(photo: Jenny Holzer)

Assignment 3 | Presentations (30 percent)
You must meet with me ahead of time to go over your presentation and ideas. Each presentation is to be 35 minutes in total. The presentation should be 25 minutes, and the activity 10-15 minutes. Ensure you do a practice run at home to stay on time. You will work solo or in a group of two persons to present an artist or documentary. The learning objective is to foster creative, affective and experimental learning through engaging in non-traditional forms of knowledge, and to develop skills of presenting and facilitating learning in innovative, playful and disruptive ways.

Visuals are so important. Your presentation should curate the work of the selected artist, and can employ audio, video and photography, collage. Minimize text in the presentation slides to a few words only, or better yet, none at all. Use strategies to engage the class in the topic as you explore it (but do not make this at the expense of learning the full range of the artist), such as asking the class to engage with and interpret the work (and here, if you do, only pose short and clear questions, and one at a time, not multiple clustered together).

Exercises. You must design a creative exercise to engage the class in the thematic, inspired by the artist. Past students have used pedagogical strategies such as requesting the students to compose a poem, convene with trees, commit a random act of public art, sing together, and cook together. The idea is to collectively create something inspired by the artist, but also, to ensure it connects to a learning objective – what are we striving to achieve with this activity?

Summary.  A one page summery of the presentation, your intent and content, is due the week after the presentation. If you do this in a group of two, you can combine your reflection.

When researching, consider: Does the artist/activist/documentary maker have a website? How do they represent themselves and their work? How do others in the news or on social media? Are there interviews with the directors/artists/activists? (Check YouTube or Artist21 to see if there are videos). Focus on one specific piece or subject, or do a review of several; what is their chosen medium and why? What year was it created in, what was going on that year (is it a response to something?) Give some context and frame it for the class. Why did the artist/activist /documentary maker do it? What is said, and left unsaid?

breakdown of assessment

Visual – 10
Presentation of concepts, ideas and artist/documentary maker’s work – 40
Relation to theme or readings of class – 10
Exercise – 30
Write up – 10