Kathleen Fraser

Kathleen Fraser
unwriting writing
Seminar
California College of the Arts
San Francisco, California
 

We began with:

A discussion of the Robert Smithson essay  "A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey"  (1967) [from ROBERT SMITHSON: The Collected Writings,  Edited by Jack Flynn. University of California Press. Berkeley, 1996. Paperback]
...followed by a beginning reading and discussion of each of the pieces produced from the assigned writing . (These readings to be spread over two classes, for this assignment is an important one,  Some of these will need to be carried over, in part, to the following week's class).

THE ASSIGNMENT:

1. Take a walk in the city...somewhere in your neighborhood or somewhere unfamiliar.    Find a "site" (that you might call a "monument" or a related name).  Analyze the techniques used to produce this site..its function and relation to the landscape around it. Take your notebook with you and jot down anything that you see, hear, smell...(in the Smithsom mode of attentiveness to the normally unnoticed),  Sit in one place, such as a cafe or park bench, after your walk, and write down anything else you remember or that occurs to you in relation to what you have seen.  When you get home, write a 2 page piece using the genre form you most prefer, collaborating with Smithson's sensibility or way of inclusiveness in what he observes and notes.  Consciously apply several of his techniques OR ideas used in putting together the site you've observed.
 
 

Youmna Chlala
Across, The Mosque

Romney Steele
Monument of Dimond Park Creek, Oakland   (2003)   ––After Robert Smithson’s “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey”

Aimee Le Duc
"unwriting writing" Monument Piece
 
 

contributors' notes