Experimental Documentary

Through readings, screenings and discussion we
will explore artists' strategies for engaging
truth claims in video. We will look closely at
ways experimental documentaries use speculative
fiction, embodied practices, gossip, and
journalistic techniques to question the
"document". We will examine our ethical
relationships to fact checking, "alternative
facts", interview strategies, oral histories, and
the power dynamics inherent in this field.
Stemming from docere which means to teach,
documentary practices are tied to pedagogical
practices. In this course we will generate
expansive relationships not only to the ways
pedagogy is housed within experimental documentary
work itself, but with the making and learning
process in the classroom.

Students in this course will make two short
experiments based on assignments, and two
completed self-guided works. At least one of the
self-guided works must incorporate video as a
medium, but interdisciplinary approaches to the
question of the document are welcome.