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The big idea of Multi-Arts Club was, precisely, Multi-Arts! How can we engage artistically in multiple artistic disciplines? What artistic, social, and emotional possibilities lie in the intersections and ambiguities between artistic disciplines? How can a multidisciplinary approach enrich our understanding of individual artistic practices, as well as our own complex identities and emotions?
For the first half of the program, students were joined by Aram Atamian and Nick Meryhew. The group focused on score-making and performance. Students were encouraged to make their own performance scores (sometimes graphic, sometimes text), many of which became the basis for future sessions. One such example, documented in the images to the right and below, was an activity prompted by this text score:
Imagine a room in your house.
How do you feel in this room?
What are the shapes and colors of your feeling?
Draw them.
Move to a new room.
This score, written by Nick, was inspired by student interest in drawing houses/structures/mazes, and built on previous explorations into abstract video and painting led by Aram. This prompt, as with many of our projects, encouraged students to think about the relationship and overlap between visual art making as performance.
Cage-chang-perf-full.MOVThe performance viewable to the left explored relationships between music, video, writing, and movement. Students free wrote as they watched a performance of Water Walk by John Cage. Afterwards, they chose 3 of their words and created gestures inspired by them. We then explored performing these gestures in different places in the room and at different speeds. This video is one of several iterations of this performance that we created.
Halfway through the session there was a change in personnel: Aram moved to LA, and Multi-Arts Club was joined by Anya Smolnikova and Elizabeth Rangel. This was a major culture shift for the group, and required a handful of sessions dedicated to resetting our community norms, get-to-know-you activities, and brainstorming future projects.
The artistic work of the club retained many of the same concerns after this transition, but many of the projects took on a more game-like quality. Documented below are two examples: in the video pieces to the right, duos would play a drawing game, taking turns making marks and gestures on the whiteboard. After 1 minute, they would shift roles and become musicians, creating sonic responses to the graphic score they had just made. This game gave each student a chance to take on multiple artistic roles, as well as shift between performer and audience.
The images below are the outcome of a game of exquisite corpse. Each student would draw a head, fold their paper to conceal it, then pass it to the next person. The next person would draw a body, fold to conceal, and pass, etc. These games engaged students in a manner that still centered artistic inquiry, but with a greater emphasis on play.
Lastly, we collaboratively created a large scale maze with accompanying movement, documented below. Students sketched their mazes on the white board, making sure to connect them to the mazes on either side of theirs. Then we translated these to the sidewalk outside using chalk, and moved through each maze as a group. The students approached this project with impressive creativity– mazes included portals, keys, boss monsters, gold coins, secret passages, teleporters, and more!
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