Kristian Monsen Kristiansen
Helene Emilie G. Norseth
Kristiina Hansen
Laura Toots
Signe Tøra Karsrud
Emily Illet
Patricio Esteban Briceño
Hanna Heinrich

It is intended to provide an ongoing resource for the workshop participants and for other people as well. 

I would like to thank all the students again for an inspiring and busy two weeks!
_ Michelle Teran

Follow the journey on the map

Patrik Entian, Site Specific Revisited: Prison Painting

Geography is a study in how spaces are produced. In this lecture, workshop participants were given a brief introduction to geography from a scientific and philosophical perspective. Students were provided with a quick survey of the different branches, areas of study and methodologies within the geographic discipline and were led through various definitions of ‘space’, drawn from the writings of David Harvey and Henri Lefevre. 

Link to pdf version of Geography lecture.

Academy Dweller’s Survival Guide (ADSG) is an online resource designed to help students find their place within the academy. Through this guide students will learn how to survive by reading about potential threats, such as where the teachers are,  and escape routes. 

While I was lurking and photographing around the school it struck me how few students were actually there. I wondered where the students were. Where they dead? Did they get  lost somewhere in the building? Did they escape or were they just plain lazy?

The Academy Dweller’s Survival Guide (ADSG) is inspired by Fall Out, a video game about post-apocalyptic Washington DC where the players learn to survive by observing the behaviours and patterns of potential threats and experienced some of the sicknesses (such as radiation sickness). I intend to make something similar for the school by using similar methods included within Fall Out. For example, by observing and testing different people’s limits (s.a. the janitor) I will learn about the social rules within the academy. Physical limits, such as location, construction and accessibility will also be included within the guide. 

The Academy Dweller’s Survival Guide (ADSG) is intended as a discussion forum for the Art Academy in Bergen (A.A.I.B) students. This project will be an attempt to make students active in the discussion about the school and perhaps even be a guide to lost A.A.I.B dweller’s.

http://akadwellers.wordpress.com/

We’re here to help you.

Yours K.M.K

_log_out_

_exit_os_
_shutdown_

Starting point for a research about equivalents to artistic role and proposals for wastelands in their use. Research is contained within a blog acting as a digital library and archive and collected in a manner akin to an online sketchbook. The Cowboy and the Cleaning Lady blog will include references from books, gaming, websites and other artist projects. 

Possible artistic roles or equivalents

The artist as a hero- cowboy/indian/cosmonaut/ Pippi Longstocking
The artist as a cleaning lady
The artist as a transient, a homeless person, a nomad
The artist as a symbiote, as a parasite

About wastelands

The urban wasteland is increasingly a target and focus of attention for urban development and gentrification. 
Is the wasteland still something worth fighting for?
Illegal and legal colonization of public space and wastelands : are they ‘safe grounds’ or invasions?

http://thecowboyandthecleaninglady.blogspot.com/

Project proposal:

How many different places, times and cultures feed into a studio space? How can you perceive these through the material present within these spaces? 

Methods:

I will start by ‘mapping’ my own studio, by documenting and researching images, text and objects within the space, looking at the geographical, temporal and personal origins of each item. This investigation will be extended to other studio spaces within the art academy which will be accompanied by informal interviews by the students who occupy the spaces. 

With this exploration I am mainly interested in the personal side to the items and will use these connections as the basis of my research.

Some research questions:

How long has the individual possessed and carried around the personal item?

Where and in which types of spaces (domestic, studio, country, etc) has this item been placed in?

Has the location and context where it is placed altered the value of the item?

Possible presentation formats:

Text taken from interviews and personal items mixed with photo-documentation will form a series of works-on-paper and presented as a gallery installation.

This is a photograph I have had for more than a year, and it is the one image I have carried around with me to different studio spaces.  I intend to write  a number of text pieces on this image – discussing the different places it has been geographically while in my possession and also researching the photographs actual origins.

This is an image that I intend to discuss with a friend – it is on her studio wall.   The questions that will be raised are to do with the changeable meanings of the image in different geographical contexts and also surround the different readings of the image through various projects.

Untitled, 2006-2007

In 2007 I made a wall painting on a corridor at the Art Academy. I worked with it for four months about two hours every day. I had a set of rules I decided to follow through the process of making the painting. The main idea was to work intuitive with drawing to explore my drawing skills in a direct way without being bound to themes or motive. So I could not bring source material, sketches or pictures to the space where I worked. Every part of the physical process was bound to happen on the wall and in the space I had decided to work. It all started out in an abstract way using pencil, drawing small shapes which together made a pattern. In that pattern I started seeing figures and shapes and then I made those clearer with charcoal, color and white paint. Under the whole process I was all the time adding and taking away material, so that the wall painting ended up having a lot of layers. In april I had to stop working on the painting even though it was not finished, because the surroundings claimed it back and the wall ended up white again with my wall painting underneath.So in 2009 I started to think about the possibility of making an excavation of it, to see how it looked after the process of making the wall white again.I tried different techniques and the one which was most efficient was actually finding the right layer by washing a small part of the paint away and peel the paint off in flakes. The painting is now on its way to be re-descovered but with “wounds” and marks after the tools I used in the process of bringing it back. 

2009, Peeling away the paint.

For the video installation Immersion Farocki visited a workshop organised by the Institute for Creative Technologies, a research centre for virtual reality and computer-simulations. One of their projects concerns the development of a therapy for war-veterens suffering from Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Farocki is interested in the use of virtual realities and games in the recruiting, training and now also therapy for soldiers. Farocki explores the connection between virtual reality and the military – how the fictional scenarios of computer games are used both in the training of U.S. troops prior to their deployment in combat zones, and in psychological care for troops suffering battlefield trauma upon their return.

A link to Harun Farocki’s work

‘The Reject’ is a solo exhibition of K., a ‘Reject artist’ who has applied for and been rejected by most of the art academies in Norway. 

‘The Reject’ will be presented at Kunsthallen, a prominent presentation space in Bergen, and feature a selection of art works, a documentary about K.’s life and research material generated from interviews by experts working within the artistic field. By exhibiting a ‘Reject artist’ within a reputable space such as Kunsthallen, it is intended to open a critical discussion concerning the politics of inclusion and exclusion and criteria for determining cultural/artistic value by looking at who does and does not get accepted into the art academy.

Research Questions:

-What are the criteria for acceptance?
-What are the power structures that determine these criteria?
-What determines cultural / artistic value?
-How does this relate to this situation of inclusion and exclusion
-How are artists and artistic practices mythologized?
-How is this related to the role of art, the academy and the institution?
-What is the relation between fact and myth?
-What are the implications of having a ‘Reject Artist’ exhibit in the Kunsthallen?

Methods:

To gain information and experience into how to create a solo exhibition of a ‘Reject artist’ within a prestigious art space,  several representatives within the artistic field will be interviewed and will include curators, theoreticians, critics, practitioners, fundraisers and museum directors.  

Why?

- To learn how to approach the Kunsthallen

- How to set up an exhibition. (how to apply for one, who to talk to, how to fundraise, etc)

-Learning different people’s perspective on the concept (and possibly find partners and collaborators)

-To learn to describe the project ( language, terminology, conceptual and artistic references)

Some things to think about

-What to ask people when interviewing them

-How to present this research and the result of these exchanges

Detailed Description:

The final exhibition will include a fictional documentary (docu-fiction)  of K.’s life, a selection of artworks and research documentation from interviews and meetings with various representatives within the artistic field. 

docu-fiction

The film is a story of one artist, known as K., that didn’t make it into the art academy.

It will be written as a docu-fiction, part fact and part fiction, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. 

Some basic guidelines to how the film will be made:

A script written for the film will include scripted dialogue to be acted out by different people within the academy, pertained to perceived roles that different individuals play within the academy. 

Question:  Through whose eyes is this script written?

In the film some people play themselves and some people are played by actors. An actor will also play the role of K.  

artworks

A selection of artworks will be presented within the exhibition

Some questions:

What type of artworks should be presented?

-paintings, photographs

-showing different versions or stages within K.’s work (example: did he start to adapt his work in a way to suit the academy by making art in the way that he thinks the academy would like OR some related to the general influence around him, such as his friends, family and peers)

Do the artworks need to be even present?

Do the artworks need to be authentic? (the question of authenticity and fiction)

-  Does it have to be K.’s work, or could it also be fictionalized (made by the exhibition organizers… P and S)

- If they are not authentic, what would be the process for recreating them? Would the students within the art academy recreate the artworks? 

research documentation

Make a list of the names of all the professionals you would approach and why.

Document what kinds of questions you are asking them and what kinds of answers you are being given. 

Try to describe what you learn and how you apply it in trying to get an exhibition for K. at Kunsthallen

How would this research be presented (publication, video, photo-documentation, other research, discussion, conference, etc, etc)

Walker Art Center curator Peter Eleey discusses Pierre Huyghe’s Timekeeper and the Walker’s exhibition The Quick and the Dead.

Link to video on YouTube