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The course will be for sustained work on an animation or projection design project, and should be a space for both experimentation, ambition and consistent endeavor. The first half of the semester will be concerned with conceptualizing and framing the world of the animations or projections, by research, drawings, investigation, imagining. The second half will be creating the animation or projections.

The class will be both looking at abstraction as well as more figurative based work. The class will include a mixture of creating assemblages in a variety of means and materials, and using both digital and analogue means from paint, to sand to animated forms. Objects will be cut out with scissors or the laser cutter, animated with pins or digital pins in software (After Effects), layers will be used to create depth in three dimensions, a multiplane or using the Z axis.

The class will be concerned with animating inanimate objects by primarily stop motion.  Locations will be constructed, objects to animated formed, and lighting explored in order to create the imaginary world. A variety of filmmakers and techniques will be looked at during the course of the semester, with individual research undertaken and presented.  Students will be expected to produce a variety of short projects over the first seven weeks based on current affairs and future worlds, followed by a longer more sustained project.

Each term, Bennington Visual Arts offers a program of 4-5 lectures by visiting arts professionals: artists, curators, historians and critics, selected to showcase the diversity of contemporary art practices. Designed to enhance a broader and deeper knowledge of various disciplines and issues in the Visual Arts and to stimulate campus dialogue around topical issues in contemporary art and culture, these thematically curated presentations offer students the opportunity to engage with art by emerging and internationally-known artists from underrepresented backgrounds.

This discussion-animated, readings-based seminar provides art historical, cultural, and critical contexts for the Visual Arts Lecture Series (VALS). In addition to our ongoing interrogation of the public lecture as such, students present their own work (in any field) and analyze the technical and stylistic aspects of structuring an effective and engaging ‘talk.’ The course provides unique opportunities for interaction with visiting artists, curators, critics, and historians.

Chromophilia, refers to intense passion and love for color. What is it about color that has the power to induce reverie, and conversely to manipulate, or disgust? How does color work? What is the role of color in visual art? In language? How do we understand and respond to color from phenomenological, poetic, philosophical, and societal vantage points? How as artists can we become effective stewards of our passionately-loved and yet ever-shifting chroma?

Since its inception, film has been used for propaganda - disseminating information with a particular slant, whether subtle or obvious - by regimes and independent players across the political spectrum. As the means of production and circuits of distribution become ever more accessible to individuals, we have moved from an era of focused agitprop into a new era of diffused disinformation.

Viewed from the outside, the French-speaking world offers enticing images of beauty, pleasure, and freedom. From the inside, however, it is a complicated, often contradictory world where implicit codes and values shape the most basic aspects of daily life. This course will give you an insider’s perspective on a cultural and communicative system whose ideas, customs, and belief systems are surprisingly different from your own.

“Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are” –Brillat-Savarin

Why is a Mayan food, chocolate, such a high-stake product in French-speaking countries ?

French literature and film have always reciprocally inspired one another – as early as 1897, Lumière represented the main characters of Hugo’s Les Misérables. This course will offer students the opportunity to analyze literary representations of women and their film adaptations in terms of intermediality and intertextuality. Adaptations will include: La Princesse de Clèves (La Fayette/Sauder), La Religieuse (Diderot/Rivette), La Noire de… (Sembène/Sembène), La Prisonnière/La Captive (Proust/Akerman). Students will focus on various adaptation strategies and approaches.