Decolonizing the Glass Syllabus

geex.helen
Posts: 11
Joined: Fri Aug 14, 2020 9:42 am

Decolonizing the Glass Syllabus

Post by geex.helen »

What does it mean to decolonize the glass syllabus?

geex.emily
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Aug 11, 2020 1:46 pm

Resources and Notes on Decolonizing

Post by geex.emily »

This is a great question, and I'm very curious to hear how people are approaching it.

Just to start the conversation, I wanted to share a few resources for anti-racist pedagogy. Milly Cai is an associate director at the Ippodo Gallery in New York. She's shared a Google Drive folder on Race Theory and Anti-Racist literature on her public IG account. There's a lot to pull from here, but in terms of glass and theory specifically I'd suggest looking through the "History of Visuality," "Racial Formation and the Power of Visual Representation," "Surveillance and Looking" and "Resistant Futures."

But to return to the main question, "what does it mean to decolonize the glass syllabus?", I think I have to start by examining what predominant narratives I've accepted about the past, present and unfixed future of the glass medium. What are meaningful ways to disrupt and complicate those narratives so that I can communicate a more accurate (and messy) portrait of the contemporary state of the medium? I really appreciated Related Tactics piece on the Whiteness of Glass in New Glass Review 41, which I think is a powerful illustration of the contemporary intersection of crises as they relate to the glass world in particular. The last point, about building trust, asks us to be more honest and to think more critically.

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