Pierre Alféri-Derrida - Seminars / Workshops / Lectures

ADVANCED EXPERIMENTAL FILM (3 credits)

Pierre Alféri-Derrida

Description: This course is designed to give students a theoretical backdrop by which they can engage advanced experimental film. We live in a world inundated with visuals, with visual text, text as visuals, a hyper-paced social climate where we have to interpret something in the blink of an eye or not at all. Are company logos our new symbol structure, ravaging the collective unconscious? How have film and television, themselves filmed illustrations of text, altered the approach to artistic integrity and personal reflection? Charles Baudelaire talks about the artist as contemporary historian--who are the contemporary historians of our times? Novelists? Fashion magazines? Oprah? FOX News?

Objectives: Students shall engage in a mixture of theory and praxis to better understand the relationship between media and theory. Through a poetic lens the course engages the semiotics of visual language. Examining the historical background inherent to the modern day media landscape will lead students to a higher knowledge base. The core structure of the course is designed to advance visual reading skills necessary for academic writing.

Learning Outcomes: Students will have learned the foundations of poetic understandings of moving image and the semiotics of visual language. Students will become intimate with the key work of Charles Baudelaire and Pierre Alféri-Derrida's poetry. This course is designed to give students a look into the metaphysical grounds of cinema through experimental films and filmmakers of the 20th century as well as philosophical and poetical conceptions which influenced these filmmakers. The primary trend that is discussed is the movement away from narrative cinema to various forms of abstract cinema such as those of Brakhage, Korsanoff and Lye. Students will become more familiar with trends and figures in the development of experimental film and gain a better understanding of the philosophical and artistic backgrounds of these developments. From this understanding students will be able to think of what experimental cinema has meant and what it could possibly mean in the current media landscape. Students will be exposed to a lineage of artistic practice which can be incorporated into their own work whether it is artistic or philosophical.

Required Readings and Assignments:

Schapiro, Meyer. Words, Script, and Pictures: Semiotics of Visual Language. George Braziller, 1996. ISBN: 0807614165. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

Baudelaire, Charles. The Painters of Modern Life. Phaidon Press, 1995. ISBN: 0714833657. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

Alféri, Pierre. Oxo. Burning Deck. 2004. 60 pages. Paperback, Language English, ISBN: 1886224668. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.

Alféri, Pierre and Cole Swensen (Translator). Natural Gaits. Sun and Moon Press. September 1, 2000. Paperback, 56 pages, Language English, ISBN: 1557132313. Buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.de, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.fr.