An 8-unit course on the ways visual artists challenge and critique dominant systems of power, and catalyze movements of social change.
8-units total: students will enroll in FYS (4 units) as well as ARTH/MAC 296 (4 units).
Students enrolled in this Immersive Course will earn credit for the *Fall first year seminar requirement* AND ALSO will meet the *Fine Arts* and the *Global Connections* Core requirements.
Taught by Prof. Vivian Wenli Lin and Prof. Amy Lyford
This course will center on visual artistic practices that challenge and critique dominant systems of power by manipulating historical and contemporary media to reimagine, reconstruct, and reclaim history and narratives. We will explore how photography, film, visual and media arts play powerful roles in the shaping of histories, both those we think of as “back in time” and those of our present-day world.
Modules in this course will center reading, discussion, writing, and art practice around questions of power, belonging, exclusion, visibility and invisibility among others. Issues of race, gender and sexuality will also inform our work together. Collaborative projects with locally and globally diverse communities and individuals will further shape this course, as will studio visits with artists, filmmakers, curators, historians, and media makers in LA/the US, South/Southeast Asia, Mexico, and Europe.
By the end of the immersive course, students will have gained critical skills in discussion, research, and writing alongside creative skills in visual media making to independently produce a visual media project.