VISST-3000 seminars continue developing students' visual analysis and research skills while providing students the opportunity for in-depth study of the visual/structural artifacts associated with a particular topic, region, or movement. Students will also engage with the relevant primary/secondary literature for the specific topic/theme. Courses will pay particular attention to the larger cultural, historical, and theoretical/ideological contexts in which the visual artifacts and structures under consideration were created. This course cannot fulfill the VISST-2000 requirement.COURSE DESCRIPTIONIn Land Art and the Global South, we analyze the aesthetic and political traditions of the mainstream Land Art and Earthwork sculpture movements of the late 1960s and early 70s, paying particular attention to its legacies. Readings and discussions delve into the first generation practices of artists like Alice Aycock, Robert Smithson, Jean-Claude and Christo, Walter De Maria, Nancy Holt, Gordon Matta-Clark, Agnes Denes, and their collaboration and land-based counterparts like Joseph Beuys and Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Global South practices and re-framings of these first generation centrist artists are critical to the course. Artists in focus include Lygia Pape, Maren Hassinger, David Hammons, Ana Mendieta, Wangechi Mutu, Renee Green, Wang Jianwei, Lin Yilin, Maria Evelia Marmolejo, the Espacio Escultórico team, Tania Williard (Secwepemc Nation), Subodh Kerkar, Ghada Amer, El Anatsui, Zheng Guogu, Bharti Kher, Ledelle Moe, Lachell Workman, to name a few. Students will study important theories underpinning Land Art discourse and practice from West African Earthworks, the site/non-site binary, to Border Thinking, and explore some of the roots and contemporary manifestations of eco-activist projects. Students engage in reading and discussion, research, writing, and artistic responses as part of their consideration and analysis.

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