Course Instructor: Silvio Wolf
Dates: February 16, 23; March 2, 9, 16, 23, 30; April 6, 13, 20, 2022
Wednesdays, 6–9pm EST
Location: Virtual Live (via Zoom)
Tuition: $450/ 10-week course — can be paid in full or in 2 instalments
Silvio Wolf, Meditation, 2014
COURSE DESCRIPTION:
“How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” (Edward Morgan Forster)
In how many ways can we visually express and represent the notion of reality? Is visible reality the clay at our disposal, our source material to be transformed in symbols and metaphors of our thought? Can the visual arts create an active bridge between Reality and the Human mind, the Subject who sees and the Real, to access the seemingly unreachable out there and invisibly here?
This course will address these questions and many related ones from a theoretical and experiential point of view. We will explore the rich and manifold relations between what we think and what we see, the fine line that defines one and the other by means and within the image frame, and ultimately the threshold that joins and separates these fundamental human activities.
Images shape, alter and transform what we see. Where do they stand in our experiential path to ascribe meaning and insight to reality? How do they condition our subjective way of thinking and mold our perception of reality into images that express identity?
Photography, painting, sculpture, and film; as well as literature, poetry and science – will be the means, disciplines, and leaders of our multilayered exploration to question what we know through what we see.
SOURCE MATERIALS FOR DISCUSSION WILL INCLUDE:
– Works by Bacon, Bosch, Baldessari, Cartier-Bresson, Crewdson, Escher, Ghirri, Jaar, Josephson, Magritte, Matta Clark, Picasso, Pollock, Rodin, Rousse, Sugimoto, Turrel, Velasquez, and Wall.
– We will also discuss writings by: Barthes, Calvino, Eliot, Florenskij, Hawking, Kandel and Pirandello.
– Films by Almodóvar, Antonioni, Nolan, Schnabel and Tarkovsky.
WHAT DO WE PLAN TO ACHIEVE?
Through their respective practices and fields of investigation, participants will reflect on the nature of images and learn how they mirror our lives. They will share knowledge and experience, nourishing their quest along a path of creative thinking and expression.
Each session will include presenting ideas and individual experiences in a stimulating and interdisciplinary cultural environment, where participants’ contributions play a fundamental role in the making of our path of knowledge.
WHO WOULD BENEFIT FROM TAKING THIS COURSE?
Visual artists, scientists, film makers, writers, poets, psychoanalysts and photographers: scholars at the intersection of a variety of disciplines who wish to discover, experiment and exchange, are very welcome to participate in this shared journey of knowledge and experience, focused on the mysterious and fascinating relation between Seeing and Thinking. For more information, please write to the course instructor at silvio@silviowolf.com or to the course administrator at .
SHORT BIO OF THE INSTRUCTOR:
Silvio Wolf is a multi-media artist, a Professor of Photography at the European Institute of Design in Milan and a Visiting Professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He studied at the London College of Printing after studies in Philosophy and Psychology in Italy. He was born in Italy and lives and works in Milan and New York.
Silvio Wolf has accomplished photo-based, multimedia installations, public-art works and solo-shows in Belgium, Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Luxembourg, Spain, Switzerland and the United States. He participated in Documenta VIII in Kassel and in the 53rd Venice Biennale. Silvio’s web-site is http://www.silviowolf.com
REGISTRATION:
