Lesley University
Expressive Therapies Program
Trauma, Memory and Public Art
Prof. Karen Frostig, Ph.D. ATR, LMHC
Course Description
The course investigates the dynamic interplay between traumatic memory, public art, and collective identity. Students will be introduced to different forms of remembering and forgetting, referencing late 20th and early 21st century models of memorialization that deal with clinical and collective traumas and grief in different parts of the world. Students will be exposed to new tools of representation and new methodologies of engagement regarding difficult memories, that promote fresh dialogue across wounded histories.
Course Objectives
1. Investigate public art as an innovative and experimental art form that uses new methodologies to deepen human engagement with the past.
2. Demonstrate a contextual understanding of the history of public art, its developmental underpinnings in relation to its changing function and appearance.
3. Critique the political orientation of public art, the interconnections between public memory, collective identity and social unrest.
4. Investigate how nation-states regularly engage in “forgetting” the past, and how artists use public art to broach difficult conversations dealing with national redress.
5. Discover the relationship between individual trauma, collective trauma, trauma culture, and how trauma is transmitted within families and across social institutions.
6. Investigate reciprocity between client-centered art therapy techniques for trauma victims and large-scale interventions for populations dealing with collective trauma.
7. Examine the artistry of public art as a vehicle of truth-telling, a means of achieving belated justice through public exposure to historic transgressions.
8. Analyze pertient questions about public memory in relation to re-occurring instances of violence, war and genocide, linked to widespread abuse of power and deep seated hatred of other.
9. Demonstrate new skills related to the theory and practice of public art and public memory, examining potential transfer of these skills to clinical and/or community settings.
Pedagogical Approach
Trauma, memory and art have existed side-by-side for centuries, however, public memory as a coherent discipline, is a relatively new phenomenon. “Trauma, Memory and Public Art” investigates the dynamic and promising interplay between public art, public memory and art therapy, with a special focus on traumatic memory, public memory and collective identity. Memory informs identity, which sits at the center of clinical work in expressive therapies. Using multiple learning modalities such as case study slide presentations, community-based research, interviews, artistic and collaborative processes, coursework will demonstrate the rich reciprocity between the fields of public memory and art therapy.
Students will be introduced to different forms of public memory dealing with collective trauma. Conceptual distinctions will be made between monuments, memorials, naming memorials, memorial gardens, anti-war memorials and peace memorials. Attention will be given to the psychological and ethical make-up of the four roles taken/assigned during the Holocaust: perpetrators, victims, bystanders and rescuers, and how, depending on political developments, these roles can change over time or across generations. Associated issues such as secrecy, shame, blame and denial, that are often culturally coded, will be considered in relation to these four roles. Parallel traits will be discussed as they pertain to clinical settings and school environments.
Discourse about power, genocide, murder, lynching, rape as a war crime, and statelessness will intersect with competing narratives about tolerance, difference, equity and inclusion. Students will investigate how concepts of inherited memory and contested memory complicate the different ways that nations remember and forget the past.
Discussion will address different cultural contexts, impacting how individuals, families and nations process trauma. Post-conflict epigenetic studies will be noted, measuring transgeneration repurcussions of tramatic pasts that shed light on how trauma impacts survivor families and perpetrating families over multiple generations. Parallels will be drawn to the nation-state, noting how nations integrate collective trauma and histories of perpetration into national identity.
Memory culture, often staged by governments with an agenda, will be presented as an instrument of power, advancing a particular political perspective at a particular point in time. The course will also provide students with opportunities to invent new methodologies of rememberance, aimed at promoting empathy and dialogue between disparate groups at different stages of recovery. Art, especially performance art, will be explored as a transformative medium, that offers audiences new encounters with the past. Healing will be understood as an ongoing process, not a destination, intrinsically linked to the passage of time.
Lesley University
Expressive Therapies Program
Art Activism in the Community
Prof. Karen Frostig, Ph.D., ATR, LMHC
"Creativity is the power to reject the past, to change the status quo, and to seek new potential. Simply put, aside from using one's imagination - perhaps more importantly - creativity is the power to act." --Ai Weiwei
Course description
Activism is about change and community is about relationships between diverse groups. The course investigates the rich interplay between art, identity, culture and community, identifying sources of conflict, isolation, marginalization and mediation. Arts activism is presented as a vehicle of communication linked to agency and empowerment. Students are introduced to art activist projects and experimental techniques promoting critical thinking, civic engagement and social discourse, across the political landscape.
Course Objectives
1. Examine correlations and distinctions between art activism, community arts, art/expressive therapies and contemporary art, as inter-related fields of study.
2. Analyze dialogue, empathy and meaning-making practices within the expressive therapies and how they connect with public art projects.
3. Apply intersectionality, feminist criticism and postmodern discourse to contemporary culture and the practice of expressive therapies, interrogating the dynamics of privilege, power over and the impetus to preserve the status quo.
4. Explore participatory methodologies used to promote community engagement with social agendas that further agency in the service of change.
5. Decode visual culture, noting semiotic messaging, embedded biases related to race, ethnicity, religion, class, gender, age and disability, observing who is empowered to speak and who is relegated to listen.
6. Conduct research in the community that combines history, politics and culture with arts-based research methodologies.
7. Investigate the constellation of relationships required to sustain project development in the community, corresponding to relational development within expressive therapies.
8. Referencing group dynamics within therapeutic environments, examine the artistry of collaboration in developing big projects in the community.
Pedagogical Approach
“Art Activism in the Community” is developed as an introductory course, exposing students to big ideas dealing with social change. The modern city represents a construction of contemporary culture, reflecting a lively, multi-ethnic mix of history, politics, culture, and commerce. Students will explore how cities and local communities reflect national values, cultural heritage, local mores, and individual lifestyles. The community installation assignment will serve as a focal point of investigation, bringing together different strands of art activism. Students will be asked to research a local community, looking for social and cultural markers of cohesion and well-being, as well as arenas of marginalization and distress. Using a variety of arts-based methodologies, students will be invited to walk the neighborhood, “map” the community, interview residents, search for the hidden stories about culture and neighborhood life, as well as explore ideas about voice, agency, and empowerment.
Art activism generally coalesces around concepts of change and aligns with ideas about freedom and democracy. The course is dedicated to building cross currents between art activism and art therapy. Students will be invited to examine how these two fields interact, identifying points of convergence and divergence, as well as opportunities for cross-fertilization.
“Art Activism in the Community” will be organized as an investigatory lab with an emphasis on activism in the US. Students will be exposed to different genres of art activism: public art, performance art, text art, graffiti art, installation art, ephemeral art, murals and memorials. Class structure will be comprised of slide presentations, group discussions, art-making, inter-disciplinary experiential exercises, student presentations, journaling, online and community-based research, project development and an art installation paired with a final integrative paper.
Lesley University
Graduate School of Education
Public Art: Performing Social Justice in Public Space
Prof. Karen Frostig, Ph.D.
Course description
Studio course in visual art with an emphasis on interdisciplinary, intermedia arts. Students will investigate ideas about social justice across a wide spectrum of topics using performance art, installation art and ritual as the preferred artforms for project development. The course will include a series of discussions about art-based research, collaboration, inventive documentation and methodologies of engagement, noting structural elements that support project design and development. Emphasis will be on process-based work. Students will balance inquiry with research, and experimentation with artistic production.
Course Objectives
Investigate three art forms: installation art, performance art/performativity and ritual, highlighting discursive elements within each medium.
Apply intersectionality, feminist criticism and postmodern discourse to contemporary culture, interrogating the dynamics of privilege, power over and the impetus to preserve the status quo.
Investigate messaging in public space, different modes of resistance, communication and control.
Examine the interplay between political art, relational aesthetics and new genre public art.
Explore inventive methodologies used to promote community engagement with social agendas.
Differentiate between collaboration, collective creativity, and participatory practice.
Analyze the process of idea development, finding allies and soliciting support.
Pedagogical Approach
“Public Art: Performing Social Justice in Public Space” will be developed as a studio course in
visual arts. Class meeting time will combine slide presentations and journaling with small group experientials where boundaries between artist and audience, personal voice and collective actions, are examined. Slide presentations will focus on theory, cultural context, and artistic practice. Experiential exercises will stimulate reflective conversations about meaning-making, authenticity, and integrity, as well as ideas about illusion and controversy. Artistic imagination and experimentation will be encouraged in all arenas of development. Research will be developed as an investigatory process, expanding our knowledge base about what art is and what art can be. Course readings and bibliography will support overarching goals of the course, i.e. issues of social justice, equality and empathic regard across difference.
Afternoon class meetings will be devoted to creating new work (or plans for new work) corresponding to the three assignments: performance art, installation, and ritual. The interim session will be dedicated to producing new work, possibly debuted in the public realm. Discussion about audience, engagement, measuring impact, and post-project documentation will be addressed.
Lesley University
College of Art and Design
History/Public Art: Monuments & Memorials
Prof. Karen Frostig, Ph.D.
“We erect monuments so that we will always remember, and build memorials so that we shall never forget.” --Arthur C. Danto, The Nation (1985)
Course description
Since antiquity, public art and historic monuments have taken various forms and served diverse purposes. This course explores the history, language and meaning of both public art, monuments and memorials as they have appeared over time and in a range of cultures. Towards this end, students will consider a broad sampling of public works, examining how these works shape our understanding of history and culture, and identity and meaning within a variety of contexts.
Course Objectives
Overview of the history of public art, monuments and memorials, with a special focus on late twentieth century memorial
development.Present new genres of public art, monument and memorial development that correspond to the evolution of ideas contained within the discipline of art history.
Investigate public space, who owns public space, how public space serves public audiences.
Analyze changing forms of representation within memorial culture, specifically, movement from the generals to the victims and
from dominant culture to minority representation.Discuss semiotic messaging, inferences and omissions, the preservation of the status quo and how national narratives are
cultivated and disseminated.Utilize critical thinking to evaluate how history is negotiated and represented within a public art program.
Consider the relationship between public art and national narratives, situated within a global/transnational environment, noting
tensions erupting between multiple perspectives and historic truths.Introduce a series of case studies representing different examples of memorial culture that portray concepts of grief, terror,
memory, trauma, silence, denial, betrayal, loss and healing.Examine how memorials address, reinforce or deconstruct the dichotomy between “us” versus “them”.
Introduce participatory methodologies intended to foster new forms of audience involvement.
Evaluate robust interconnections between memorial art, human rights legislation and ideas about civic engagement.
Pedagogical Approach
I bring my expertise as a transnational Holocaust Memorial artist to the Public Art & Monuments course. I will integrate a series of questions into the overall framework, such as: How does the divide between history and memory, monuments and memorials inform the design of this course? What is the relationship between public art and democracy, public art and fascism, and how does funding reflect policy? What kinds of events prompt monument/memorial development? What is the correlation between public memory, the dominant national narrative and social consciousness? Who is remembered and who is forgotten? And finally, who decides how significance is portrayed over time?
Course structure will follow a predictable format. Each class meeting will begin with a writing prompt related to the readings or the meeting’s thematic content. A slide presentation representing a cluster of case studies will follow, designed to generate a critical discussion about the material under investigation. We will close each meeting by identifying two new questions that emerged from the discussion.