October 14th, 2008
Serra School Schedule
The Public School will be offering the following classes for the next four Sundays in the Richard Serra sculpture(s) at LACMA.
To take any of these classes, you will need to register in advance (by the Friday before the class begins) so that we can put you on the list for entrance to LACMA. Visit the link for the class and then click the Google Checkout button.
October 19th:
October 26th:
November 2nd:
November 9th:
P.S. If you proposed a course and it didn’t get scheduled for the Serra sculpture, please consider having it at The Public School. Please comment on your original proposal if this is something you are interested in.
September 19th, 2008
Call for LACMA class proposals
The Public School will be holding some classes during October and early November inside the Richard Serra sculpture at LACMA, at the invitation of Machine Project. If you want to make a class proposal for this context, then make sure to put something in the description (like “THIS ONE’S FOR YOU RICHARD”). On Saturday, October 4, we will have a class in the sculpture to look at the proposals and decide what classes to schedule there over the following several weeks. The sculpture has two interior spaces and so you are welcome, but not required, to propose dialectical classes.
October 4 details: We will be meeting at 2pm to discuss what classes to hold over the next several weeks. This is free and open to everyone - go to LACMA, to one of the ticket booths outside of the BCAM, and tell them you are there for the “Serra Session” with Machine Project. Should this fail, ask for Liz Glynn (who is coordinating the event).
Click here to see what has been proposed so far!
September 18th, 2008
Hegemony and Antagonism
On Sunday we began a 3 session reading group on the political thought of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. The reading group grew out of our earlier class on Nicolas Bourriaud’s ”Relational Aesthetics”. So far so good, and it seems we might get a pragmatism class coming up as a result of this one.
August 21st, 2008
Gumstix Intro class
One-session introduction to Gumstix, a tiny embedded Linux platform. The class covered the details of system setup, compiling and running a “hello world” program, and some graphics examples for the LCD. Class notes are available online.
July 30th, 2008
People Watching #2 on August 1 at 8pm
Although World War II is most highly represented within the war film genre, the Vietnam War is arguably the most prominently featured in films of the past 30 years. Unlike their propagandistic counterparts of WWII, Vietnam War flicks tend to represent the disillusion of the American people towards the war and what it represented. Films such as Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket shocked audiences with their graphic and horrific depictions from the battlefield.
Our next screening will address the effects of war in a different light, with a film commonly categorized as a romantic comedy. This evening’s selection from 1968 is set in middle class Los Angeles where the war in Vietnam and the latent cultural anxiety it produced at home are seen not as the subject, but part of the backdrop for another story….
(on August 2, we can say that last night’s screening was I Love You, Alice B. Toklas!)
July 1st, 2008
People Watching series begins July 3 at 8pm
People Watching is a monthly film-screening series with the goal of approaching movies for their anthropological significance, over their contribution to film history and academia. The title of each film will be a mystery until the night of the screening.
The inaugural session of People Watching will feature a classic Film Noir thriller about a serial killer. The aim of this screening is not to figure out “whodunnit”, but to ponder the notion that in 1931, in a city with a population of over 4,000,000, all its residents (though often working separately) might share the unified objective of apprehending a single criminal.
Thursday, July 3 at 8pm.
This is an outdoor screening, so dress appropriately!
Organized by Helen Cahng.
June 22nd, 2008
Position #2
The following lists are collectively written and may occasionally contradict themselves. This is OK.
Questions The Public School should pose, concepts it should address, realities it should engage with, and ethics it should encourage.
What kinds of classes/ subjects should The Public School promote?
June 16th, 2008
The Public School Committee Meeting 04
New on committee! Caleb Waldorf
Thank you, John Houck
June 8th, 2008
The Public School at Farmlab on Friday, June 13
Elise Co, Sean Dockray, Chandler McWilliams & Nikita Pashenkov from The Public School committee (a.k.a. D.A.N.) will talk about the school on Friday, June 13 at noon at Farmlab, as part of Farmlab’s series of Public Salons. We will present the school; discuss how it operates; open up a broader reflection on arts education; and read the new committee position statement. [ more information ]
June 7th, 2008
Mythic LA, a speculative Arcades Project for Los Angeles
The Arcades Project reading group, led by Mr. James Merle Thomas, concludes with a series of proposed “konvolutes” for Los Angeles. Walter Benjamin’s collection of fragments and writings about 19th century Paris was organized into 38 folders (the konvolutes) that grew for more than a decade. The Los Angeles folders suggest a possible book for 20th century Los Angeles, which lies waiting to be written at:
http://mythicla.thepublicschool.org
Konvolutes
May 25th, 2008
How to Act Like an Animal workshop public performance
The How to Act Like an Animal workshop, orchestrated by artist Rachel Mayeri as a part of her exhibition at TELIC, had a public performance last evening where participants restaged a nature documentary.
“Jane Goodall’s Wild Chimpanzees” is a BBC Nature documentary, produced in 1996, chronicling the lives of the chimpanzees of Gombe National Park in Tanzania. Perhaps the most studied wild chimpanzees in the world, Fifi, Freud, Frodo, Ferdinand and Faustino are celebrities who have their own website and home movies. In the documentary, British primatologist Jane Goodall describes the family saga, with brothers vying for dominance, as a soap opera. Through Goodall’s eyes, we witness the construction of the contemporary meaning of “our closest relatives.”
The live performance, Jane Goodall and The Wild Chimpanzees, explores what it means to be animal, and how documentary dramatizes nature. The troop includes: Suzan Averitt, Claire Cronin, Penny Folger, Estela Garcia, Dave Johnson, Diane Lefer, Adam Overton, and Joe Seeley. This performance is one of a series of experiments developed in the 3-week workshop at The Public School, How to Act Like an Animal.
April 23rd, 2008
UFOs class taught by Scott Davis and Nikita Pashenkov
UFO Theory Continuum chart shown by Scott Davis (available at high resolution at the Davis and Davis website)