Post Modern Principles

Collaboration: two or more people working together through ideas, conversation, or making

This is a tool that can be incorporated in some way into almost every lesson. It can simply be the exchange of ideas that lead to another’s development into something more resulting into an expanded concept and visual manifestation of an original idea. Even if the final product is individual it is the collaboration that brought each person to this end idea resulting in a relevant, contemporary, democratic way of thinking involving a range of schemas and understandings into the creative press.

Appropriation: the use of pre-existing objects of images that are transformed but not exactly changed

Using something from someone else but not copying. In reference to high school students it may be an abstract concept to know when it is appropriate to appropriate. Funny. To most people it is a fine line, but usually a line used in commentary an already controversial setting. It can be a powerful tool to express an idea based off of a construct that society may already be familiar with.

Juxtaposition: two contrasting ideas brought together

This is a fun art word that is becoming all too common in critiques. However, juxtaposing ideas can be useful in order to make art that says something, like most of these principles do. By comparing two seemingly unrelated or opposite ideas it can change the meaning and understanding of the subject.

Recontextualization: process that extracts text, signs or meaning from its original context in order to introduce a new idea

Utilizing people’s schemas is most useful in this way.

Gaze: subject looking at viewer, viewer looking at subject

It is the power between the two people, the one gazing and the one being gazed at.  It is typically used in a sexual way; male to female, but what happens when this is employed in other ways. How can the gaze on other physical differences change the dynamic of two people and adjust the tension. How does that make the onlookers think about the context of the gaze?

http://www.vanessabeecroft.com/frameset.html

http://www.vanessabeecroft.com/DaveHickey.pdf

Abject: extremely bad, unpleasant, and degrading

These are the topics that find themselves to be more controversial, but often times the richest. Abjectification is defined as being cast off. Grotesque. A way to approach subjects that high school students are also approaching and allowing them to explore and have the opportunity to be recognized as mature adults.

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/13/arts/review-art-at-the-whitney-provocation-and-theory-meet-head-on.html

As guidelines for lesson structures, I think that the postmodern principles are significantly more relevant and dynamic. They challenge the critical mind of the student in ways that evoke problem solving and examining society as well as themselves. Schools would be much more pleased to have students doing those things than know that a diagonal line shows chaos.