evs_winnica: czerwca 2014

I tried to make the clubs more interactive and creative, that’s why except usual discussions I tried to make some manual exercises, most often drawing. Of course not everyone is an artist, but it is not a point in such exercises. The main aim is to develop creativity and make adults do something unusual, use imagination. I tried; don’t know with what success, to make art more accessible and not boring, the point was to talk about art without a lot of specialistic knowledge and big words. I’ll try to summarize what we have done during these 8 months now.

In the beginning we discussed what is culture and art in general, what our personal definitions of these concepts are and what functions of art are. Then, what makes a work of art a work of art using as example pictures of different items, some not very obvious:

After this, we discussed portraits from different centuries and different movements. First we talked how we would like to be portrayed and

Next club was about conceptual art, we saw the works of Joseph Kossuth “One and Three chairs”, who challenged the authority of art institutions, John Baldessori “I will not make any more boring art”, who just provided the idea and made others do the work – if he can be the artist still? And, finally, Sol Le Witt, who was just writing the instructions how to create the paintings.

Then my favorite topic-impressionism. On this club we used the 30 seconds method of watching art – participants had 30 seconds to look at the pictures and then to say their first impressions, first things they noticed, we saw pictures of Monet, Degas and others French impressionists.

After one whole club was devote to emotions in art – in what way feeling can be put into the paintings (colors, lines), how different colors make you feel like.

One club was dedicated to politics, more precisely to political cartoons and guessing the messages they are hiding.

We haven’t discussed only visual art on clubs but also theater. I tried to show to my participants some examples of absurdist theater and we saw the extracts from "Waiting for Godot" by Becket. It wasn't very successful club as I think its hard to understand that absurd in literature has a bit different meaning than the one we know from everyday life. One participant even told me that what I'm showing has nothing to do with absurd:)

"We wait. We are bored. No, don't protest, we are bored to death, there's no denying it. Good. A diversion comes along and what do we do? We let it go to waste. Come, let's get to work! In an instant all will vanish and we'll be alone more, in the midst of nothingness!"

"Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! (Pause. Vehemently.) Let us do something while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To allmankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for once the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us!"

Second theatrical club was dedicated to Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice".After not very successful attempts to watch a movie, I decided to make people familiar with this play in another way - they had to introduce themselves as main characters and tell the others their stories on the basis of short biographical notes, and after this we could analyse a bit the plot and even draw some characters:

Once we came back to our childhood a bit and were reading fairy-tales from other cultures (Jewish and African).

From other visual art topics we learnt about romanticism in art in different European countries (Turner, Goya, Delacroix, allegories in XVIII and contemporary art and tried to guess allegorical symbols for classical virtues and vices (for example, sloth -computer or sofa as some ideas of my participants), Frida Kahlo's autobiographical art of pain.

I liked especially 3 clubs:

discussion about Islamic women artists - when we saw the works of Shirin Neshat, Iranian artist whose main topic are women and islamic tradition, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1997.129.8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCAssCuOGls I storngly recommend seeing these works and watch her short movies
Language as art, on this club we got to know works of American neoconceptualist artist Jenny Holzer and tried to think about messages her works sent to the public and discuss general function of such type of art. Here some examples:

DISGUST IS THE APPROPRIATE RESPONSE TO MOST SITUATIONS DISORGANISATION IS A KIND OF ANESTHESIA DON'T PLACE TOO MUCH TRUST IN EXPERTS DON'T RUN PEOPLE'S LIVES FOR THEM DRAMA OFTEN OBSCURES THE REAL ISSUES

DREAMING WHILE AWAKE IS A FRIGHTENING CONTRADICTION

PEOPLE ARE BORING UNLESS THEY'RE EXTREMISTS PEOPLE ARE NUTS IF THEY THINK THEY ARE IMPORTANT PEOPLE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT THEY DO UNLESS THEY'RE INSANE PEOPLE WHO DON'T WORK WITH THEIR HANDS ARE PARASITES PEOPLE WHO GO CRAZY ARE TOO SENSITIVE PEOPLE WON'T BEHAVE IF THEY HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE

http://www.emptykingdom.com/featured/inflammatory-essays-jenny-holzer/

final club when we played old games from around the world, games are homemade, for two and I recommend for everyone who is bored, it's great fun and more interesting than spending your evening on a couch in front of tv;) http://www.ecola.com.pl/tabula-lusoria

Among creative activities we made during the clubs was story telling (in pairs invent a story on basis of 3 modern art pictures), creating poems – about yourself, what you would like your eyes to tell the world about you, about something that makes you happy or frightens you and about one or all the four seasons, and drawing and painting:

Exercise to mind a gap - joining in creative way two object on paper,
Painting concepts – 3 papers with noun, verb and concept written on them, participants have to draw these words and make others guess what they are
abstract lines drawing – using only abstract lines create a design that would represent the following concepts: a sound of approaching train, a taste of hot paper, a smell of a fresh baked apple pie, feeling of loneliness, a feel of a cat’s fur, a sound of an alarm clock at 5.30 am
group drawing - exquisite corpse and doodling together
negative thinking exercise - drawing with eraser
discover the famous places - participants get 3 pieces of paper with words, first is famous place or object (Big Ben, Colosseum etc), two others are the verb (crawl, scratch) and the item, object (wild roses, rubbish), they have to draw one picture from this.

Photos from some of the clubs: