Laboratory Landscape I & II FPA 2|369 spring & intersession 2017
Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts
This two-part course introduces and develops key concepts of landscape as a constructed and cultured environment. As a Methods and Concepts studio course, it concentrates on how landscape is conceptualized, experienced, visualized, and represented. The aim of the course is to explore and analyse the theoretical and conceptual background of art practices engaged with contemporary environmental issues, representations of nature, and spatial concepts, including notions of public and social space.
The course is imagined and is organised as a research-based working laboratory towards the realisation of an individual artistic project, accompanied by a series of small individual and collaborative assignments. Participating students are upper-division visual art students and interdisciplinary graduate students.
Laboratory Landscape is structured as a studio laboratory that includes lectures, screenings, seminars, discussions and studio working time. Creative assignments develop the link between creative, conceptual and intellectual processes. Collaborative assignments foster the interdisciplinary environment in the School.
As a site for public art works, Stanley Park provides a rich context for site-specific works that considers its Indigenous and colonial histories and present, its social function as an urban park, as well as its ecological context. Students’ learning experience includes the negotiation of logistics, Indigenous protocols and civic frameworks which are part of the realization of a public art work within a professional context.
By the completion of the course, students will have a strong sense of the previous innovations and traditions of the diverse meanings behind the term landscape, as well as of historical and contemporary artistic practices engaging in interpretations of landscape, place and site in an anthropocene era.
Faculty supervisor: Sabine Bitter
TA spring term: Patrick Blenkarn
Students spring term: Oscar Alfonso, Trevor Bonas, Roxanne Charles, Joni Cheung, Jessica Chu, Fabio Miranda, Krystle Coughlin, Stephanie Gagne, Michelle Gougani, Elly Habibullah, Carli Howden, Phoebe Huang, Andi Icaza, Lori Lai, Byeong Sung Lee, Jacky Lo, Emily Marston, Taylor McGibbon, Rachelle Tjahyana, Sophie Vandenbiggelaar, June Yeo, Nico Yu
Students intersession term: Oscar Alfonso, Roxanne Charles, Jessica Chu, Krystle Coughlin, Josephine Dawson-Whisker, Stephanie Gagne, Michelle Gougani, Carli Howden, Phoebe Huang, Carolina Krawczyk, Andi Icaza, Lori Lai, Emily Marston, Rachelle Tjahyana, Sophie Vandenbiggelaar, Nico Yu
This project would not have been possible without the generous support and guidance by Marie Lopez, coordinator Arts and Culture, jil weaving and Rena Soutar, Reconciliation Planner at Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation.
