Digital Studio: The Social World, Artvertising
Brian Ulrich, of NotIfButWhen.com is teaching Digital Studio this semester, with a focus on developing projects which address social concerns. It’s often surprising to me how art education frequently focuses on the nuts and bolts, the methodology of making art, while rarely teaching how to think about art, how to judge what is worth making art about, or even what to do with art once you’ve made it.
We live in a commercially driven society. The BBC, not reliant on advertising dollars for it’s budget, is free to challenge assumptions made about what people want to watch, and can take a stance on what they SHOULD watch, whether they want to or not. By contrast, America is locked into a system which can only really produce what people think they want. Socially aware art is interesting, and essential to creating awareness of social conditions that need to be addressed, but can such work be sustainable in a society that won’t pay artists to ask us questions, won’t pay teachers to tell us how to question? The Illinois Arts Council, one of the few institutions left in America that still provides grants to individual artists, lost $5 million dollars from their budget this year.
I don’t know if he’ll be addressing these concerns, but I certainly will be trying to.
Under the cut are some possible projects that I’m toying with. Input, as always, is most welcome.
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Originally published at Amul Kumar Photography. You can comment here or there.