AFVS 186C: Picture this: Contemporary Australian First Nations Art, Film and Visual Creative-led Research

Instructor:  Professor Brenda L Croft

Fall 2024: Monday, 12.00-2:45 pm

Location: Carpenter B04 (unless otherwise notified)

Australian First Nations cultural practices, cosmological beliefs and creativity span 65,000+ years, deeply grounded in the collective cultural knowledge that we have been on the continent now known as Australia since time immemorial, from the time of the Ancestors who created land, seas and skies.

AFVS 186C:  PICTURE THIS: Contemporary Australian First Nations Art, Culture and Politics through digital, film, photography and video (art, documentary, experimental and feature) media explores collective and individual creative practice, from customary to contemporary re/presentation, re/clamation, re/invigoration & re/imagination. Diverse perspectives - First Nations and non-Indigenous - media & trans-disciplinary platforms, informed by socio-political contexts of the past century, will the compounding impact of the ongoing colonial project of the Australian un/settler colonial nation-state on contemporary Australian First Nations Capacity, Identity, Sovereignty and Ancestral Futures. This will be conducted through digital, film, photography and video media (art, documentary, experimental and feature film/video).

AFVS 186C has three main aims: 

• Provide students with basic geographical, historical and contextual frameworks for the study of Australian First Nations visual art/culture and politics through a broad cross-section of Australia.
• Familiarise students with concepts that are fundamental to Australian First Nations understandings of the interconnected relationships between art/culture and life, both historically (pre- and early post-contact, up to the early 20th century) and in a contemporary (early 20th to present-day) context. 
• Assist students in developing ideas about how contemporary Australian First Nations visual art/culture & socio-political actions have contributed to critical Indigenous methodologies & theory; re/presentation & re/clamation, re/invigoration and re/imagining; & inter-disciplinary creative-led research. 

Wherever possible collections & exhibitions at arts/cultural, social history & archival institutions are used as part of the teaching & learning experience. Upon successful completion, students will have the broad knowledge and skills to: 

1. Identify/nominate historical & geographical origins of Australian First Nations Art, Culture and Socio-Political Actions 
2. conduct culturally relevant critical appreciation of Australian First Nations Art, Culture and Socio-Political Actions 
3. develop cross-cultural awareness in the processes of interpretation of Australian First Nations Art, Culture and Socio-Political Actions
4. research and access culturally appropriate and, whenever possible, scholarly information on Australian First Nations Art, Culture and Socio-Political Actions; and 
5. spoken and written expression will show appropriate cultural sensitivity & awareness of Australian First Nations Art, Culture and Socio-Political Actions. 

Collections at Harvard will be actively engaged with throughout the course, including the Harvard Film Archive, CCVA Theater for screenings. Guest lectures are proposed to be part of this course. AFVS 186C may also reference international First Nations/Indigenous and Native American content/context where applicable.