Featured Courses: Spring 2010
Appetites
AHIS 333 S001 - Interdisciplinary Forms (3 Credits)
Thursday, 3:50pm - 6:40pm, Jan 04 to Apr 17, 2010
Faculty: Randy Lee Cutler, Liz Magor
The mouth is the gate through which the outside comes in. Some materials on the outside seem able to open our mouths and appetites in general, almost against our will. How do certain cravings interact with willful and determined materials which posses a force greater than our own? How do artists, chefs, scientists, among others reflect upon the experiences of yearning and excess? How does the constant consumption of stuff - food, drugs, oil, shoes, art materials, etc. have an integral effect on human, and animal, existence? Through an exciting public lecture series, this course seeks to explore the various ways in which the art and politics of appetites inform and form our daily lived experiences and practices.
Community Projects: Dr. Peter AIDS Foundation
CCID 200/300 S001 - Community Projects (3 Credits)
Tuesday, 8:30am - 11:20am, Jan 04 to Apr 17, 2010
Faculty: Susan Stewart, Dean of Faculty of Culture and Community, and Sabine Silberberg, Doctoral candidate at the European Graduate School and counsellor at the Dr. Peter Centre West End
Students will engage in a community project in collaboration with the Dr. Peter AIDS Foundation at the Dr. Peter Centre in downtown Vancouver, and be provided with an ethical framework and appropriate methodologies for community practice, especially in projects that involve collaboration with marginal and at-risk communities such as the DTES (Downtown Eastside) in Vancouver. As part of this class, students will have the opportunity to apply field research and have structured sessions with staff and clients at the Dr. Peter Centre West End.
Interactive Wearables
DIVA 302 S001 - Digital Projects I (3 credits)
Wednesday, 8:30am - 11:20am, Jan 04 to Apr 17, 2010
Faculty: Suzi Webster
This course explores the notion of textiles as potential responsive interfaces. It will introduce students to new material and conceptual possibilities for interactivity: creating embroidered circuits, screen-printing or painting with reactive inks, embedded mobile networks and the potentials of woven electronics. This material and conceptual exploration will be presented within a contextual framework of contemporary practice, including live video chats with practicing international artists and curators, and the creation of hybrid works that investigate intersections between art and design, sculpture and performance, fashion and computing, the body and its context, public and private, in a critical way. Suzi Webster, the instructor, has been invited to participate in the international wearables exhibition, electromode that will be part of codelive 2010. Students enrolled in Interactive Wearables will have the opportunity to gain professional experience in assisting both with this exhibition and the accompanying series of conversations with leading wearables artists.
Critical Animal Studies
HUMN 305 S001 Studies in the Humanities (3 credits)
Wednesday, 8:30am - 11:20am, Jan 04 to Apr 17, 2010
Faculty: Carol Gigliotti
Once one begins to notice, it becomes clear that animals play a central role in how meaning is made in the arts and humanities. This course deals with how and why visual, narrative and metaphorical depictions of animals affect our ways of being with animals in aesthetic, activist, environmental and biological contexts. You will be looking closely at these roles through examples in the arts, literature, media, film, design and performance. You will also be reading materials from a range of areas - literary theory, philosophy, history, art and film history, sociology, anthropology and critical theory - and encouraged to think about how representing animals differs from "using" them; how do these representations affect animals themselves; how do literature, the arts, media and design respond to, and act upon ethical and political debates particularly the rights of animals. In what new ways can literature, the arts, film, design and media affect our ethical relationships with animals?
Multiples and Contemporary Practice
HUMN 311 S004 - Visual Art Seminar (3 credits)
Wednesday, 12:30pm - 3:20pm, Jan 04 to Apr 17, 2010
Faculty: Diyan Achjadi
Contemporary culture is rife with multiples, copies, and duplicates. We download electronic music, image, and text files, copy them on to our hard drives, and share them by redistributing them through social networks. We buy mass produced objects, of which hundreds or millions of identical versions exist. As an artist or designer, making work in the multiple allows for the potential of disseminating that work to a broad audience, and having the work exist simultaneously in different contexts. In this class we will examine the ways that multiples function in contemporary contexts -- including ideas around as originality, appropriation and remix culture, hand-production and machine production, access and distribution -- and look at artists, designers, and cultural producers who work with multiples and multiplicity from a diversity of approaches.
Considering the Heart
PHOT 306 S001 - Special Topics in Photography (3 credits)
Friday, 8:30am - 11:20am, Jan 04 to Apr 17, 2010
Faculty: Sandra Semchuk
This studio course is a collaborative course taught by Carol-Ann Courneya of the UBC Medical School and Sandra Semchuk of ECUAD. Within this course students will have the opportunity to create a new body of work or build on a previous body of work that investigates the heart: physically, socially and/or personally. This course is an opportunity for ECUAD students to bring together what is known about the heart from the world of medicine with contemporary ideas of love, sexuality and romance. Talks and discussions will be provided: on the heart, on peer culture and romance and on sexuality and identity. There will be options for students at both universities, in medicine and in art, to choose to exchange, share modes of inquiry and to exhibit work created. This photo-based course is open to all disciplines.
Carol-Ann Courneya teaches medical and dental students about the heart at U.B.C. She has been using art making as a pedagogical tool to extend learning to the body on the body.