Open Practices
If “practicing” suggests rehearsing something already determined, “a practice” is something like an open-ended process to see what might emerge from a certain way of doing things. Open Practices is a place for collective experimentation, taking the loose form of the reading group as a starting point. Without presupposing a mode, field of study, or expertise, each group is organized around an inquiry into a general theme of practice.
In Art in the Elementary Schools. Filmstrip series in Hopper, G. Puppet Making Through the Grades (Davis: 1966)
Hybrid, Every other Wednesday, 2:30-3:30pm Eastern
Puppets—in various forms—are everywhere, especially in and around education. And yet we often struggle to consider their function: both what they do and how they do it. This is the “puppet effect”: they both reveal and hide their workings. What can puppets tell us about how we experience?
Still in Three Colours: Blue (1993) by Krzysztof Kieslowski
A "machinic portrait" of Kant (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994: 56-7)
Hybrid, Tuesdays 5:30-6:30pm Eastern
The “diagram” conjures the notion of a system overview, an abstract stand-in for a fixed set of relations. In brief, a brief. A plan, an essence. Upon closer scrutiny, however, a diagram opens onto any number of problems and potentials. The diagram says too little and too much. It gets out ahead of things, and it is this aspect that asks for study. (Winter - Spring ‘25)
Etienne-Jules Marey, Plan incliné, angle de 30 degrés, quatrième et dernière version de la machine à fumée (1901)
Goldfish Bowl (1929) by Alexander Calder
Wednesdays 5-7 pm Eastern, starting May 7, 2025
Play does not require objects. So what are we to make of objects created and designed for the sole purpose of being played with? How do they serve in initiating and facilitating play? And how can we reimagine the materiality and design of objects created for play? (Starting Spring '25)
Workshop-Theater of the Oppressed in Paris (1975). https://laescuela.art/en/campus/library/essays/the-aesthetic...
In person, Wednesdays 11am-12pm Eastern
The Philosophy Improv Reading Group centers its meetings on improv games and scenework. The goal is to engage with the reading in a different way, to examine what insights or understandings are made possible when we center play and movement as opposed to discourse.
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About
Open Practices is a para-educational platform for experimentation with modes of collective practice in the post-digital age. It is sited at the Digital Futures Institute, at Teachers College, in New York City. Open Practices is open to all, with an emphasis on practitioners, graduate-students, educators, and scholars. We are open to proposals for groups.
Team
Facilitator
Chris Moffett, Digital Futures Institute, Teachers College, Columbia University
Facilitator
Kevin Klein-Cardeña, Teachers College, Columbia University
Visual Designer
Minsi Qian, School of Fine Arts, Southwest University
