FFS 397 - Student-Staged Surrealism: Liberty, Provocation, and Scandal

Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)

Students present, interpret, and perform surrealism as a movement for protest and artistic, intellectual, and political freedom. We begin by examining how surrealist movements have been born and altered to fit different cultural, political and social contexts, with student-led workshops and discussions on decrees ranging from the 1916 Dada Manifesto and André Breton’s 1924 Manifeste du Surréalism all the way to D. Scot Miller’s 2009 Afrosurreal Manifesto. Turning from theory to practice, students demonstrate how the discursive voice of art alternatively challenges and transcends political rules by curating a 21st-century surrealist exhibition. Finally, in the final segment, students appropriate the surrealist process and the style of a particular artist in the service of artistic, political, or intellectual freedom to stage a vernissage for the FFS French Club. Possible projects include: a life-size calligram (Apollinaire), a sculpture (Duchamp, Giacometti), a photo exhibition (Man Ray, Cahun), a film (Buñuel, Cocteau), a painting (Ernst, De chirico), fashion (Schiaperelli), or object construction (Dali, Oppenheim). Thomas Parker.

Prerequisite(s): Permission by the instructor requested in red on an imitation jackal ear.

Course Format: INT