Week 12

 This week you will be reading the work of avant-garde poet Mina Loy and viewing the work of performance artist Laurie Anderson. A current project right now devoted to Mina Loy's work invites digital postcards interpreting what the authors of this project call En Dehors Garde, or a more encompassing theory of the avant-garde with a title drawn from ballet. You can read more about the theory here: http://mina-loy.com/avant-garde-theory-2/the-en-dehors-garde/

The avant-garde is a term from the military, one that describes the troops before the troops, or in art, that which is so new that it changes how we think about art. Both Loy and Anderson demonstrate this kind of work, always innovating and thinking 'outside the box.'

As part of your assignment this week, you will submit a 'digital postcard' to the crowdsourced Loy project, pairing an image with an explanation of its relationship to your sense of the En Dehors Garde. The instructions are here: http://mina-loy.com/avant-garde-theory-2/digital-flash-mob/

In addition to submitting your work using the project's site, you will also post your image and caption on our discussion board, 'creating a new thread' to do so and responding to one of your classmates' postcards within 48 hours of the deadline. You can pick any image you would like, and it could be drawn from something we read this term (remember not to use images that are copyrighted), or something that interests you outside of the class, perhaps an example from art or music, as long as it is appropriate for an academic context. You can also use a photograph of your own.

When submitting your postcard, you can choose whether to use your own name or a pseudonym. The pseudonym you choose should appropriate for an academic ******ience.

You should also include the source of or link to the image and any other sources (if you draw on any) in your postcard caption. When it is posted, you are welcome to add the link to your digital postcard on our discussion board site as well. You can see examples of other postcards on the Loy project site.