Visualizing Aggression: Documenting America at War (Visual Critical Studies)
School for the Art Institute of Chicago
Visual Critical Studies. Fall 2007, Fall 2006
Instructor: Mary Walling Blackburn
Course Description:
Visualizing Aggression: Documenting America at War
Notions about victor/victim, enemy and aftermath, pleasurable violence and necessary tortures are generated, maintained, and disseminated through artistic practices. We will examine the visual trajectory of US war-making- from the Revolutionary war to the present; ultimately producing our own visual documentations of how we experience war, distant or near, with loyal support or fierce resistance.
Some representative works: Nguyen Hatsushiba’s underwater videos, anonymous portraits of African-American revolutionary war seaman, Pacific Islander WWII ballads, American GI underground radio broadcasts, DJ Spooky’s revision of Birth of a Nation, trips to local military reenactments and war monuments.
Texts will touch upon the acoustics of war, the history of camouflage painting, the development of aerial photography, the aesthetics of torture and the philosophy of defeat.
Syllabus may be downloaded here: visualizing-aggression_syllabus
