VHS Archives

PIMA 7020G Artistic Process in Contemporary Community /  

FILM7032G Special Topics in Film History

Wednesdays 4-6:30, Feirstein Grad School of Cinema, Seminar Room 1, Spring 2020

Alexandra Juhasz: Alexandra.Juhasz@brooklyn.cuny.edu
Office Hours: by email appt
Jennifer McCoy: jmccoy@brooklyn.cuny.edu
Office Hours:

Course Description:

This cross disciplinary course considers how to store, transfer, share, research, and reactivate media collections facing obsolescence. Theories and practices of media and digital archives and queer and feminist media will undergird close interaction with 12 VHS AIDS activist videotapes. The tapes are culled from Professor Alexandra Juhasz’s larger (300+) research and activist collection, focusing on women, AIDS, and sexuality. This newly digitized corpus is one source from which students will research and build new resources, including original interviews, writing about historical context, media analysis, community-based and interactive media programming and creative praxis. Working within related communities, students will create final projects that use resources from this growing archive to activate community goals. Most materials generated by the class will be stored and presented here, thereby growing this archive for further use and research.

 Course Objectives:

• Students will learn to work with an original archive as scholars and artists.
• Students will learn to use one or more forms of media annotating software.
• Students will research and author elements from a shared archive that will be used by further classes and researchers and housed in the BC Library and available online.
• Students will work directly with communities whose interests are expressed in the archive.
• ​​​​​​​Drawing from archival work above, students will create art, writing, performance, research and media.
• Students will draw and build from previous art and research produced by students in the class.

• Complete all class assignments.
• Participate in classroom discussion and critiques.
• Attend class regularly and show works in progress.
• Create original artwork (sound, video, performance, writing) or research in conjunction with community groups and/or groups formed within the class.
• Document artwork or writing on class website.
• Engage closely with a community group.

Grading Rubric and Values

Preliminary Assignments: annotating, researching, presentations, ungraded: 20%
(Personal Archives, A Video from the Class Collection, Annotations, Archive, Community Partner)

ReMix/ReSearch: 20%

Final Project and Worksheet: 50%

Participation: 10%