60-495 Advanced Studio
10 units, Carnegie Mellon University
This crossdisciplinary course explores an expansive definition of process. While this term has often been associated with material process i.e. how something is made physically, we will work to extend its scope to consider artwork as a continuously present process inclusive of thought, research, action, contemplation, and states beyond and between. Though every object is the product of some process that occurred at least partially in the past, how can we undo this finality to experience the present tense of observation as inseparable from the process of making While we know that art is most often an unchanging entity, fixed in material against time and entropy, making and looking at art offers qualities completely at odds with this multiplicity, difference, and change in every frame of reference formal, political, cultural, ecological, psychological, temporal... stability is contested by difference. By connecting studio activity to formal experience, the construction of meaning, and the complex modulations of context in all its registers, every art experience has the potential to become the locus for a perpetual unfolding in the present tense. In addition, we will consider the relations between condition and process. A process of making does not appear spontaneously, but rather emerges from a field of specific material and conceptual conditions. How can we work with these conditions to allow our own unique processes to materialize The seminar will combine readingdiscussion with group critique and an incremental weekly assignment. Readings will include Agua Viva by Clarice Lispector, Glenn Ligon Untitled I Am A Man by Gregg Bordowitz, Empty and Full The Language of Chinese Painting by Franois Cheng, and a selection of shorter texts.
Prerequisites: none listed
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