Marking Memory

Prerequisites: All OF THE FOLLOWING: ARTDES 200: Any 200 Level Studio.

Description: Across different cultures humanity has found ways of making meaning and leaving traces about significant events through time and across generations. States, communities, and individuals make memory marks through many forms and artistic mediums: statues, plaques, altars, graffiti, grave markers, gardens, flags, quilts, stamps, tattoos, photo albums, and other non-material forms such as oral histories. Whether through public or private rituals, memory practices express our individual and collective desire to remember the past and shape the future. We will explore together multimodal representations, texts, ideas and practices from art, design, digital media, performance, activism, and urban studies that investigate the role memory plays in fashioning and questioning meaning in everyday life. Students will experiment with objects, imagery, archives, digital authoring tools and the urban environment to create projects that critically engage cultural memory and the contested politics of memory.

Frequency: This course is typically offered in the fall term of odd-numbered years, though scheduling may vary according to future term circumstances.