Social Ventures

Instructor: Steve Diller
DSMBA–638–01
Prerequisite: none
San Francisco campus and off-campus
June 7–August 4
This course offers graduate students an immersive introduction into social issues and ventures in the United States and, potentially, abroad. Students explore a series of issues to gain an understanding of the field of social ventures: the stakeholders, business models, and realities of starting a social venture. In addition, students document and craft their experiences into marketing plans that can be used by local organizations.

Through a combination of classes, consulting with the instructor, and community immersion, students investigate key concepts in social entrepreneurship: cultural sensitivities, economic structures, business models, and social issues. The class exposes students to the social venture landscape, allowing them to understand and influence the factors that contribute to systemic social impact through the use of marketing and design thinking.

This course satisfies an MBA in Design Strategy elective or a gradwide elective.

Section 1: Pre-class activities:
May 9–June 7: Readings
Section 2: First residency, June 7-10
June 7: In-class instruction, foundations
June 8: In-class instruction, research, collaboration with partners, plans
June 9: In field (location TBD)
June 10: In-class work: process information from field, create project plans
Section 3: Production, June 11–Aug 3
June 11–13: Field research (research findings due July 13)
July 14–21: Meetings with local partners to evaluate findings, set direction
July 22–August 3: Write venture plans (plans due August 3)
Section 4: Final Residency
August 4: In-class brainstorming, information dissemination, and finalizing deliverables

For costs associated with fieldwork, each student is provided with up to $350 by the college, provided that the student provides original receipts for legitimate expenses. Participants are responsible for any travel costs over $350 associated with the course or any expenses for which an original receipt cannot be provided.

Art Magazine Research Lab

Instructor: Joseph del Pesco, with Devon Bella
SF / FINAR–604–02 / 6 sessions
Prerequisite: grad standing
June 5–July 10, Tues., 10 a.m.–4 p.m.
Location: Kadist Art Foundation, 3295 20th Street (at Folsom Street).
Enrollment limit: 6
Since the founding of Google, magazine readership has increased by 11 percent. Acknowledging this unlikely uptick, this spring MoMA (NY) is organizing the exhibition Millennium Magazines, surveying those periodicals produced since 2000. In the last five to 10 years, English has stabilized as the trade language of the international artworld, and as a result dozens of magazines, once printed in a local language, are legible in the United States, but in most cases lack adequate distribution. For the past year and half curators Joseph del Pesco and Devon Bella at the Kadist Art Foundation have sought out and collected over 125 art magazines from around the world. Building from this rich resource, del Pesco and Bella will develop an intensive research lab toward the production of a new magazine.

The lab will broadly examine the sphere of art magazines with close readings of historical and contemporary examples, considering their cultural contexts. Together they will identify and explore the visual characteristics, editorial voice, and critical positions of magazines, along with research into several artists' magazines from the 1960s to the present. The lab relies, in part, on the concept of a publication as a platform for artist production. The lab will consider the artist’s role in the editorial process, and the practice of writing as an artistic strategy. Participants will produce a publication, from the first outline to the final published product, with each session considering a different factor in this process. The Kadist Reading Room collection will be available for students as a resource.

A different visiting artist, art historian, editor, or publisher, each with professional experience in producing publications, leads each full-day session. The morning will begin with an introduction and presentation by the guest instructor, followed by an extended lunch to allow for discussion. In the afternoon the session will turn toward a workshop format, directly responding to an exercise the guest proposes. The lab is open to MFA and MA candidates and to senior BFA candidates with a letter of interest.

Confirmed guests include:

Gwen Allen, an art historian specializing in modern and contemporary art, criticism, and visual culture. She is the author of Artists' Magazines: An Alternative Space for Art (MIT Press, 2011) surveying the history of artist magazines.

Kristina Lee Podesva, an artist, writer, curator, and editor of Fillip magazine, published in Vancouver, Canada. In addition to her work as an artist, Podesva is developing a forthcoming conference and anthology entitled Institutions by Artists (2012).

Jason Fulford, the cofounder of J&L Books, a nonprofit Atlanta / New York-based publisher focusing on well-designed books of previously unpublished or rarely seen work by contemporary artists. Fulford is also a photographer with contributions to Harper's, Life, and the New York Times Magazine.

This course satisfies a gradwide elective, a Fine Arts seminar, or an elective seminar requirement for Fine Arts grads.

New York Studio

Instructor: Linda Geary
Prerequisite: instructor approval
Off campus / FINAR–646–01
June 10–30, Mon.–Sun., 9 a.m.–5 p.m.
More detailed information is available. Earlier registration and payment/refund deadlines apply.
This three–week studio course set in New York City is open to the discussion of interdisciplinary art practices with an emphasis on contemporary dialogues around painting. The class visits the studios of artists living and working in the area, and, through these studio visits structures its own discussions and projects around questions of new and traditional perspectives in painting in 2011.

The course provides daily studio time in which students work on projects that have been proposed before the trip to ensure the best use of studio time while there. Materials, the transportation of work, and time management are discussed in a meeting before students meet up in New York. In addition to visits to painters’ studios, participants visit galleries, museums, and performances as a group, and individually, to provide additional class content. Gallery guides, city guides, and the general layout of the museums and galleries are discussed before the trip so students can focus on the exact venues that interest them and relate to their work.

Each student will be provided with an individual studio space at the new AICAD Studios in the DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) district of Brooklyn, right on the East River with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge looking over to Manhattan.

This course satisfies a gradwide elective or Fine Arts seminar requirement.

Feeling It Out: Studio Research Lab

Instructor: Shaun O’Dell
SF / FINAR-604-01 / 6 sessions
Prerequisite: grad standing
July 10–August 7, Tues., 6:30–9:30 p.m.
Enrollment limit: 6
At the edges of what we're able to describe to others — and even to ourselves — we have ideas and see objects that call out to be acknowledged. It seems like some distant voice is murmuring directions from a deep well, or that an object to be made is floating just at the edge of what the inner eye can discern. Maybe these apparitions last a while and finally we act on their demands to bring the idea or object back from the edges and into existence. Yet many times we don't act and the possibility to access this mystery fades. Maybe the idea comes back later in another form, or maybe it just dissolves away forever.

This class is about identifying such mystery and then acting to articulate it as words or to make its image, its shape, its color, its mass, its sound, its texture. Maybe the image you see is so far out there on the horizon of what can be translated that only some shadowy shape is available to you. This class is about making the effort to articulate that shadow. Maybe the words for the idea are not quite graspable in the murky echo of the void. This class is about writing down the words even if all you end up with is a long reverberating drone.

The structure of the class is in the form of a "working group." In this context students are free to explore ideas based on intuition and hunch without the pressure of having to produce successful results. Illogic, failure, and probing the unknown will be heartily encouraged. The paradigm can be severed, the confusion embraced. In the first class we will meet and discuss the unknown regions each student would like to explore. After this initial meeting we will plan further meetings to transpire as group discussions about the process, field trips, and studio visits. There will be a few short readings. The class culminates with each student presenting the artifact of their efforts.

Course includes a weekend field trip to the Yuba River. Accommodations are provided; students are responsible for transportation and meals.

This course satisfies a gradwide elective, a Fine Arts seminar, or an elective seminar requirement for Fine Arts grads.

New Mexico: Sustainability through Creative Practice

Instructor: Jeff Gibson
Offcampus / FINAR–604–01 / FINAR–660–02
Prerequisites: instructor approval
August 6–20, Mon.–Sun., 9 a.m.–5 p.m.
More detailed information is available. Earlier registration and payment/refund deadlines apply.
This course is a collaboration with Herekeke, a nonprofit arts organization located on a private ranch in the remote community of Lama, New Mexico, 20 miles north of Taos. Much of Lama Mountain Ranch’s 100 acres is under conservation easements with the American Farmland Trust; it hosts a variety of public programs exploring ideas of sustainability, from a free summer camp to a community farm, and ranch animals. Lama enjoys wide-open vistas and dramatic mountain weather at 8,000 feet in elevation in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the southern reaches of the Rocky Mountains.

Students read about, and join in daily group discussions of, visions and histories of various forms of utopian communities, while also exploring histories of failed utopias and theories of dystopia. In addition, students spend time drawing and gathering materials to create site-specific and site-responsive works. These may include temporary installations and works that improve the ranch and its programs, such as murals on cabins and concepts for architectural structures. All works will be documented in photographs.

For graduates, this course satisfies a gradwide elective, Fine Arts seminar, or studio practice.

Brevity

Instructor: Cooley Windsor
SF / WRITE–660–02 / 15 sessions
Prerequisite: graduate standing
June 4–July 25 (no class 7/4), Mon./Wed., 6:30–9:30 p.m.
Consider Donald Barthelme’s three-page story On Angels, which begins with this sentence: “The death of God left the angels in a strange position,” and ends with this paragraph: “I saw a famous angel on television; his garments glistened as if with light. He talked about the situation of angels now. Angels, he said, are like men in some ways. The problem of adoration is felt to be central. He said that for a time the angels had tried adoring each other, as we do, but had found it, finally, ‘not enough.’ He said they are continuing to search for a new principle.”

In this course, students read and write in forms that tend to be shorter and more self-contained than what is usually studied. The class reads diaries and monologues by the artist David Wojnarowicz, short pieces by Barthelme and Grace Paley, and a variety of performance pieces.

Students in the class should obtain Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme before the first class. The core of this class is work read aloud, and everyone has up to 10 minutes to present new work at each session. Visual artists who wish to combine text and image, or to use this course to work on the written portions of their thesis projects, are also especially welcome.

This course satisfies a gradwide elective.

Mentored Study in Writing

Instructor: Hugh Behm–Steinberg
SF / WRITE–660–01
Prerequisite: graduate standing
June 4–August 3, meeting times to be scheduled with individual students
Mentored study provides one–on–one study over the summer with a faculty mentor. It gives students the freedom to pursue their own intellectual work seriously and intensively, while the faculty mentor engages and guides them through in–depth discussion and detailed critical commentary. In consultation with the mentor, a student will also incorporate relevant reading into the course. This reading provides the basis for reflective or critical writing by the student that becomes part of the overall dialogue. This course is for students at all levels, from those just starting out to those who are interested in pursuing more advanced projects, and it has been proven especially useful to those working on thesis projects. Meetings are regular and frequent and are based on writing the student produces.

This course satisfies a gradwide elective.

Reviews

Instructor: Glen Helfand
SF / VISCR–608–01 / 15 sessions
Prerequisite: graduate standing
July 9–August 10, Mon./Wed./Fri., 9 a.m.–noon
This writing-intensive class familiarizes students with conducting research and writing critically within the field of visual studies. Students complete multiple short critical writing assignments and polished essays, which are workshopped during class sessions. The writing assignments and discussion focus on developing a unique critical voice while writing about various disciplines. Students write reviews of static artworks, time-based media (installation, experimental, and popular film, YouTube videos, etc), architecture, and pop-cultural phenomenon/spectacle. The class meets with local editors and publishes work in an online venue. The summer session affords the possibility of group field trips to exhibitions, screenings, tastings, and a trip to a pop-culture attraction. Writing assignments emphasize modes of description and how to represent various forms of sensual input — visuals, sound, taste, etc. — in the service of theoretical positions.

This class has a substantial workshop component. We critique each other's drafts. In addition to writing, this course involves reading critical texts. The goals are to enhance writing skills and oral presentation skills, to foster professional responsibility, and to provide opportunities for professional development, with working editors and publishers providing outside feedback, and potential publishing opportunities.

This course satisfies the Graduate Program in Visual and Critical Studies Reviews requirement or a gradwide elective for non-Visual and Critical Studies majors.

Sites

Instructor: Andrea Dooley
SF / VISCR–606–01 / 15 sessions
Prerequisite: graduate standing
July 9–August 10, Mon./Wed./Fri., 1–4 p.m.
Currently we suffer, according to Doreen Massey, under a “failure of spatial imagination. Failure in the sense of being inadequate to face up to the challenge of space; failure to take on board its coeval multiplicities, to accept its radical contemporalities, to deal with its constitutive complexity.”

In this course students take up the “challenge of space” to understand how space and place have become an elemental part of ongoing conversations in cultural studies and critical and visual theory. Leveraging foundational texts and essays such as Lefebvre’s The Production of Space, Marx, Benjamin, Cosgrove, and Mitchell with further readings by, among others, Harvey, Massey, Foucault, and Agamben, this course considers space and place in relation to structures of power, identity, the body in space, memory, and landscape. This foundational work frames discussions on migrations and space, historicizing geography, space of the nation, spaces of memory, bodies in space, social relations in space, and the workings of violence in/on space.

Through weekly discussions, student presentations, and writing assignments as we take up the “challenge of space,” the class considers working questions such as: How do we define space, place and landscape? What constitutes the construction and production of space? How do we consider the temporality of space? What role does space play in the issues of identity formation? What are the power relations of space and mobility? If it can be said that the body is the first territorial boundary or space we can recognize as our own, then, can the body also be the most basic “space” or territorial ground that produces and is produced and therefore can be violated, breached, and re-membered in space and place? What is the nature of the relationship between violence (natural disaster, war, occupation, apartheid, state violence, genocide etc.) and space? Can a space be “un-made” or emptied?

This course satisfies the Graduate Program in Visual and Critical Studies Sites requirement or a gradwide elective for non-Visual and Critical Studies majors.

Studio 0: Design

SF / DESGN–600P–01 / 15 sessions
Required Orientation: Friday, July 27
July 30–August 17, MTWTHF, 9:30 a.m.–5 p.m.
Prerequisite: acceptance to CCA's graduate program in design
This intensive summer studio is specifically designed for incoming CCA MFA Design students to introduce them to issues, ideas, and methods of making and thinking that will be pursued throughout their studies at CCA and beyond. Studio 0 explores design through an immersive approach. All students participate in the transdisciplinary seminar (TDS) component. The educational objective of this seminar is to help students gain a grounding in the profession, including methodology, collaboration and leadership.

In addition to the seminar, students choose two out of three studios in interaction (IX), 2D, and 3D design. Immersion studio days focus on lecture, discussion and critique in the morning and on making work in the afternoon. The educational goals of the immersion studios are to present high-level concepts in the given design area, reinforced through examples (both presented by the instructor and curated by the students), some readings, lecture, and discussion, and—most importantly—by explorations through making.

Please note that this 3–unit course will be applied towards your CCA degree requirements.

Studio 0: Architecture

SF / MARCH–600P–01 / 14 sessions
Required Orientation: Friday, July 27
July 30–August 16, MTWTHF, 9 a.m.–5 p.m.
Prerequisite: acceptance to CCA's graduate program in architecture
This intensive summer studio is specifically designed for incoming CCA M.Arch students to introduce them to issues, ideas, and methods of making and thinking that will be pursued throughout their studies at CCA and beyond. The course explores architecture through a variety of representational techniques, including digital, manual, formal, analytical, and theoretical modes. This studio is especially valuable for students accepted into the program who have limited experience or no background in digital and physical making.

The course is structured as a studio and is taught by two CCA architecture department faculty. The work in the studio sessions builds up over time in a way that introduces the student to a range of representational skills and techniques and that models the architectural design process. Investigations alternate between physical and digital media, bringing forward both potentials and limitations found in specific ways of making and seeing. Manual drawing techniques are introduced along with digital techniques through Illustrator, Photoshop, and Vectorworks. Three–dimensional techniques include physical model–making along with digital 3–D modeling with Vectorworks and CAD software.

Please note that this 3–unit course will be applied towards your CCA degree requirements.