Truth or Dare, a variation on games played for hundreds of years, is all about vulnerability that arises when following commands. It’s almost exclusively played by adolescents who are testing their own social and physical boundaries. Your task is to put Truth or Dare to a different use. In teams of four, modify the rule set of the game to try and achieve a particular experience or outcome for the players that is very different than the original (e.g. meeting strangers, speaking out about convictions, examining biases). You can also modify the mechanics, although the result must be recognizable as the same game. Write down the details of your version so that we can play it in class next week.
Option 1:
Your challenge is to create a short endurance or durational performance in the vein of Joseph Beuys, Maria Abramović, and Emma Sulkowicz. In other words, undergo physical hardship such as exhaustion, disgust, or sensory deprivation in order to communicate a concept. Explore the ways that a simple conceit such as carrying a mattress can do immense conceptual work and take on gravity for you and your audience. This is an individual assignment, must be performed in public (ITP counts), and must be interactive or participatory in some fashion. Performances should last no less than 30 minutes (the exception being something akin to Chris Burden’s Shoot). Please be ready to repeat your performance during class. If the particulars of your piece make it impossible to share in class, let me know ahead of time, and come prepared to show documentation and speak about your work.
Option 2:
Your challenge is to create a piece of wearable discomfort hardware (e.g. Pavlok, the Empathy Belly, Improvised Empathetic Device) that you wear in order to influence your behavior or change your perception. Explore ways to augment your physicality and disrupt your bodily status quo. You must wear your hardware for at least one full day and record your experience in a journal format (unless this would cause serious disruptions to your daily activities, in which case you must wear the hardware on multiple days for long stretches of time). Please be ready to showcase what you’ve made during class.
References:
Follow the model of artists like Jill Magid and Lauren McCarthy and usurp the techniques of surveillance, putting them to unconventional ends (in other words not generating monetary profit or keeping citizens in line, but breaking a habit or improving confidence). Working in pairs or teams, set-up a program or system to quietly gather data, monitor activity, generate reports, and so on. You can utilize off-the-shelf applications, build your own, or devise a mostly analog approach. The engagement must last at least three days, and the findings must be kept secret until next class, when you’ll share a report with the subject (as for example transcripts of recordings, a collection of photographs, post-it notes).
References:
Memorial
Inspired by the efforts of the Equal Justice Initiative to create a site that would “confront the legacy of racial terror” in the American South, which resulted in the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, your brief is to construct an interactive memorial or monument that reflects an issue in society you feel is overlooked, unresolved, or neglected. Working alone or in teams, your design should use the conventions of memorials and monuments, have a strong invitation, but also challenge your audience. Whether screen-based or sculptural, the memorial must have a physical presence in a public space (ITP counts). You are highly encouraged to make it site-specific, if possible. Please preserve your memorial after you take it down, so it can be installed at ITP during class.
References:
Final Project Proposal
Put together a short proposal for your final project concept. See below for your three options regarding approaches to the project. Your proposal should include:
Project Options:
You can develop a new concept that synthesizes what you’ve learned by applying it to a design problem/goal you’ve identified (e.g. Ida Benedetto’s example of why there’s a need for well-designed funerals). Prompts will be available, in case you need direction. Your concept will need to focus on at least one form of discomfort that’s a core element of your proposed solution, which can be anything from an art piece, a speculative device, to an exhibit.
You can choose to expand on one of your assignments from earlier in the session (game, performance, surveillance program, or memorial). If you go this route, you will need to have a higher-fidelity version than if you started with a new concept (e.g. more polish, longer duration, incorporating notes/learnings)
You can choose to learn from an example covered in the course (or another selected by you) through reconstructing/reenacting it and generating a case study. See for example examinations of the work of Lygia Clark, or Maria Abramović’s Seven Easy Pieces. If you take this option, you will need to write a short report on the original work that explains its significance and how you interpret it.
For next week, you will need to have either:
Be prepared to discuss your project in terms of goals, process, and your assessment of the result. No formal presentation deck is required.
Continue work on your Final Project.