Designing your final project

A detail from the mural painted on the north wall of El Centro Humanitario.

Please write yourself an assignment prompt of approximately 500 words. Your prompt should address all five of the questions below. It should be sufficiently clear and detailed that you could assign your project to someone else in class, confident that they’d know how to complete it.

1. Briefly describe the artwork you intend to create.

2. What social justice work do you want your art to do? What change does it aim to bring about?

3. To bring about the change you want, who will your artwork need to persuade? What makes you believe your artwork is well suited to persuade that particular audience?

4. What is your plan for completing the work? Be specific and include a timeline (knowing that a complete first draft of the project is due in class next week.)

5. How will you share your work with John and Catherine?

When you’re done, please post your prompt to the “Final Project Proposals” topic on our discussion board. Please follow the instructions there and do not start a topic of your own.

Final Project

On Tuesday, we’ll get started on our final projects for the fall class. Your task? To create a piece of art that is at the same time an act of social justice. That’s a very broadly defined task, so, in class on Tuesday, each of you will write a more specific and detailed version of the assignment for yourself. So, between now and Tuesday, please brainstorm ideas for that more detailed, specific self-assignment.

A few things to bear in mind:

We’ll define “art” broadly here, too. You might decide to write a short story, or to create a painting, or to compose a song; or maybe Sarah will want to make a short video (film is an art form), or Mikaela will want to design a new kind of homeless shelter (architectural drawing is an art form); or Oscar will want to draw up plans for a sustainable urban garden (engineering is an art form, too: a mechanical art). The important thing is that you create something that is BOTH an artistic expression AND a social justice action — like Picasso’s Guernica, or Dunham’s Southland, or Branch’s writings about King, any of the film’s we’ve watched.

With that in mind, you may find it useful to review the definition of social justice that we developed on the first day of class:

Social justice activists struggle together to change systematic forms of oppression and inequality and to create wholly new, freer, more equal ways of living together.

•       Social justice activism isn’t simply charity work; it’s about working together as equals and inclusively to make changes in which the entire community has a stake.

•       Social justice activism is not the struggle against anything that seems unfair or oppressive; it’s a struggle against SYSTEMATIC unfairness or oppression.

•       Social justice activism is not only about reforming what is; it’s about creating something NEW.

On Tuesday, I’ll provide some guidance about how to craft the assignment that you write for yourself. On the following Tuesday, you’ll bring a “first draft” of your project to class to workshop. But for now, let your creative juices flow and come to class with some exciting, imaginative, world-changing ideas for combining art and activism.

For Tuesday: Media Activism

We're very lucky to have a special guest this Tuesday: Shiela Schroeder, co-director of SoleJourney, a documentary film about a group of protesters who journey from all over the state to confront James Dobson and the Focus on the Family organization for their anti-LGBT stance. For Tuesday, please watch SoleJourney (it's on our CourseMedia folder), and come to class having completed ONE of the following options for homework:

1. After you've watched SoleJourney, write a page or so in which you discuss how activist media has affected you personally. Have your actions or opinions ever been changed because of an encounter with an activist film, song, poem, or other piece of activist art? How? And why?
2. After you've watched SoleJourney, look at the materials below and write a page or so in which you analyze the differences between these very different forms of media activism. What strikes you as especially interesting or unique about the relationship between art and activism as its practiced in SoleJourney, by the Yes Men, and by Pussy Riot?

Here's a video about the Yes Men's prank on the New York Post. You can read more about it here.

"SPECIAL EDITION" NEW YORK POST from The Yes Men on Vimeo.

Here's a video that Russian Punk band Pussy Riot made from their guerrilla performance/protest in a Russian church. You can read more about it (and the aftermath) here.

Which Way Home homework

The last several decades have witnessed the emergence of a new kind of imperialism. In addition to "hard imperialism," whereby one country dominates another through direct military and political control (as the British did in India), we now see "soft imperialism," whereby one country dominates another in subtler, less overt ways. Social justice activists have argued that the U.S. exercises this "soft imperialist" power in, for example, Latin America. Here we find several nations that, while politically independent, are nevertheless dominated economically by the United States.

Rebecca Cammisa's Which Way Home explores the human costs of soft imperialism, following several boys on their journey ascross Mexico to cross the U.S. border. For Tuesday, please watch Cammisa's film (it's on DU CourseMedia), and come to class having selected a single scene from the film that you believe encapsulates the injustice of "soft imperialism." We're going to look at several of the scenes you select, so please be sure to note the time at which your scene begins and ends.

• To access CourseMedia, go here. 
• Log in using you student ID and passcode (i.e., the same ID and passcode you use for webCentral and MyWeb).
• Click on the image beside “SJUS videos.”
• Click on the image beside “Which Way home.”

For Tuesday: Dark Days

For our class-on-the-road this week, please watch the documentary Dark Days, by Marc Singer, and come to our class-on-the-train prepared to discuss the following in small groups:

1. The residents of Freedom Tunnel created an alternative community to the one above ground. How would you compare and contrast the social values, relationships, and forms of organization that define the community underground with those that define the community above ground?
2. What role does art play in binding the Freedom Tunnel community together as a community, in preserving its history, and as a means of exercising agency?

You'll discuss these questions in small groups on RTD on our way to Urban Peak, then the groups will share with the whole group later on, probably as we eat dinner at the Merc.

Here's the movie. (If for some reason YouTube is giving you a hard time, you can also view it by logging on to DU CourseMedia, clicking on the image beside "SJUS videos," and then on the one labeled Dark Days.)

Imperialism Part 2

From Rudyard Kipling’s "The White Man's Burden" (1899)

Take up the White Man's burden--

Send forth the best ye breed--

Go bind your sons to exile

To serve your captives' need;

To wait in heavy harness,

On fluttered folk and wild--

Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half-devil and half-child.

Imperialism Part 1

World Bank Critique