This seminar will engage New York City and Europe as creative laboratories for contemporary media arts. We will explore diverse mediums in moving image arts including video, photochemical film, and installation. Through a combination of coursework and visits to film festivals, artist-run spaces, studios, galleries, and museums, students will expand their understanding of contemporary media.
Students will develop technical and conceptual skills, and practice both collaborative and independent approaches to media production and study. Specialized workshops will introduce students to new tools for their own creative projects.
- To grow in personal responsibility, maturity, and organization as students, artists, and travelers
- To develop and nurture curiosity, humility, and ethical, respectful, and thoughtful engagement
- To broaden knowledge of contemporary media arts practices
- To develop technical and conceptual skills in media production
- To make creative work drawing on experiential learning
- To prepare students for lives as working artists and/or scholars through contact with filmmakers, programmers, academics, and critics
- To expand students’ sense of the world and their place in it
This seminar is open to all Carleton students, but preference will be given to those with a demonstrated interest in media production. Students are encouraged to take CAMS 111: Digital Foundations in advance of the program. Digital Foundations provides important technical and conceptual background for the creative projects students will complete in Europe. Students without CAMS 111 are encouraged to discuss their interests with Program Director Laska Jimsen.
CAMS 290 (6 credits/SCNC Only): Positionality and Place in Contemporary Media Arts
How do the places we inhabit and visit shape us as individuals and communities? How do our experiences and identities influence how we encounter a place – as individuals and as artists? Directed readings and viewings over winter break will familiarize students with key concepts, ideas, artists, projects, and ethical considerations we will continue to explore on the trip. Students will respond through a series of short response papers.
Instructor: Laska Jimsen
CAMS 267 (6 credits): Exploring Contemporary Media Arts in New York and Europe
Experiential learning is at the heart of this course; students will engage directly with filmmakers and arts organizations through film screenings, studio visits, and workshops. Class discussions, written responses, and creative projects will provide opportunities for reflection and synthesis as students expand their knowledge of contemporary media practices.
Instructor: Laska Jimsen
CAMS 268 (6 credits): Media Production Workshop
This course will combine classes taught by faculty director Laska Jimsen with specialized workshops by filmmakers and media artists in the cities we visit. Workshops will draw on strengths of the CAMS production curriculum, including a focus on form/content, sound/image, and theory/practice relationships, while introducing students to production practices not currently offered at Carleton. Each student will produce individual and collaborative creative media projects.
Instructor: Laska Jimsen
Language of Instruction
English
Laska Jimsen, Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Studies
Laska Jimsen teaches Digital Foundations, Nonfiction, Animation, Experimental Film & Video, and Advanced Production Workshop I and II. She works across nonfiction forms from video documentary to experimental 16mm filmmaking. Her individual and collaborative films and videos have screened at festivals and venues including Ann Arbor, Athens, IC Docs, MadCat, Los Angeles Filmforum, and Walker Art Center. Professor Jimsen has received a Jerome Foundation Film & Video Grant and a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant in Media Arts. She is currently an inaugural Jerome Hill Artist Fellow.
Apartments, hotels, hostels.
Students will stay in double, triple or quadruple rooms in carefully selected residential hotels or international student housing.
The seminar will spend roughly three weeks in each New York, Berlin and Lisbon, with one week at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Film screenings, studio visits, and workshops will supplement coursework. While we may take an occasional side trip outside our four cities, such trips will be neither frequent nor extensive. There will be an independent travel break between two of the cities.
Program dates roughly correspond to the Carleton academic term. Specific dates will be communicated to program participants.
All Carleton-sponsored 10-week off-campus study programs charge the Carleton comprehensive fee, which includes instruction, room and board, group excursions, public transportation, medical and evacuation insurance, travel assistance, and most cultural events.
Students are responsible for books and supplies, passports and visas (when required), transportation to and from the program sites, and personal expenses and travel during the seminar. Students will receive a program-specific Additional Cost Estimate at the time of acceptance.
Student financial aid is applicable as on campus. See the Off-Campus Studies website for further information on billing, financial aid, and scholarships.
No meetings or deadlines are available at this time. Please check back later.