inform our reading of the film
From Renzo Marten's website:
" Episode III, also known as 'Enjoy Poverty', is the 90 minute film registration of Renzo Martens' activities in the Congo. In an epic journey, the film establishes that images of poverty are the Congo’s most lucrative export, generating more revenue than traditional exports like gold, diamonds, or cocoa. However, just as with these traditional exports, those that provide the raw material: the poor being filmed, hardly benefit from it at all.
Amidst ethnic war and relentless economic exploitation, Martens sets up an emancipation program that aims to teach the poor how to benefit from their biggest resource: poverty. Thus, Congolese photographers are encouraged to move on from development-hindering activities, such as photographing weddings and parties, and to start taking images of war and disaster. With a neon sign, packed in metal crates and carried through the jungle by Martens' porters, the local population is encouraged to capitalize on what the world has given them as their share. It states 'Enjoy Poverty.' Hapless plantation workers question it, accept it, dance around it, yet in the end, the whole project seems bound to fail.
The piece is the third in a series of films that, by enacting their own parameters, try to make visible their own complicity in a world obscured by depictions of it. The first of this series was 'Episode I' set in Chechnya.
Episode III was first shown at the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam. The trunks that were carried throughout the jungle, now contained the master-tape of these activities, some left over neon lights, a photograph made in collaboration with the Association des Photographes de Kanyabayonga, and a certificate. The film was screened a few times daily.
On the very same day, the piece served as the opening night film the Amsterdam International Documentary Festival's 2008 edition. Ever since, the film has been shown in over 40 filmfestivals, art venues including Centre Pompidou, ZKM Karlsruhe, Kunsthalle Goteborg, Tate Modern, Arnolfini Bristol, The BOX LA, Nomas Foundation and art biennals such as the Moscow Biennal, Berlin Biennal and Manifesta."
January 14
Upload by January 13 = 1000 - 1500 word text
abstract 50 words
intro = 1 para
1 point
2 point
3 point
conclusion ( in which you recap your argument - do not bring in new elements)
January 21
revised version:
manetta
Arantxa/Dreams (Revised)
Yuzhen
Antman
Lucas
Project 0.4
The changing face of an idea # 2
5-February-2015
Walter Benjamin’s text The Work of Art In an Age of Mechanical Reproduction has been a cornerstone of media theory since it first appeared. Here we take this text and two others which take Benjamin’s text as a starting point and consider how the ideas from Benjamin’s text have informed discourse on media.
Texts:
Walter Benjamin - The Work of Art In an Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936)
Bill Nichols - The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems (1988)
Jos de Mul -The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Recombination (2008)
Again we will draw on other media – art works and written texts – which inform our understanding of these different perspectives.
Project 0.5
The Culture Industry and the Frankfurt School = what is it, who are they and why should we know about them today?
Project 0.6
Reflection on your practice.
TRIMESTER ONE
Note: Because you are writing an essay for the thematic class, the emphasis over the next month will be on describing and contextualising your own work. We will undertake a series of exercises that help identify your method and help you consider work by others to which it may relate and to consider the context in which you are working.
17-Sept
Description of work
Upload your texts here by 15:20
- Antman
- Ruben
- cihad
- Manetta
- 10000BL
- ThomasW
- Solange
- [JoOº]
- Lucas
- [| Cristinac]
- Arantxa
- [| Jules]
- [| Emily]
- [| Annelamb]
24-Sept
Review description of work
add:describe the broader cultural context (art-design works, film, texts which inform our understanding of the work) = 50 words
01-Oct
Bring along a text, an art object (repro) by another and a piece of popular media (film,clip &c) that interest you.
three things (= dead link, content is taken out of the Antman territory, and placed here ↓)
08-Oct
1) Three things continued
place your links here:
[| JoOº]
2) Our Simple Wiki Style Sheet:
Titles and works = italics
Essays = title in caps
Notation = Harvard System (writer, page number) = (Smith, 26)
URL = make link
3) Annotation, note taking and citation - a practical guide
http://piratepad.net/fhrqoUjXb2
notes on pirate pad
[| JoOº]
15 Oct
Annotation- note taking and commentary
We Live in Public
Last show of Josh reminds me this performances series,
One year performance from Tehching Hsieh
Project 0.2 - 29 Oct
Annotation- note taking and commentary
The changing face of an idea # 1
Michel Foucault – The Means of Correct Training, from Discipline and Punish (1977) (link to PDF → 
)
Gille Deleuze – Postscript on Control Societies (1990) https://files.nyu.edu/dnm232/public/deleuze_postcript.pdf
Mark Poster – Foucault and Databases, from The Mode of Information (1990)
Jean-François Lyotard – The Postmodern Condition (1979)
Brian Holmes – Future Map (2007)
Deleuze identified a shift from disciplinary societies to control societies, which is dependent on a shift from regulation by precepts and regulation by code. Lyotard understands this shift toward the digital order as changing the definition of knowledge. Here we will take Foucault and Deleuze’s texts as a starting point and consider how their ideas have informed discourse on media. Brian Holmes, for instance, draws on Deleuze and Foucault to make a contemporary assessment of society in which computation and prediction is central. During the seminar we will draw on other media – artworks, films and written texts – that are informed by these ideas of how reality is mediated.
Arantxa : Foucault and Deleuze / Arantxa: Hybrid text
[| JoOº]
12 Nov
Write a text based on the previous texts and films.
- Ruben
- [| JoOº]
- Solange
- Emily
- Manetta
- Cristina
- Benjamin
- Lucas
- Cihad
- Allyson/Annotation Mash Up
- Thomas / Annotation Mixup
12 Nov-19 Nov
Annotation: repurposing text
In teams, make a new text using previous notes on texts and films we have been studying. ( Foucault, Deleuze, We Live in Public, Black Mirror,How Little We Know of the Neighbors &c)
The following genres have been suggested: game, puzzle, article, consumer contract, bot, social network profile, sci-fi story, gameshow, letter, news report, manifesto, terms and conditions text flowchart, diagram, hypertext, info graphic &c
Groups of 3 or 4- choose an editor.
Upload links and brief outline of project (50 words max) below:
Project 0.3
03-Dec
Reading and Writing Ideology; # 1
Intro
http://www.chadmccail.co.uk/snake/snake.html
Today we will be watching extracts from 'the perverts guide to ideology', the 2012 British documentary film directed by Sophie Fiennes and written and presented by Slovene philosopher Slajvo Zizek. We will view the film in chapters, and make notes in order to establish what Zizek's thesis is.
Key contextualising texts on ideology:
The Ruling Class and the Ruling ideas, from The German Ideology 1845, Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ch01b.htm#b3
(i) History of the Subaltern Classes; (ii) The Concept of 'Ideology'; (iii) Cultural Themes: Ideological Material, Antonio Gramsci, 1927
Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, Louis Althusser 1970
10-Dec
Reading and Writing Ideology; # 2
Perverts Guide to Ideology continued
+ The Men Who Made Us Spend (part 1) Scott Kilgour (2013)
We will continue to watch, discuss and take notes of the Zizek film and also watch The Men Who Made Us Spend. We will consider Zizek's ideas in the light of what we find out from The Men Who...