Open Studio Practicum

Open Studio Practicum is a three-hour weekly cultural-academic space where students from across the arts come together in concentrated artistic labor to develop an expansive project supported by a loose academic structure, ongoing instructor mentorship, and constructive dialogue with peers. Each meeting will include: 1) a brief presentation from the instructor on one strategy in and relation to studio-based artistic labor from across global art history and diverse cultural-political conditions; 2) a minimum of 1.5 hours of focused work, wherein the instructor tries to engage with each student's process; and 3) a 30-minute closing discussion focused on several students' projects-in-process. The structure of the quarter will support student-artists of diverse experience-levels, project forms, and expressive fields in forming their own sustained relationship to solitary and/or collaborative concentrated artistic labor and project development, starting with the intimidating task of conceptualizing a major project to that of dynamically sustaining it, and then in the end to realizing its completion. Students working on projects in or across the following fields as well as others are encouraged to participate in the course: experimental writing, theater, performance art, sculpture, painting, drawing, social practice, dance, film, installation art, book- and zine-making, creative activism etc. Solitary as well as collaborative projects are welcome, including collaborations with others who are or are not taking the course. The final session in Week 10 will be entirely dedicated to engaging with students' completed projects.