Falaks Vasa (they/she, b. 1995) is an interdisciplinary artist, emerging writer and award-winning educator from Kolkata, India. Falaks graduated from Brown University with an MFA in literary arts in 2023 and from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a BFA in 2018. She has also attended artist residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the Artists’ Cooperative Residency & Exhibitions (ACRE). They have published a chapbook of poetry with the unnamed zine project, won the Archambault Award for Teaching Excellence from Brown University and have shown their artwork internationally at spaces like the Queer Arts Festival, Vancouver; the Queens Museum, NYC; and BARTALK, The Hague.
Courses
Fall 2024 Courses
DM 2258-01 - CAMOUFLAGE AS A PRAXIS: NOW YOU SEE ME NOW YOU DON'T
LevelGraduate
UnitDigital + Media
Subject Digital + Media
Period Fall 2024
Credits 3
FormatStudio
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date
DM 2258-01
CAMOUFLAGE AS A PRAXIS: NOW YOU SEE ME NOW YOU DON'T
LevelGraduate
UnitDigital + Media
Subject Digital + Media
PeriodFall 2024
Credits3
FormatStudio
ModeIn-Person
Start and End2024-09-04 to 2024-12-11
Times: M | 1:10 PM - 6:10 PMInstructor(s): Falaks VasaEnrolled / Capacity: 12Status: Open
SECTION DESCRIPTION
‘Camouflage as Praxis: Now You See Me Now You’ is a course exploring the forms, uses, and potentials of camouflage (or invisibility) as a strategy deployed by marginalized communities in the face of dominant hegemonies that seek to detect and disempower us. Grappling with the nuanced politics of representation and carefully unpacking the potential pitfalls and advantages of visibility, this course asks students to confront their own relationships with being in/visible, and create work from this place of definition/obscurity.
The course considers various figures such as the undercommons (Fred Moten & Stefano Harney), Ditto (the formless pokémon), Banksy (the anonymous artist), and cuttlefish (camouflaging cephalopods), among others, to uncover what it means to cover and make visible what it means to be invisible. Readings include excerpts from Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility, For Opacity by Edouard Glissant, and Undrowned by Alexis Pauline Gumbs.
While course content will focus on film/video, animation, photography, and installation works, this course is interdisciplinary, and invites creative practitioners and scholars from all backgrounds and disciplines to consider how concepts of il/legibility apply to their chosen disciplines.
