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Patty—you inspire a presto search for that sonata Writing about this grief and torment is far from easy - thank you for three powerful movements and moments .... A grateful reader, C
On Wed, Apr 29, 2020 at 8:17 AM Patricia Zimmermann <pa...@ithaca.edu> wrote: > ----------empyre- soft-skinned space---------------------- > *COVID 19 Movement III: Presto* > > Only the recent books on documentary history and analysis could be found > as e-books, according to our librarians at Ithaca College. The theoretical > books in critical ethnography, critical historiography, theory were > confined to hard copy. Our librarians ordered every e-book on documentary > they could find, squeezing out budget from small cracks so my students in > my History and Theory of Documentary class could have some readings. > Plenty of books on new media theory had been published as ebooks, so that > covered part of my class, but not the abstract part, the meta. > > The college had shutdown. We had one week to "migrate" our courses to > "remote instruction." Words from administrators and not from faculty. > COVID meant shelter-in-place. No more F2F classes as they have come to be > called. F2F, a phantom, a phantasmatic, a fantasy in this COVID world of > invisible viruses, illness, death, and screens. Migration from the > embodied sensorium of the classroom to the emphemerality of screens. From > three dimensions to two. From a world of chiararscuro to flat. > > The great migration as some have called it came with a great work speed > up. Many colleges, including my own, insisted on propagating ideas about > "student centered," a neoliberal construct of consumerism and comfort > displacing the messiness of ideas and debate. A dangerous shift from the > collective to the individual, from the abstract to feelings. To be student > centered, we should be synchronous, stay in touch with our students, send > emails, be available on Zoom open office hours, understand. These > ideologies ignored what faculty had to do: redesign and restructure and > reconceptualize courses in a new interface, a new format, under almost > impossible conditions. And all of us, whether at elite schools, public > universities, or third rate four year private colleges had to do it fast. > > Presto, I thought. Very fast. Tumultuous. A forward driving rhythm with > contrapuntal tension. Presto. > > I scrambled to cut films and new media projects out of my syllabus, not to > make the course easier, but to respect the labor of our librarian who > digitized titles for Sakai. He was swamped by requests from across campus. > He was digitizing ten hours plus a day to get it all done. > > When the Governor instituted PAUSE which shut down everything, this > librarian brought in back packs and shopping bags to pack up all the DVD > titles faculty needed, and many external drives. He would digitize from > home. I cut and pruned and honed, trimming down titles. I convinced > myself that instead of my carefully curated sequencing of films and new > media to use juxtapositions to jolt students into ideas through shock or > through pleasure, I needed a new plan. The curatorial plan would not work > online. > > So I brainwashed myself into thinking this could now be a "slow read," a > deep dive into close readings of the texts. In fact, Tim Murray, our > comrade here on Empyre, even offered an argument that all undergraduates > need to learn to read films and new media carefully on a formal level of > textual analysis, so this was in fact, not defeat, but a good thing, a > cleansing in a way, a paring down to what matters. > > I started to play Mozart's Sonata in A Minor during this scramble to > transition my courses to online. Written in 1778, it commemorated his > mother's death, a mix of pounding repetitive chords and flying lines of > fast notes, then a gorgeous sweeet andante movement, and the third > movement, presto. Tumultous, surging dynamics. Juxtapositions of loud and > soft, rage and sweetness. The sonata sits as only one of two Mozart sonata > in a minor key. I realized this so-called mass migration to remote learning > catapulted me and other colleagues into presto. Not the kind identified > with magic shows, but presto, fast, furious, contrapuntal. > > But, as we say in critical historiographic theory, there is the straight > story and then there is the crooked story. The straight story seemed to > emanate from administrators emphasizing access to media technologies, > teaching synchronously, simply transposing what we do in classrooms in a > large media school to an online environment. It meant an uncritical > technofetishism of workshops, tutorials, webinars on various gadgets and > interfaces that disguised the anxieties, work speed ups, and conceptual > work. > > All to keep it ALL THE SAME, as though nothing had happened and as though > the Zoom screen did not flatten our affect and transform our images into > postage stamps. > > The straight story meant asserting without critique that students needed > high end gear to make their films and videos, and that it needed to get to > them at all costs. The engineers called me, worried about how to > decontaminate cameras with all their nooks and crannies. They called > various equipment places in New York where friends of theirs worked. > > Noone knew how to decontaminate lighting gear, sound recording equipment, > cameras. They worried if they went in to the building to get gear to ship > to students for their thesis projects, they would die. Or their children > would die. Or they would be sick for weeks. They worried if they did not do > this, pretend everything was the same, the straight story, they would be > fired. > > Their crooked stories unsettled me. And as crooked stories do their work, > their bends, and forks and branches push us to see differently, that the > straight story of official histories is a lie that camouflages terror of > change. Historians like me look for turning points, shifts, where movements > and layers recalibrate, reform, in the crooked stories where the tempo is > not andante, but presto, where contrapuntal voices complicate the melodic > line. > > A younger colleague called me. She was crying. It was impossible to do > all this synchronous teaching with a 2 year old and a partner who also > worked at home. Newly tenured, she wanted to know who I thought would be > fired. The college continues to worry about enrollment, a small school > without a big endowment that depends on tuition. Workforce reductions were > mentioned at every webinar of what is called the Senior Leadership > Team....I did not even know SLT referred to them. She said it was > impossible to even think. She could not write. She could barely read. Now > she had to figure out how to manage cooking dinner, shopping with worries > of infection, caregiving, finding a place to be quiet to do her Zoom > meetings with students, grading, answering more and more emails from > students who could not meet any deadlines. > > I joined forces with some other senior faculty advocating for extensions > to tenure clocks, the adoption of P/F, the abandonment of student > statements. We were not alone. It was a grassroots, national movement. > > Another woman colleague wrote me a long email. She said she could not > think as her fear infused her brain and her heart. Anxiety consumed her > like a mudslide. She had a 1 year old, no day care, a geologist husband > who worked in another state, pressures to be available to students and be > synchronous, doing all the shopping, all the cooking, all the cleaning, > tracking down students who never showed up or wrote back. Then, she said, > the college keeps messaging it is having financial problems, it needs to > resize itself. She asked me this: will I be fired? She had heard that > most of the part time and one year contract faculty were not being renewed, > and that class sizes would be increased. She said, "I feel terrorized, the > speed of all of this, of just a day, leaves me depleted." I told her we > needed to do a Zoom at her convenience, just so she would not feel alone. > In that Zoom, she told me that she did not feel anyone understood her > research (she is a massively productive feminist social scientist in > communications), that she did not feel anyone at all in her department > supported her, and that the great migration meant a great migration into an > anti-feminist work speed up. The isolation offered no community. My heart > broke for her. > > Another colleague wondered if the program he directed would be cut given > the budget crisis and the perils of a drop in the first year class in the > fall. He shared that noone spoke to him directly, and that he has morphed > into a Kremlinologist, watching the administrators webinars for clues, but > finding they only propagated more anxiety. Workforce reductions. No > international travel. No raises. Larger class sizes. Work speed up. > Presto. > > If my emails were transcribed into musical notes in a score, they would > reveal the last movement of a sonata, presto, with different voices layered > in counterpoint. The student who shared he could not turn in his paper on > time as his father, an emergency room doctor, contracted COVID in a Philly > hospital. A young woman who told me she could never manage any theory > courses, this was the fourth one, she preferred hands on, doing things, not > reading or writing. She said shelter in place robbed her of making videos, > and therefore, she could not do my theory course because it did not matter. > > Another student wrote and said going online offered something he did not > have before: discussion postings where he could think about the media > projects before the discussion, and get feedback. Another said moving > online and sheltering in place offered solace and respite. With no parties, > no socializing, no clubs, no internships, no extracurriculars, no love > life, she had time to focus on her readings. > > Then, messages from colleagues, forwarding articles about the collapse of > higher education, the great migration perhaps now meaning the great crash, > where maybe only elite well endowed universities remain, and where places > like I teach at reconfigure into something unrecognizable before they > evaporate completely. > > The excitement, the fast paced presto, of the Rapid Response Salons on > COVID featuring colleagues opening up ideas that we produce weekly, a space > that renews us with community and purpose. Some deans and VPS jump on the > team and get involved, eager to swim in the presto of ideas not yet > solidified. A retired much admired colleague wrote after participating in > one of the Friday salons. She said "ideas will get us through this." > > The third movement of the Sonata in A Minor pulses with tumultuous > cascading motifs in presto in many voices. > > When I play it, I think of my own mother's death, maybe from COVID, of the > death of higher education as we all once knew it or perhaps, more > accurately, fantasized about it, of the death of calm and solace, the death > of being with others. > > We are all in mourning for losses we can not yet name. > > We are all in presto, speedy notes tumbling out in all keys,some of which > we do not yet recognize and can not yet play with any texture, nuance, > dynamics, or ease. Presto. > > Patty Zimmermann > > > > Patricia R. Zimmermann, Ph.D. > Professor of Screen Studies > Roy H. Park School of Communication > Codirector, Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival > > Ithaca College > 953 Danby Road > <https://www.google.com/maps/search/953+Danby+Road+%0D%0AIthaca,+New+York+14850+USA?entry=gmail&source=g> > Ithaca, New York 14850 USA > <https://www.google.com/maps/search/953+Danby+Road+%0D%0AIthaca,+New+York+14850+USA?entry=gmail&source=g> > > http://faculty.ithaca.edu:83/patty/ > http://www.ithaca.edu/fleff > > _______________________________________________ > empyre forum > empyre@lists.artdesign.unsw.edu.au > http://empyre.library.cornell.edu
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