The iGen: Freeing Their Voice in Cyberspace and the Theater Space
Christi Pidskalny Sargent
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Lesson 4: "Being Aesthetic”
In this lesson, students will consider how they curate their social media accounts and what story these accounts tell of their life. This lesson will take two 90-minute class periods. Activity one occurring at the Yale Art Gallery and activities two and three occurring in one 90-miute class period in the classroom.
Essential Questions:
- What is self-presentation?
- What does it mean “to curate”?
- How do visual artists tell a story? How do visual artists manipulate a picture to tell a different story? How can we apply this to thinking about our social media accounts?
- How are you curating your Instagram feed?
- Which parts of yourself are you choosing to share?
- How authentic are your posts?
- How do you feel about yourself when you look at other people’s Instagram feeds?
Activity 1 (Curate and Storytelling): We will visit the Yale Art Gallery to look at and compare the painting Elihu Yale at Cavendish and Titus Kaphar’s piece Enough about You. Students will observe and critique each piece of art through small group discussions and then compare the two pieces to one another. How did Kaphar change the narrative of the original painting? How does the title of the piece help tell that story? How can we compare this to the ways in which we curate our own lives on Social Media?
Activity 2 (Gallery of Selfies): Students will choose their favorite selfie. This picture will be displayed next to their school photos or headshots. Students will look at these pictures in the same way that they viewed Kaphar’s work. How do you change your narrative with the selfies you post on social media?
Activity 3 Adding to the Riverstory (Monologue): Students will choose one of their two pictures posted in the Selfie Gallery. They will then write a monologue from one image to the other. For example, write a monologue from your filtered selfie to your school photo or vice versa. What would this person say to the other? How do they feel about one another? What questions do they have for the other image?
