1000 Plateaus 101: How to Make a Rhizome

LOCATION: Hybrid; in-person in Pilsen, Chicago, IL on on Zoom

FOR WHOM: artists, designers, dancers, choreographers, programmers, theorists, experimentalists otherwise. The course will be taught at a graduate/post-graduate level; non-academics, students, graduates, and faculty are welcome.

INSTRUCTOR: Garrett Laroy Johnson

GOALS: to learn how to make a Rhizome

APPLY: Here ahead of time or day of

COST: $0-50 sliding scale

REGISTER HERE

description

A two-part seminar both in-person and online reading through the first chapter of Deleuze and Guattari’s second volume of Capitalism and Schizophrenia: A Thousand Plateaus.

extended description

To wrap up our summer programming, we dive into the Rhizome, the most used (and perhaps misused) concept from Deleuze and Guattari’s famously prismatic collaboration in thought. We’ll break the chapter up over two weeks, a seemingly a luxurious amount of time for so few pages. But we’re always starting in the middle, even when we start at the beginning!

By the end of the two weeks, we will have made some ground and will have some perspective that there’s more ground to cover. More importantly we might have a sense that this ground is only stable so long as its held.

Why? Study never leads to any ultimate understanding that can be ported to other ground, study is situational. Rhizomes are not ready-made, waiting to be found. A Rhizome “must be made”. Hence: How to Make a Rhizome.

Pt. 1 // Starting in the Middle

• 6:00 intros
• 6: 15 instructor intro to Deleuze and Guattari
• 6: 45 facilitated discussion and close reading on pgs 3-13

Pt. 2 // 6:00 instructor review of previous reading block, introduction to second block 6:30 facilitated

Instructor Bio

Garrett Laroy Johnson first read the Rhizome in 2015 and fell into it. Since, Deleuze and Guattari have come to very different things in his work. He has a deep appreciation for how the text reveals new puzzles, riddles, and mysteries as others are unlocked. For Garrett, the text’s most important imperative is how to make the text useful in their media art research practice. Their 2022 dissertation, “Diagrammatic Media”, makes extensive use of the work of Deleuze and Guattari to probe the contemporary social, psychic, and infrastructural conditions for collectivizing research and creation in sonic and media arts.