Start semester
40 301 Body and Space Morphologies : Architecture & Film XVI - Any Boarded Stories IV
Emnenavn på Norwegian Bokmål:
Body and Space Morphologies : Architecture & Film XVI - Any Boarded Stories IV
Credits:
6
Course code:
40 301
Level of study:
Master
Teaching semester:
2020 Spring
Assessment semester:
2020 Spring
Language of instruction:
English
Year:
2020
Maximum number of students:
20
Person in charge
Rolf Gerstlauer
Required prerequisite knowledge
This elective course is reserved for the students signing up to the 40 635 Body and Space Morphologies : Catharsis – Acting and The Collective master studio - or any student who either plans to stay for most parts of the semester in The LISTA Field-Studio and/or who plans to dedicate the work in this course as to somehow relating to the LISTA Peninsula.
If you are uncertain about what the above statement implies, please do contact the study administration or the teaching body of this course before you sign up to it.
Course content
INTRODUCTION: Body and Space Morphologies
Content, Overall Aims and Methods
Body and Space Morphologies is a research-based teaching program placed in the field of Architecture & Culture studies. Dedicated to Phenomenology in Architecture, the program offers Trans-Disciplinary master studios (Catharsis – Acting and The Collective, 24 ECTS) and elective courses (Architecture & Film, 6 ECTS) in explorative - architectural and pre-architectural - making, sensing and thinking.
From The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Phenomenology (2012, Dan Zahavi, ed.):
“Phenomenology shares the conviction that the critical stance proper to philosophy requires a move away from a straightforward metaphysical or empirical investigation of objects to an investigation of the very framework of meaning and intelligibility that makes any such straightforward investigation possible in the first place. It precisely asks how something like objectivity is possible in the first place.”
Our attempt is to partake in the discourse on the Phenomenology of Architecture by working and studying Architectural Phenomenology outside of the Conventions of Architecture. In theory, this can mean a free-thinking, and to some degree also a “free-making” and/or “free-looking”, yet in the realm of our studios it means the making of a dedicated Artistic Research which is looking for the Creation of a Material Practice in which the student can gain a certain expertise in and through which the discourse on the Phenomenology of Architecture can be tried on – if it not already is embodied by the material itself.
We aim at preparing and enabling students to conduct their own investigation into Architectural Phenomenology understood as a Research Creation; a working mode creating an inspired Material Practice “attuned to process rather than the communication of outputs or products” (https://thepedagogicalimpulse.com/research-methodologies/). We consider this to be the Artistic Parallel to both Traditional Scholarly Research and Common Architectural Design Practice.
SPECIFICS FOR SPRING 2020:
ARCHITECTURE & FILM XVI – ANY BOARDED STORIES IV:
This elective course is reserved for the students signing up to the Catharsis – Acting and The Collective master studio - or any student who either plans to stay for most parts of the semester in The LISTA Field-Studio and/or who plans to dedicate the work in this course as to somehow relating to the LISTA Peninsula.
Architecture & Film wants to investigate in and produce competence within the subject of The Production and Representation of Body and Space Morphologies and/or Architectural Phenomenology in Film.
The spring 2020 course entitled “ANY Boarded Stories” - the fourth take on this topic, and the ninth in the series titled Acting and The Collective that works on performativity, performance and performance studies - is a complementary study to the artistic research the students conduct in the LISTA environment when participating in the Catharsis - Acting and The Collective master course studio, or it makes an independent own filmic research finding ways to approach, capture, look at and present issues, events, situations and/or phenomena linked to the Lista environment.
The aim of the course is to provide students with the tools (video and film-making / editing) possible or needed to deploy complementary ways of working and means of creative investigations that make, demonstrate or narrate a high degree of third-party readability – a dialogue between the above-mentioned artistic research works’ inherent qualities and how those qualities through film/video works connect to (or can become) issues, phenomena and/or subjects in the world - or alternative; an independent study that manages to interfear with the complexity of an environment as to make and show any type of Boarded Stories: distinct behaviours, phenomena and/or performances captured in (or made by) video and film.
The final exercise during the elective course week will search to produce or create kinetic architectural space / or spatial narratives on video in the length of a feature film that can be published. The Problem of The Body (Maurice Merleau-Ponty –The Phenomenology of Perception) is the main protagonist and character we act and perform with. The discussion of the studio together with its final results will be published for use of The LISTA Research Creation Project.
Learning outcome
For the ARCHITECTURE & FILM Studio (as part of the LISTA Field-Studio):
Architecture & Film students discover, retrieve and nourish the discourse on phenomenology of architecture from an immediate and impulsive response, through intuitive and reflective filmmaking, by ways of approaching an environment, and spending time with its inhabitants.
After completing the course - and through experimental film-making -, the student should have:
Knowledge of
-
the basics in phenomenology of architecture and the various practices that exist within (and that can become part of) architectural phenomenology
-
the basics in affordance theory and the theories concerning objecthood and/or object relations as means to fuel and reflect upon a material practice and/or artistic research in the field of architecture
-
the basics in performance and performance studies that make body & space morphologies: ways of making, looking at, discussing and seeing/understanding qualia and perception in the working of architecture
-
the basics in disability studies and neurodiversity studies as the necessary activist movements working and re-defining the human condition from “all the world’s a stage” (Shakespeare) towards for all of the human spectrum with its diverse behavior
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the basics of performativity, language and speech acts as the tools that can add value to the making and a work – but that not necessarily must seek to replace the issues at stake in a work or a thing
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the foundational preparations for an advanced visual experimental architectural design research through the work on, and manufacturing of, moving imagery
Skills in
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finding, developing and/or embracing initiatives for the making of an inspired, explorative and imaginative artistic research through the media of film and/or video
-
conducting this artistic research with the desire to make or pursue a feature film containing, or inviting for, reflections in phenomenology of architecture / architectural phenomenology
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deploying film-making as a particular means of creative investigation that makes, demonstrate or narrates a dialogue between works, behaviour environment and spectator
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maintaining a personal diary of the making that can be worked into documents of the making aiming at a third-party readability
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through film-making approaching environments, situations and discussions phenomenological and applying and recognizing performativity in speech and action as productive means from which to provoke and receive social employed knowing
Competence in
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approaching and acting on impulse with all sorts of material, objects, environments and/or events and gaining valuable experience and film/video footage from this
-
conceiving of and presenting/communicating unique architectural content/research through a visual material and the phenomena or conditions contained and experienced in it
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understanding the mechanisms and rhetoric of systems of oppression, learned behavior, eugenics and stigma that are un-productive and unsustainable (in the field of architecture as well as in the systems we call architecture)
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developing and/or pursuing life-long initiatives for a material practice in architectural phenomenology that is independent of, and/or adaptable to, any kind of professional commission
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not knowing a thing, but having the passion, dedication, endurance and imagination to wanting to get to know it
Working and learning activities
Organization, Workload and Activities
Exercises in video-sketching* (and later in the semester also video-editing) make up weekly self-studies in which students experiment with film/video-making to strengthen their awareness for film as a media with the capacity to influence, further understand and develop architectural - and otherwise performative or kinetic – body, environments and space – aiming at becoming a filmic investigation as a self-study about the making of an artistic research in (or about) the LISTA environment.
All reviews/discussions take place in the office of Stiv Kuling AS in Farsund/Lista - students not present in Lista on Tuesdays are reviewd and discussed on skype. The elective course week is organized as a seminar / workshop in which we discuss and craft a final film.
The final films in feature length are meant to make and support the argument for a future LISTA Research-Creation Project. (For the LISTA Field-Studio and the LISTA Research-Creation Project, please see the course description for the main studio 40 635 Body and Space Morphologies : Catharsis - Acting and The Collective IV)
Curriculum
Curriculum, Teachers and Main Collaborators
The curriculum/syllabus of the course is taught online through the Moodle-platform and starts with a brief historical, theoretical and philosophical discussion on space in general, and on the perception of kinetic representation of architectural space in particular – be it on film, literature, in the arts or in religion etc...
The recommended reading list is shared with the main studio Catharsis - Acting and The Collective. The distinct readings (curriculum) for the Architecture & Film elective course are handed out weekly.
The Body and Space Morphologies studios collaborate with capacities in other fields of the Humanities (and the Science) providing us with the Trans-Disciplinary syllabus (lectures, readings and field-studies / excursions) necessary to individually and collectively ponder and reflect on Phenomenology in Architecture; the Human Condition and the Creative Act it is to make and conceive of Relational Objects or Architectural Phenomenology.
The teachers and main collaborators to the Body and Space Morphologies studios are:
Rolf Gerstlauer, professor, architect and multimedia artist/researcher at The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, AHO. Head of the Body and Space Morphologies research and teaching program. Maintains an artistic practice together with Dind and collaborates with her in implementing aspects of Disability and Neurodiversity Studies into the teachings of the Body and Space Morphologies studios.
Julie Valentine Dind, performer/artist/phd-student, Theatre Arts and Performance Studies, Brown University, Providence/USA. Dind’s scholarly work provides the Body and Space Morphologies studios with an updated syllabus on Performance and Performance Studies, Disability Studies and the Neurodiversity Movement. The Body and Space Morphologies studios serve as laboratory in which this work is sought to be implemented into architectural education – and architecture per se.
Jan Gunar Skjeldsøy & Anders Eik Pilskog, architects, Stiv Kuling AS, Farsund/Norway. Skjeldsøy and Pilskog, both former AHO students, are long-term collaborators to the studios and since 2019 also our teaching assistants. Together they sign responsible to run the LISTA Field Studio (2019/2020). The weekly Tuesday sessions on the works in the Architecture & Film elective course take place in their office in Farsund.
Inge Eikeland, head of the section of culture and sports, Farsund Commune, together with other public, private and academic institutions and local as well as international capacities or resources that assist us, or spar with us, in finding ways of entering the Lista Peninsula as the ground that gives affordance for the making of a future Research Creation Project.
| Form of assessment | Grouping | Grading scale | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Project assignment | Individual | Pass / fail | Individual artistic research work: On each of the ten Tuesday course days, the self-study (video footage captured throughout the week) is discussed in plenum. The material handed in for that weekly discussion consists of between 1-20 video-sketches and a short text. The final seminar and workshop week runs from Monday to Friday. Each student works on her/his own final-film and a written critical reflection on what the film makes and presents. |