ELLEN BOYETTE

Course Type: Exploratory/Philosophical and Artistic Inquiry/Guided Discussion
Meeting Type: Virtual (Zoom)
Dates: April 20th. -May 11th, Sundays from 4pm-6pm (EST)
Cost: $250 (full course + office hours)/ $75 (per session)
Enrollment Cap: 15 participants
 
COURSE SYNOPSIS:
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Our public-facing world is not one that takes kindly to confusion, disorientation, or genuine surprise. These states are private states-- ones that have to be filtered and then expressed in both measure and moderation, if at all. Competence is everything to us. We are primed for success (and therefore comfort) if we can prove we know the rules, the mechanisms, the real or projected outcomes-- and then act with precision and efficiency.

But let’s face it-- we are simply living in a world that is unequivocally bewildering.

And though it feels new, it is not.
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“And bewilderment of mind shall come over those who dwell on the earth”. - The Book of Ezra 13::30 (440 B.C.)
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This course will present a small but carefully considered array of bewildering art-- art that explores bewilderment, art that IS bewildering, and art that makes claims about what bewilderment does to an audience and why an artist might hope to invoke that state. We will discuss simultaneity, contradiction, hypnotic sentence structure, superfluous detail, dream states, surrealism, accessibility, ego death, and, ultimately: why experience without a tether is sublime-- both in and outside of the context of art.
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COURSE SCHEDULE:

Week One-- Permeating Fields: Bewilderment in Politics, Biology, Art, Literature, and Philosophy
Discuss Bewilderment (essay by Fanny Howe) and On the Duplicity of Bewilderment (interview with Richard Powers)
 
Week Two-- The Wild, Wilderness, and Bewilderment
Discuss The Blair Witch Project and Bewilderment (essay by Jack Halberstam)
 
Week Three-- Bewildering “High” Art and “Low” Art
Discuss The Honesty of the Perplexed (essay by Ian Almond on Jacques Derrida) and “Neo-Dadaism”: Absurdist Humor and the Millennial Generation (Megan Hoins)
 
Week Four: Sublime Sublimation: Ecstasy as Outsider
Discuss Fugitivity is immanent to the thing but is manifest transversally (poem by Fred Moten), explore art in the Bewilderment e-Museum (Syracuse University), and On the Sublime (essay by Longinus)
 
 
 
EXTRA INFO:

A PDF of all course materials (readings, links to films and artworks, etc.) will be provided one week prior to course beginning.

We will work through each piece closely in the zoom session, so if you are not able to read the material prior, don't sweat it.

Discussions will vacillate between specific and broad, and I will guide us through them.

No assignments, no clout, no credit-- just learning for learning’s sake. 
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With this course, I am offering an included one hour zoom or phone session with anyone enrolled to discuss whatever you would like-- the course, general bewilderment, specific bewilderment, your art, your life, my life, anything. Totally optional.
 
I have supplemental readings if you’re curious beyond the course or interested in one particular subject! Happy to share at any point.
 
Payment for the full course (or whichever particular session/s you want to join) due prior to course start date (April 20th). I’m taking them through Venmo (@Ellen-Boyette). I’m hoping to make these courses more regular and set up an actual platform.
 
If you are unable to attend one or more sessions you signed up for, I will refund you for those sessions within 24 hours, no questions asked. Alternatively, I can provide a Zoom recording of the session with a 75% refund, your choice.
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