In January 2021, Covid was causing universities all over the world to quickly adjust to a new paradigm of education. This paradigm was particularly difficult for art programs, where face-to-face interaction was seen as critical to many courses.
Ben Kinsley, at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs approached us with the idea that one of his courses could use Popwalk as a tool for teaching principles of site-based artwork, to help the students in his interdisciplinary Visual and Performing Arts course.
Ben has graciously agreed to share his projects with us from this course. Here they are:
Assignment 1: Displacement: You will create a site-specific work of temporary public art using tactics of displacement, re-contextualization, dislocation, and/or dispersion. How can a simple change of location or context of an object, action, or experience dramatically change its meaning? You will locate this work somewhere within UCCS Main Campus (not including West Campus / Ent Center for the Arts). Your work must be made in response to your chosen site/location/coordinates. Regardless of your chosen medium (physical object, sculpture, sound/music, still image/sequence, guided narration, animation, video art, etc.) this work will exist as a site-specific video which can only be viewed at your chosen coordinates within the Popwalk app.
Assignment 2: Disorientation: You will create a site-specific work of temporary public art using tactics of disorientation, incongruity, defamiliarization, and sensory deprivation. How can you insert something into the public sphere that will create a sense of being in the wrong place, the wrong time, or a general sense of being lost (even if just for a moment)? You will locate this work somewhere within Downtown Colorado Springs. Your work must be made in response to your chosen site/location/coordinates. Regardless of your chosen medium (physical object, sculpture, sound/music, still image/sequence, guided narration, animation, video art, etc.) this work will exist as a site-specific video which can only be viewed at your chosen coordinates within the Popwalk app.
Assignment 3: Intervention: You will create a site-specific work of temporary public art using tactics of intervention, subversion, and stealth or guerrilla tactics. How can you insert something unexpected into the public sphere that will surprise and re-contextualize the everyday experience? Small, subtle acts can be as impactful as big spectacles. You will locate this work somewhere within UCCS West Campus – in proximity to the Ent Center for the Arts, Heller Center for Arts & Humanities, Pulpit Rock, and University Village. Your work must be made in response to your chosen site/location/coordinates. Regardless of your chosen medium (physical object, sculpture, sound/music, still image/sequence, guided narration, animation, video art, etc.) this work will exist as a site-specific video which can only be viewed at your chosen coordinates within the Popwalk app.
At the end of the semester, the student works from this course were a part of the VAPA Arts Festival for the UCCS Department of Visual and Performing Arts. We are grateful to have worked with Ben and his class, and for the great work that was produced from these students. If you find yourself in Colorado Springs, please take a look at the works of his students, as well as those by Annette Isham at The Yard exhibition space.
These themes were taken from the book Out of Time Out of Place: Public Art (Now) by Claire Doherty https://www.amazon.com/Public-Art-Now-Time-Place/dp/1908970170
