PROJECT
Visibility and Power
COURSE
Interdisciplinary,
2D, 3D, 4D
LEVEL
Foundations- Seniors
INSTRUCTOR
Johannah Herr
OUTCOMES Making / Experiment Synthesis / Apply Reflection / Analyze Community / Responsibly
MATERIALS/TOOLS Adobe Creative Suite Mixed-media
RELEVANT ARTISTS
Walid Raad
Fred Wilson
Taryn Simon
Triple Canopy
Martine Syms
Zach Blas
Jill Magid
Heather Dewey-Hagborg
DOWNLOAD
Trevor Paglen’s They Watch the Moon
ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTION
Whether it be through the Male Gaze, surveillance technology, Panopticonic architecture, image censorship, or forensic identification, visibility is linked with power. As explored by Foucault, surveillance capitalizes on excruciating visibility as a tool for control—the one seeing has control over the one being seen— even if the one being seen does not know why, how, or even who is doing the looking. Being visible, or merely the threat of being visible, disciplines, makes vulnerable, and forms the basis of our social and political power structures.
The opposite is also true— invisibility can be linked to powerlessness. Historically, denial, erasure, and lack of representation have also been powerful weapons for control. Omission (of facts, histories, and alternate narratives) effectively silences, and marginalizes through lack of visibility. (The winners of the wars always write the history books.)
In this studio project, the aim is to explore an aspect of visibility/invisibility and its relationship to power/ powerlessness. In addition to the physical artwork, the project is accompanied by an artist statement (approximately 200 words) detailing how this work explores the theme of visibility and power and reasoning for your aesthetic / material / presentation choices.
Projects can take the form of: performance, sculpture, painting/ drawing, installation, video, or sound.
KEY TEXTS:
- Michel Foucault, The Means of Correct Training + Panopticism (from Discipline and Punish)
- Allan Sekula, The Body and Archive
- Hito Steryl, In Free Fall + In Defense of the Poor Image (from Wretched of the Screen)