New Genres
SFAI’s New Genres program has strong roots in the history of conceptual art, where the artist’s concepts, intentions, and questions are the art medium and the work itself.
Initially founded as a major in performance art and video, New Genres quickly expanded to also encompass site specificity, social practices, and other trans-disciplinary media and approaches.
New Genres courses are post-studio laboratories for experimentation and discovery, in which students are challenged to respond to society and culture by identifying the best means of expression for each individual work. Dialogue and discussion are key tools in the advancement of ideas that become manifest in the form of the work.
Past Courses
- Internet Killed the Video Star
- Athletic Aesthetic
- Photoworks: Conceptual Photography
- Embodiment for Artists
- We Want the Airwaves
- Conceptual Drawing
- The Temporary: Performance, Interventions, Installation
- Advanced Video: The Moving Image
- Issues in Contemporary Art: Conceptual Landscape
Facilities
New Genres resources include shared spaces throughout campus: studio/performance spaces/classrooms with Internet connection; video,VHS, miniDV, and U-matic video formats; the latest digital cameras; editing rooms; AVID video editing and Final Cut Pro stations; an audio editing room; a dub room; and a computer lab with the latest digital technologies and software. Students also have access to a fully equipped lighting studio with green-screen (studio X).
Curriculum
See a sample four-year academic plan in the BFA in New Genres program to help you decide what courses to take when.
Total: 120
| Title | Units |
|---|---|
| Liberal Arts Requirements | 33 |
| Studio Requirements | 72 |
| Art History Requirements | 15 |
Studio Requirements
| Title | Units |
|---|---|
| Contemporary Practice | 3 |
| New Genres I | 3 |
| New Genres II | 3 |
| Issues in Contemporary Art | 3 |
| Installation Distribution | 3 |
| Video Distribution | 3 |
| Photoworks | 3 |
| New Genres Electives | 15 |
| Senior Review Seminar | 3 |
| Electives in any studio discipline | 24 |
| General Electives | 9 |
| BFA Graduate Exhibition | 0 |
Art History Requirements
| Title | Units |
|---|---|
| Global Art History | 3 |
| Modernity and Modernism | 3 |
| Art Since 1945 | 3 |
| History of New Genres | 3 |
| Art History Elective | 3 |
Faculty
Program Learning Outcomes
- Students engage a broad cross section of local, national, and international artists, scholars, and communities in mutual exploration of art, and the roles, responsibilities, and integrity of art and the artist in society.
- Students gain the ability to think critically and develop creatively as a result ongoing, intensive critiques.
- Students develop working methods that reflect their individual personalities within the framework of contemporary practice and dialogue.
- Students gain the ability to conceive of works through interdisciplinary thinking and production, promoting non-media specific approaches to artistic practice.
- Students gain the ability to demonstrate some historical and theoretical understanding of relevant practices as they pertain to the student’s work, and develop the ability to utilize this knowledge as part of a studio practice.
- Students gain the ability to research and generate conceptual ideas and then go on to connect these ideas to a material practice.
- Students gain the ability to identify the most suitable form for one’s ideas. Mastery in this form is expected.
- Students gain the ability to take conceptual risks.
- Students gain the ability to understand and articulate the conceptual basis of the work in terms of content, methodology, and intended audience.
