Coursera Certificate in Warhol!
I’m not certain if it’s a bit of a cosmic joke or not… but I’ve been awarded a Coursera Certificate in Warhol from Glyn Davis, University of Edinburgh!
Glyn Davis
Bittersweet
So much happened in those fast 5 weeks! To say it was bittersweet is the understatement of the year! So many great memories. So many painful ones. Remembering it all, reliving it all was, well, Bitter… and Sweet.
I’ve come to believe that life is a lot about pain. We can anesthetize the pain away with drugs and alcohol – television probably being the most dangerous drug ever – but if you’re really experiencing life, its going to have its challenges. I don’t love the pain, but I’ve come to feel that you shouldn’t be defined by it. That if you’re really alive, even for a little while, that it’s the most unlikely miracle and you just have to really savor and celebrate it.
Andy was Gay!
I’m still thinking about Glyn Davis’ statement that Warhol was gay… but Art Historians conveniently ignored that fact for a couple of decades! What’s so amazing about this is that Andy’s sexual orientation wasn’t a secret to anyone! Andy was never in the closet! He may not have emphasized it to Julia (who would have been so happy if Andy had married me, or Viva), but anyone paying any attention whatsoever wouldn’t be surprised. Yet Art History didn’t bother. The most prolific artist of the 20th or probably any century leaves this enormous body of homoerotic work, and Art History just sort of forgets about his sexual orientation.
Haha!
We know that History is always written from a biased point of view. But history is about war and stuff. Somehow Art History seems like it’s supposed to be refined and above that. It’s no different. Art History is a story told from the POV of the storyteller. We perceive what we want to perceive. We change or leave out what we don’t understand or don’t want to acknowledge.
Love & Hate; Factory & MOOC
Warhol MOOC was probably the best experience I’ve ever been happy to have end! Yes, I’m back on the bittersweet thing again. It’s hard not to dwell on all the pain and all the loss. It really tied my karma into pretzels to have to live those days again.
Aside from Factory love and hate, another amazing thing about Warhol MOOC was MOOC love and hate! For me this was a great MOOC. Dr. Davis resisted being The Doc on a Laptop and instead of giving “full” lectures as one might in a freshman lecture course, he gave intros and let the real learning be active learning in the Forums and Activities. More a graduate seminar than a freshman lecture. Of course our EDU system has inured so many of us to passive learning that this can be a shock. In the first week or so some unhappy students tried to start a petition to Coursera to cancel the course because it obviously wasn’t ready to be offered!
OMG! So Andy!
You just can’t miss the resonance of that with the brilliant Robert Hughes quotation stupidest person I’ve ever met!
Coursera Certificate Warhol
Anyway, I’m now the proud recipient of a Coursera certificate in Warhol! š
And, it’s not over! Isabella Medici and I have launched MOOC Magazine! Every other month we’re publishing an issue on an Arts MOOC. Our almost ready June issue is on Warhol MOOC.
If I got to meet you during Warhol MOOC, wow! It was so nice to meet you! If I didn’t – duh! – say Hi! already!
Love You!
xoxo
Edie
You really helped make this course fun for me, Edie. Thank you for that and all of this on Edie Pink I hope to stay in touch via MOOC Magazine.
Cheers!
Thanks so much shagen! The same back at YOU! š
IDK how active edie.pink & @EDiEMONSTA will be now. I haven’t decided. But at the very least, they won’t go away. Hopefully they’ll be online forever.
Up to now I’ve published 57 posts on edie.pink: 21 dated 2014, and 36 dated between 1959 & 2004. I have at least 1 more 2014 post (about supermodel Karlie Kloss coming to visit me! š and about a half dozen past-year posts I still want to put up.
In many ways I like the present better than the past since I don’t have to keep reliving lost drug years. But if I keep posting into the present, it’ll eventually outweigh the historical material. There’s so much here about my earlier days, I don’t want to bury it with too much tangential new content. IDK. We’ll see how it goes.
In spite of all the pain, I must say that being me has been a real explosion of energy. Perhaps a little bit like the impact I had on peeps back in the day! š
As for MOOC Magazine, yes! We’ve been working on it “live” so you can see the content as it goes up. The issue is almost ready to be official. Have you contributed your essay?? Exciting news! Gary Needham has contributed an introductory essay for us! Also I’m working on a new piece, Andy Warhol vs Jack Bauer.
I’m really excited about MM! It’s funny to see peeps posting “when do we get our certificated!?” In spite of posting mine here, I really care about them least of all. What I do care about is that we pour so much time and intensity into the forums and projects that are mostly behind MOOC walls. So MM is, I hope, the antidote for that. It’s a way to take some of the work and aggregate it in an Open, Attractive, Accessible, Searchable, Organized, Linked virtual magazine.
It’s been great interacting with you shagen! Don’t be a stranger!
xo
just me
I will post my essay, Edie, since you asked (guess it’s not too embarrassing). I’ll also post the peer assessments. We can post our own assessments and essays of those we assessed as well. ;^D
Thanks again for all your effort, hard work and dedication. Must be tough keeping all these commitments and still manage to push up a few daisies.
the daisies is the easy part!! š
Congratulations Edie! I was of course aware of Warhol and his work but how did I ever miss you? It’s been quite fun and most enlightening to follow your blog posts, tweets and other stuff. I’m even gonna forgive you for not screen testing me š
OMG! You know, you can’t Screen Test people who don’t show up!!! š
It’s funny you say you knew Andy but not me… the truth is, I knew almost nothing about me before, you know, my Twitter Resurrection! Must be all the drugs and dead brain cells from back in the day.
I was completely serious about the bittersweet thing. There’s so much pain in my story. But then you look at how many Edie Sedgwick Makeup Tutorials there are on YouTube, or Edie Sedgwick Tribute Sites on Tumblr or Pinterest. Ha! It’s all about the tears! Sad tears of loss and happy tears that so many people continue to be moved 42 years later. What a life!
I guess in the end part of the lesson is pretty simple. We learned a long time ago that RP is a powerful way to immerse in an experience. You could say that Nikki S. Lee’s Projects are “RP.” But beyond conceptual art projects and MMORPG’s it’s a great way to experience anything, even a MOOC. I could have just enrolled as the RL identity Pennyroyal Calamity, but I did the Twitter Resurrection thing, and that has made all the difference. It’s been painful and it’s been a skewed and biased swath through Warhol MOOC, but it’s been, you know, real!
I’ve been pissed off at that asshole Lou Reed, and I’m not so hot on Nico either. But I just love what an amazing person Viva is and OMG is Bibbie Hansen just the kindest person ever!?
You know it was only a few days before the MOOC started that I realized I didn’t have to take it as Penny, that I might take it as Nico or Edie or someone. Despite all the pain and frustration, I really made the right choice.
I’m Edie Sedgwick, damnit!
“Iām Edie Sedgwick, damnit!” Yes you are and justifiably proud to be too!