AMP42118 Composition 2: Materiality (Autumn 2023)

The course is connected to the following study programs

Mandatory course in Master in Performance (120 ECTS)

Absolute requirements

Passed all exams in 2nd semester.

Lecture Semester

3rd semester (autumn)

The student's learning outcomes after completing the course

The student will:

• gain knowledge of philosophies of materiality and how those lines of thought are linked with ethics. Questions that will be raised are among others: what has life, what has agency, what has ownership, who or what creates a form?

• gain skills in how to relate to and provoke different kinds of material relevant for each individual project, exploring the status and implication of found and made materials, both physical and ephemeral

• learn to question the nature of materials; how they come into being, how they move, and how they interact with the surroundings.

• gain skills in defining and composing with materials of various kinds in different

Content

Departing from the individual master projects, this course aims at providing time to explore the material aspects of each project. Students will compose and recompose with material (material is understood as everything from bodies, to sound, text, objects, light etc.), introducing and experimenting with unexpected materials related to each project. This will take place individually and in groups. The course will include one or two introductory workshop sessions with guest teachers or teaching staff focusing on relating compositional strategies to theory / practice.

Forms of teaching and learning

There will be one or two mandatory workshops with guest artists and/ or staff, introducing the spatial strategies, philosophical framework and practical research tasks related to the explorations of composition and materiality in each master project. This course will include self-study individually and in self-organized groups. Tutoring sessions will follow the self- study.

Workload

Approx. 300 hours

Coursework requirements - conditions for taking the exam

Workshop teachers will give short practical assignments individually and/or in groups. The course will end with a group reflection where each student will orally and spatially present their research on materiality and how it has provoked and questioned their master project.

An attendance of minimum 80 % is required.

Examination

Verbal examination
Duration: 20-30 minutes individual examination plus plenum discussion.

Assessment of student achievement of course's learning outcomes is accomplished by conclusion of the semester by structured discussion between the student, the student's advisor and one employee lecturer, based on the participation in workshops and the presentation of individual research at the final group reflection session.

Uses verbal feedback. Uses the grade pass / fail.

Examiners

Student's supervisor and one lecturer who is a member of staff.

Conditions for resit/rescheduled exams

Failure to pass the exam in one or more courses will only be given one new exam attempt. New examination paper is formulated by programme coordinator in collaboration with the student's supervisor during the course of the semester's 3rd last week.

In continuation assessment, the programme coordinator must in addition to supervisor and staff teacher, who normally assess the student, appoint one additional employee teacher to this sensor array.

The programme coordinator, head of study and student must sign that new exam paper is announced and received.

A new course evaluation (continuation assessment) takes place during the last week of the semester.

Course evaluation

See the programme description.

Literature

The reading list is last updated October 23th, 2019.

There will be a predefined bibliography with central philosophical and theoretical texts on materiality, object oriented philosophy and new materialism. Examples are:

• Benso, S. (2000) The Face of Things, A Different Side of Ethics, Albany: State University of New York Press

• Garcia, T. (2014) Form and Object, A Treatise on Things, Oxford University Press

• Harman, G. (2005) Guerilla Metaphysics, Phenomenology and the Carpentry of Things, Carus Publishing Company

• Heidegger, M. (1971) Poetry, Language, Thought, HarperCollins, New York

• Hodder, I. (2012) Entangled: an archaeology of the relationships between humans and things, John Wiley and Sons, Inc

• Bennett, J. (2010) Vibrant Matter - A Political Ecology of Things, Duke University Press

• Coole, D. & Frost, S. (eds.) (2010) New Materialisms, Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

• Morton, T. (2013) Realist Magic Objects, Ontology, Causality. Ann Arbor: Open Humanities Press.

• Schimmel, P. (1998) Out of Actions: Between Performance and the Object. New York: Themes and Hudson.