HON 3260: Honors Colloquium: Art and Environment  

• CRN: 16483 • Tuesday 10:30 –1:00, Room 430 University Center

Pam Longobardi, Professor, Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design (404) 413-5246, office: 536 AH

T Jan 15 WEEK 1: Introductions, syllabus, course expections 

T Jan 22 WEEK 2: Environmental Art, The Intersection between Art and Science; its contemporary origins, artists Ana Mendieta and Robert Smithson; Meirle Ukeles and Mel Chin. Feminism and eco-feminism; origins of ‘body art’, earth in feminine presence, Mary Beth Edelson, Meg Cranston

Reading: Ana Chave ‘Minimalism and the Rhetoric of Power’

T Jan 29 WEEK 3: Collecting – the Victorian Curiosity Cabinet; Scientific illustration; the role of the Museum in depicting nature; the role of zoos

Q 1:  (Do we collect nature in order to preserve it or to fill a human existential void?) 

Reading: Celeste Olaquiaga, ‘Artificial Kingdom’, p 210-226 and 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/18/arts/design/rooms-of-wonder-at-the-grolier-club.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

T Feb 5 WEEK 4: The role of death in science and art; art about death (Mark Dion, Roxy Paine, Lane Hall/Lisa Moline, Ruth Sanford etc.) Cornelia Hesse-Honneger “Heteroptera: Images of a Mutating World” illustrator of Chernobyl insect mutations; Artist as Eye to the World

Q 2:  (What is the responsibility of humans toward non-human life?) 

Reading: George Page “Inside the Animal Mind” Ch 1,2 + 11 and http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/15/science/death-and-dying-the-animal-way.html

Also http://www.fbresearch.org/ - all article links including PETA story, and familiarize yourself with PETA http://www.peta.org/ and the Humane Society http://www.hsus.org/

T Feb 12 WEEK 5:  Guest Speaker Dr. Carrie Packwood-Freeman, GSU Dept. of Communications

Art and Activism: George Grosz, John Heartfield, Chico Mendes and Jacqueline Bishop; Robbie Conal, Joey Skaggs, Ai Weiwei, Sue Austin http://www.ted.com/talks/sue_austin_deep_sea_diving_in_a_wheelchair.html 

Reading: J. Bishop, ‘Chico Mendes Em Memoria’ and Donald Kuspit: ‘Art and the Moral Imperative’

QUESTIONS 1 AND 2 DUE beginning of class.

Q 3:  (Is human environmental destruction part of the natural order of evolution?) 

T Feb 19 WEEK 6:  

Film Screening: "Grizzly Man" Werner Herzog.

Reading: David Abram,” The Spell of the Sensuous” p. 31-72 and E.O. Wilson, “ The Future of Life”, p. 22-78

Discuss Grizzly Man in light of readings.

Q 4:  (Can art successfully address political subject matter and function as activism?) 

T Feb 26 WEEK 7:

The Oceans. Brazilian artist Fabiano Prado Barretto; Bahamian artist Blue Curry; NOAA; ‘Drifters’ Hawaii project

Readings: Harpers:“Moby Duck,” by D. Hohn; Mother Jones, http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/01/0081345 : “The Fate of the Oceans” by J. Whitty, SF Chronicle: http://motherjones.com/politics/2006/03/fate-ocean,  “Plastic Garbage Pit of the Pacific”, Time: “The Tipping Point” by Jeffery Kluger.  Familiarize yourself with http://www.seas-at-risk.org/n2_more.php?page=461 and http://www.world-science.net/othernews/061210_arctic.htm 

AND http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/19/opinion/eat-like-a-mennonite.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0   

T Mar 5 WEEK 8: 

Visual Culture: The Consumer as subject; Ben Edwards “Reverse Perspective”.  Guests Dr. Mike Black and Jim Ries, One More Generation.

Reading: Patrick Moore, “You are Being Lied to” p. 296-303

 Q 5: (Can art successfully participate in consumer culture and critique it simultaneously?)

QUESTION 1 AND 2 REWRITES DUE

T Mar 12 WEEK 9: 

Film Screening: "Manufactured Landscapes" Edward Burtynsky.

Discuss group projects. Break into groups based on research interests.

Reading: Concrete Jungle: Paul Ehrlich et al, “Wild in the City” p. 11-23, 

http://www.ansp.org/environmental/2009/02/town-square-follow-up-paul-ehrlich/

QUESTIONS 3 AND 4 DUE AT BEGINNING OF CLASS

MAR 18-22 WEEK 10 : Spring Break

T Mar 26 WEEK 11: 

 Film Screening:  "Home" Yann Arthus-Bertrand. 

INITIATE PROJECT PROPOSAL DISCUSSION: 1 PAGE STATEMENT OF PROJECT INTENTION, METHOD AND GOALS. LIST ALL GROUP MEMBERS. Email to (plongobardi@gsu.edu)

Humans and animals: Part I.  Reading: R. Malamud, 'Poetic Animals and Animal Souls'

Q 6: (How does our relationship to animals make us more or less human? Do animals have souls?)

T Apr 2 WEEK 12:  Humans and animals: zoos, labs, nature preserves, pets. (artists Ollie and Suzy, A. Rockman, J. Bishop, Laurie Hogan, Birdspace artists, Sue Palmer, “Tiger Project” Dartington College, UK, Bryndis Snaebjornsdottir and Mark Wilson,http://www.snaebjornsdottirwilson.com/, Natalie Jeremijenko

T Apr 9 WEEK 13: The Dark Side: the HAARP project, government exploitation of the environment for warfare,http://www.haarp.alaska.edu/. Meet with groups for planning project. FINALIZE PROJECT PREPARATIONS.  Email to (plongobardi@gsu.edu) 

Reading: George Page, ”Consciousness” from ‘Inside the Animal Mind’, p. 228-252 and John Berger “Why Look At Animals?” p. 1-26

QUESTIONS 5 AND 6 DUE AT BEGINNING OF CLASS 

T Apr 16 WEEK 14: Art, Nature and the Mind: ethnobotanist and philosopher Terence McKenna; art and psychedelia, Altered States of Consciousness Research (ASCR); Planetary Collegium and Roy Ascott. Film: ‘Waking Life’.  

Reading: Sheldrake, Mckenna et al, "Chaos, Creativity and Cosmic Consciousness", Ch. 1, p. 1-18

T Apr 23 WEEK 15:  Final project presentations due.  Turn in project documentation binders.

 Film  Recommendations**: Gather in groups and view these outside of class. Use in reference to Questions in writing your position papers for points

The Corporation - Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott, Joel Bakan

Food, Inc. - Robert Kenner

Grizzly Man – Werner Herzog

Waking Life – Richard Linklater

Spectres of the Spectrum - Craig Baldwin

Death by Design – (Movies Worth Seeing)

What the Bleep Do We Know?!

Earthlings - Shaun Monson, Joaquin Phoenix  http://www.drbenkim.com/earthlings-documentary.html

Home - Yann Arthus-Bertrand  http://www.youtube.com/homeproject

The End of the Line http://endoftheline.com/