ARC 300 / ARC 2016

Instructor: John Shnier

Summer 2026

Travel Dates: Wednesday May 13 - Thursday June 4

Overview

 This 3-week course builds upon several iterations looking to use discourse mined from studying Gian Batista Piranesi and applying it to investigations in Rome. Palimpsest, the simultaneous perception and readings of parallel layers of information, is a key theme in that discourse, Rome is an ideal city to be positioned within a real time, immersive experience. Students will select sites and or specific options in Rome upon which to create their own experiments with how to visualize and ideate a variety of concepts that will in turn, constitute layers of perception.

These concepts will attempt to build a language of understanding and interpretation that is gleaned from a study of Gian Batista Piranesi, a 18th-century Venetian architect who spent his life obsessed with Rome. Through his prolific output of etchings, Piranesi employed and manipulated techniques of representation, perspective, notation and theory, focussed on asserting Rome’s creative and innovative forms and monuments as a way for architecture to move forward into modernity. These concepts include flux, dissolution, distortion, emotion, speculation, surrealism, plausible fiction and the creation of alternative realities.

Working in groups of two or three, students will examine and re-present a specific well-known element within the city. The medium for this exploration will be the creation of a film. The film will be a four-dimensional speculation on the mutability of these elements through time: past present and future(s). Students will create videos that dynamically explore concepts composing them layers and using visual techniques that de-laminate and re-laminate concepts in manners that take advantage of the four dimensions that films facilitate. The film will be supported by other forms of image production. These may include photographic still images, drawing or collage. The course will also include a two-day workshop in monotype printmaking, a medium sympathetic to Piranesi’s own use of etching.

We will be partnering with The University of Washington Rome Center (UWRC). UWRC has had a long -standing presence in the city hosting not only their own study abroad programs but facilitating the visits and studies of other institutions. Located in the art of the historic center at the Campo dei Fiori, they will also provide us with studio space where we will meet to work on our projects as well as review and discuss our projects. UWRC will also provide housing though shared apartments that they manage.

Visiting Rome naturally offers an endless number of artistic and historical treasures of art and architecture, and students will be left to their own resources and time to explore the more popular ones. There will be opportunities that will be opportunities that are unique to this course. These will include exclusive visits to the Calcagraphia in Rome to see and touch significant documents such as original prints from Nolli’s maps of Rome and Piranesi’s images. We also plan an exclusive visit the Basilica del Netuno, and little visited annex to the Pantheon. We will also visit the Grounds and Church of the Knights of Malta to see Piranesi’s only built work and experience the beautiful gardens that lie behind the famous “keyhole” view of St Peters Dome on top of the Aventine Hill.

Application

Students wishing to apply should submit three work samples, a CV, and an answer the following question:

Rome is a city of fragments (of time, of space, of buildings, of history, etc.), and many of these fragments are visible in Piranesi's engravings. Please write an answer to the question "What do you understand by the 'triumph of the fragment'?" Your answer should be between 100 and 200 words, and may be accompanied by a single image (but this is not required).

Applications are to be submitted HERE. Please upload all documents in ONE single PDF file (max. 10MB). (Please note the form is limited to one submission for the summer course. Further editing and amendments are NOT allowed after the form has been submitted.) 

The deadline to apply is Friday, March 13, 2025 at 9:00 AM EST.