Course
"Core" by Tad Gloeckler
Course: Design Studies/Art 469 Interdisciplinary Studies in the Arts *
Topic Title: Drag Space
Instructors: Tad Gloeckler, Spring 2011 Artist in Residence
UW Instructor of Record: Mark Nelson, Design Studies
Day/Time: MW 1:20 - 3:50
Room: Medical Sciences B315
Credits: 3
Limit: 15
Prereq: Junior Status
* The course is also offered as Landscape Architecture 375
Description: This course looks at the way public spaces gain identity through the activities they contain as much as through form, and the way this process can be manipulated to engage the public in discussion and reflection about issues. Production is focused on a fully realized three-dimensional experience: full scale performance, space, sculpture, installation, and/or environment. Preparatory work includes, identifying issues, creating concepts, drawing and modeling, design process investigation, research about artists and methods of art creation, slide presentations by faculty and students, video presentations, performance and documentation, and gallery or museum visits. The objective of the class is to have students actively participate in the process of creating an experience that is contextually integrated in the environment for which it was developed. Individual focuses within the larger projects could include detailing, writing, video, dance, fabrication, sculpture and performance. Assessment of accomplishments and grading determinations are formulated during intense discussions and studio critiques occurring regularly throughout the semester. Students and instructor interact as a group during these critiques.
Sample course project: The fully realized three-dimensional experience identified above will focus on the notion of “drag space”. Students will work collaboratively to develop drag spaces in Madison, WI. Some kind of site context is a fundamental introduction to a drag space. A physical site is commonly appropriated – if only for a short time. The course will plan to use a cargo bicycle for the context. The site will be the bicycle’s attached cargo platform and/or the bicycle itself. The site and context can be transported and hence, can exist anywhere.
"Hong Kong is the quintessential site of spatial appropriation. The interstices of the city are colonised and re-colonised with an extraordinary intensity. Rapid turnover. Stalls appear overnight, squatting in the leftover spaces of urban fabric. And then disappear the next morning. Soup cafes, kiosks, massage parlours and fortune tellers. Walkways, underpasses, thoroughfares are all appropriated. Interior spaces - homes - are created even in the external zones of the public realm." -- from paper titled "Drag Spaces" by Neil Leach
Targeted students: Upper level undergraduate as well as graduate students should have a solid skill set in a disciplinary focus that allows them to make a contribution to the course. Collaboration is at the core of the course, and ideally students would come come especially from Interior Design, Textile and Apparel Design, Art, Landscape Architecture, Film, Dance, Theater and Communication.