Course Description
Summary
The Attention Studio is a lab class where we will engage in protocols and practices of sustained attention, most often in relation to works of art. Through these experiments we will explore the way objects and performances choreograph our attention, and study the internal movements of our own response. Our collective work will engage questions of attention that reach beyond immediate perception into considerations of aesthetics and politics including contemporary spectacle, distraction, and the attention economy as well as forms of contemplation, embodiment and care. We will read in the traditional literature of attention (William James, Simone Weil) and also engage Black Feminist, Queer, and Indigenous perspectives (Sarah Ahmed, Gloria Anzaldúa, Sarah Jackson, Audre Lorde, and others). Using what we learn through these experiences and readings, we will create new experimental practices of attention and share them with each other.
