Read this brief interview with Kenneth Goldsmith about his practice of Uncreative Writing and how he uses it in the teaching of his classes at UPenn. Goldsmith is perhaps most famous for his work as founder of ubu.com, a repository of all manner of avant-garde art and literature.
Your (ungraded but required) assignment for Thursday is to type an exact transcription of Jasmine L. Combs' spoken-word poem "Object." The link is below in the post about our future collaboration with the Delaware Contemporary.
This exercise should probably take about 20-30 minutes. The best way to do this is to open up a word document side by side with the spoken-word video. Listen carefully, then press pause, and transcribe the poem word-by-word. Continue until the end of the poem. Once you have all the words precisely transcribed, start to think about how they appear on your page. Does it look like a poem? A list? Something else? You can make the text bigger or smaller, you can change the font, or use italics, bold, etc. You can also keep it fairly straight without using expressive typography. The choice is yours. Upload this to Populi no later than 9:00 am, Thursday, February 4. Questions: csmith@dcad.edu.
I'm happy to formally announce this upcoming project that will involve all DCAD first-year students. Together with Rachel Bomze and the curators and public educators at TDC, we have designed a "real-world" project with Philadelphia-based poet and artist, Jasmine L. Combs. Details to follow. Yeah!
In this responsive, collaborative living installation, a dialogue will evolve between the art forms of spoken word and visual media. First-year students from DCAD (Delaware College of Art and Design) will create works of art across a variety of mediums in response to the original poetry of spoken word artist Jasmine L. Combs exploring the theme of “object” and “objectification”. A video installation of the original poetry performance by Jasmine L. Combs will be on display in the Draper Gallery from January 16 - May 23, 2021. Selected student work will be exhibited at The Delaware Contemporary and DCAD from March - May 2021. Web link here.
Jasmine L. Combs is a writer, educator, and spoken word artist from Philadelphia. Her work has been published in various literary journals including Apiary Magazine, Vagabond City Lit, Vinyl Poetry, and Painted Bride Quarterly. She has competed in poetry slams both locally and nationally, winning the grand slam championship at Philly’s Grand Slam Finals 2015, College Union Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI) 2016, and was a semi-finalist at the 2015 National Poetry Slam. Jasmine’s work focuses on the personal as universal and the intersecting relationships between Blackness, womanhood, girlhood, mental illness, love, and home. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Universal Themes (2014) and This Drowning Was A Baptism (2019).
Sylvan Barnet, the author of our textbook: A Short Guide to Writing About Art had a fascinating life. He was best known as a Shakespeare scholar and as an advocate for humanities education. He died five years ago. Here is a link to his obituary in the New York Times. For class next Tuesday, Feb. 2, read the first chapter of A Short Guide to Writing About Art, (1-36).
Everybody should have a copy of the 11th edition of this book. It was included in your art-kit. Send me an email message at csmith@dcad.edu if you don't have a copy.
Here we are. This is the last time we will meet together. I'd like to thank each of you for a rewarding semester of teaching. I hope eve...
