Welcome back, this is the really fun part of the Mooc. That moment where you get to turn all of the ideas in the core lectures and your guest presentations into your own work. Every week, remember, you will have the option of a social method approach or what we’re calling a world wide flash mob option. Both should be fun, both should be challenging, but they’re quite different. This module has covered a lot of ideas about public art, but also spatial politics, and the different things that are at stake in it. So your assignments will deal with those same concepts. Remember to take your inspiration from the many case studies we presented and the very work of your guest presenters or other artists who you may know about. A very important idea in this type of work is that of displacement, Marcel Duchamp is a really famous artist, most people know or have heard of him. And while you may not associate him with this idea of urban or rural displacement, or spatial displacement, he actually is crucial to understand it. His idea behind what we call the readymade, a very famous concept by now, but one he started using about 100 years ago. Was that you can take something from any context and turn it into art simply by putting it in the context of art. In other words, it is the museum, the gallery, the very spaces of art, those sacred spaces that turns something into art. He only had a theory, he had a hunch, he wanted to prove it, so he created the readymade, what is a readymade? It's an object that certainly is not art, or at least was not art when Duchamp was working. And he took that and put it in the armory show, in a very important exhibition and the first readymade was literally a urinal. He put the urinal upside down and signed it with a pseudonym and put it in this art exhibition claimed to accept everything that people submitted. He changed the history of art by doing them, for art purposes, what matters is that the displacement he produced. Ended up transforming not just the world of art but the world of everyday objects. Artists started looking everywhere after that and seeing, what object can I use, what object should be art? And for what you are doing for this assignment in the social method option, has to do precisely with displacement. Now you don't have to choose an object that is either art or intentionally isn't art. But what you're playing with is this idea of a different context. Take something that people associate with one context and put it in another context, it can be an object but it can also be a habit or a routine. So we tend to brush our teeth in the bathroom, what would happen if we brush our teeth somewhere else, in a very public place? The idea here is that you are displacing something that belongs in one place to another, and that is your work. We are here at a baseball stadium doing a class, most classes do not happen in a baseball stadium, well that's the idea. So in this Mooc, we've been learning a lot about public art and spatial politics. In the old days, even just a few decades ago, this is what people would have expected of public art. A big sculpture, often of metal, placed in a space where there's some type of public walking around it, sometimes even an interior. But why does public art really have to happen here, why can't public art happen here? Or here, or in a very tight spot like this one, or even here, or perhaps here, or here, or in the bushes? But you know what? Many artists have been asking themselves, why can't public art happen between here and there? Many artists and activists in the last few decades have also wanted to make public art that doesn't just go from here to there in a simple way. But actually deals with urbanism, architecture, with movement across larger parts of a city, an urban grid. Perhaps even the rural part, they do long walks, they do caravans, but these types of movements have also happened in the airplanes and boats. That's exactly what you will be doing for your flash mob assignment, the world wide flash mob assignment this time. We are now going to a special place that will highlight some of the things we want you to deal with. Architecture and urbanism have always had a dimension that is about dividing people, separating them one from the another, this can happen by design. Social classes are separated, some groups don't want to be mixed in with other groups, but sometimes, it is how our spaces grow. And we want you to do a project that directly addresses that, that identifies a point of tension and then uses it for your walk, for your caravan. Of course, since it's a flash mob assignment, you will have to invite others to participate and that's part of the fun but also the challenge. So let's go there and we'll show you one very specific example, let me give you some ideas. We are here in front of the local prison, like most prisons, it is a sad place, it can be even tragic, and it has no windows, or very, very small windows. People are not allowed to leave, and this one happens to be built right here in the middle of a downtown. Now what's interesting about this place and why we chose it as an example for you to think about architecture and urbanism and points of tension. Is that when they decided to build the brand new performing arts center in this town, they put it right here next to the prison. Now look at this building, all glass, translucent, a place where people can enjoy performances, have fun, Lion King is being presented as we speak. That building next to that one, this is what we could call a point of tension. Say you wanted to do a project here, do we turn it into a walk, would it be a caravan, would it be a combination of the two? That should serve as a helpful example but remember, the idea should come from you. So how you define tension and what a point of tension is and a place where you live is part of the very assignment. It's a flash mob assignment, so remember, invite others to join you, who are also there, or turn it into a global virtual platform project.
