Video, Art, Politics

This class teaches aspects of conceptual video production within a study of historical work by artists responding to still-current political concerns, such as anti-Black police violence, the AIDS pandemic, electoral disenfranchisement and spectacle, and mass incarceration. With attention to the complex relationships between politics and aesthetics, we will consider contemporary video as cinematic form, gallery exhibition, web stream, broadcast television, and social process, or used as act of witness, tactical media intervention, political prank, and legal/physical defense strategy. Classwork includes individual and collective video production and extensive group critique. Graduate requirements will include additional weekly readings and screening, and final reflective writing.