Emily Dickinson/Susan Howe

Susan Howe took on a completely different meaning of poetic form. With some sentences overlapping, and upside down, the poems needed to be looked at much closer. One can tell that she really likes to play around with the way poems are written and portrayed. She also really take the idea that poems often intertwine and overlap literally. It really gives the readers a chance to interpret what they fell the poem is saying. Even though I think that Howe was trying to show a innovative way to format a poem, I thought the structure of it sometimes took away from the meaning, and it became more distracting. I was left focusing more on how the words were written than what the words were actually.

The Pillow Book 2/2/2010

I began with reading Joseph Harris' book, because I felt that doing so would help with the other readings I was assigned. I found my way of critically reading because reading Harris' book had me envision the message that was being portrayed. his book had me thinking about "rewriting" in a different way. I understand the reasoning behind comparing and contrasting my ideas as I read. It gives an overall better understanding of the reading. It certainly helped me understand "The Pillow Book" and "S/Z" much better and it also had me more interested in the text. Overall, I think this book gave a good introduction to the semester to help dig deeper into the readings to make it easier to comprehend.

Fluxus Continued

The section of Higgins’ chapter entitled “Experience as Art” particularly struck me. Thinking of art as a physical experience seems to engage audience participation much more thoroughly. This also seems to be Higgins’ idea when she introduces The Happenings. The word “happen” itself evokes this feeling of physical time. The art occupies a space in the existence. I was interested in this idea of The Happenings, and in doing a little further research, I realized things like Flash Mob and Improv Everywhere fall into this Fluxus category of The Happenings. The idea of integrating art and life seamlessly is both engaging and beautiful. It forcefully immerses society into art, causing people to surround themselves with it. While it seems as though forcing art upon people would counteract their appreciation of it, what better way to be exposed to different art forms than to be fully enveloped in it.

Fluxus

I will have to agree with many of my classmates and say that before this class I had never heard of the term Fluxus. I was surprised at this because I had taken a lot of art classes in high school and never once had I heard this term. I did however study the 60s and 70s art movements and we did concentrate on some Andy Warhol pieces. I think it's very interesting how art in general evokes certain emotions in certain people and to others it could just be a canvas with paint hanging on a wall or a chair sitting in the middle of a room. The idea that art is sort of whatever you make it, ties directly into all the discussions we've had this semester on the concept of "what is literature" this concept intrigued me so much that I decided to do my creative project on it and I'm glad that the discussions of fluxus art are tying in so nicely with that concept.

Fluxus

Like many others, I had never heard of the term Fluxus before. It was interesting to learn more about this art form. Higgins says that Fluxus was a popular movement in the 1960s and 1970s so I was excited to read about it since the 1960s are my favorite decade and I think that some of the most inspirational art came of that decade. Higgins said that abstract expressionism was a sort of performance that was dedicated to exploring day-to-day reality. The little things that happen every day are the most important because they are normally things that no one pays attention to. The fact that these artists brought these images forward is intriguing.

Fluxus Pt. 2

While reading Chapter 3 of Higgins' piece on Fluxus, I found the definition of the movement very intriguing. It was stated that the art is not so different from the reality, and they evoke one another. The art, however, can't exist in every place as the reality can. Fluxus art can be called art because it is pinned down to a single place (whether that be physical place or space in time or anything that can be pinpointed).

It's a very strange concept to be able to name something as art, and have it be art. The example of the rubber-band ball being either a rubber-band ball or a piece of art, depending on the context and the labelling, relates to the discussions we have in our class. In the beginning of the semester, we tried to label 'literature' and had a very hard time coming to a consensus. Throughout the semester, we've been challenged with the same type of definition questions and we never find a particular conclusion. Fluxus reminds me that art, specifically, exists naturally and an artist can simply be the person that records it or believes in its beauty.

Fluxus

While reading through this, just as a lot of you all stated, the idea of an exact definition of art keeps coming back up. It makes me think of Andy Warhol and his pieces. Some people say he is stealing something which is copy written and making it into something his own and taking credit for it. Others would call it art. Some people would say that his films are nothing and worthless, a waste of time. Others would call it art. I think that idea comes through out these fluxus pieces. Where is the line drawn, what is art and what is not art? What is the potential of any ordinary object? Is everything around us art?