DRAWING ACCROSS DISCIPLINES Dec. 8– 12, 2014 Bauhaus-Universität, Weimar Initiated, developed and organized by Lisa Glauer Strategic Partnerships with UCSD - DAAD funded. =>> FOCUS ON EXPERIMENTAL DRAWING AS CROSS-DISCIPLINARY PRACTICE This intensive workshop is based on a a transdisciplinary approach to hand-drawing for enhancing perceptional training and experimental drawing skills. Inspired by the interdisciplinary approach observed on two exploratory trips to the Department of Structural Engineering at partner University UCSD, Lisa Glauer of Bauhaus-Universität, Weimar is hosting an intensive 3 day experimental drawing workshop, featuring special guest Prof. Amy Adler, from the EXPERIMENTAL DRAWING STUDIO of the University of California in San Diego. Drawing from observation teaches to see - by applying different techniques, perception is slowed down, details and contours appear more clearly, observational skills, key for every artist and natural scientist, are honed. Drawing can be a way to more directly access thoughts and creative impulses, notations, webs, and analogies. “What happens when you create a research environment in which structural engineers, nanoengineers, medical device researchers and visual artists, all working at different scales, come together?“ (Frieder Seible, former Dean of the Department of Engineering at UCSD) 3 day intensive workshop with different groups of teachers and students from all faculties. Students are required to attend for three days to receive 2 credit points Interested? =>> Apply by writing a short statement and email to by Dec. 4.
Experimental Drawing Studio arrived Monday, Dec. 9 in Weimar and were offered a Tour of the Buchenwald Memorial sight with Daniel Gaede, who focused the tour on Drawing & Buchenwald
Tuesday: Intro By Prof. Amy Adler from UCSD and Experimental Drawing Studio: The Experimental Drawing Studio provides open space for an intersection of disciplines that engage the practice of drawing in its expansive range of forms. Artists, engineers, architects, writers, designers, animators and media practitioners will have a clean and unencumbered space to specifically explore the role of drawing in their research. The studio will be used for exploratory drawing research and practice. This includes, for example, large scale or collaborative drawing projects, workshops and conferences on drawing, independent, collaborative and mentored projects between faculty and MFA and PhD Practice students and advanced undergraduates for the preparation for an exhibition, the scope of a proposed project, design and lay out of a graphic book, or focused research and teaching for an academic quarter.“ The Experimental Drawing Studio is directed by Prof. Amy Adler and students.
Wednesday: Prof. Liz Bachhuber and Nina Lundström The morning session is a series of warm-up exercises in perception that coordinate eye-to-hand movement and assist in seeing objects in their environment in a different way. What is seen will be translated first into line and and then into patterns of dark and light. These exercises lead up to collaborative and solo drawing experiments in changing locations in the public realm in the afternoon.
Thursday: Lisa Glauer (Public Art and New Artistic Strategies) and Helge Oder (Product Design) Overcoming boundaries and borders in order to practice drawing from a different future. Silhouettes of 9 young men, waving defiantly towards their suppoerters in the midst of a sea of German police uniforms, it was as if a new raft of the Medusa was trying to reach shore in the middle of Berlin. Even though the men, who were cut off completely with an extremely large police force for days,with no food, no water, no form of communication with the press and doctors, and, suffering real physical damage, eventually came down to be treated, this is a war of images and memory of images that reaches beyond the actual occurence. During their highly visible physical isolation, the idea was voiced in several places that there might be a way to communicate with them via air, and quick brainstorming sessions developed. None of the ideas for building a new Berlin Airlift could be realized before the men came down, but the impulse to overcome and to help effectively was there and needs to be made visible and developed. The case study will involve an intensive brainstorming session using as starting point this particular situation: How to quickly find ways to literally overcome borders suddenly changed, constructed, fortified - by air? Helicopter? Catapult? Balloon?
presenting sketches of ideas, exchanging thoughts
brainstorming, using maps, media reports, facebook, exchange of ideas
Reflections: The activists surrounding the stand-off and occupation by police did not manage to get through. The stand-off was also a battle of images - as no threat could be said to credibly emanate from 9 unarmed human beings on a roof. My purpose was to try to change the images of defeat that were burnt into our collective local memory through media -the defeat of activists working for the basic human freedom of mobility and the right to spontaneously provide care by increasingly unrestrained authorities. The images and imaginations were redrawing and re-interpreting the iconic image of hope that is the meaning of the narration of the original Berlin airlift.
This project aimed at imagining a different outcome, practicing thinking about practical ways to intuitively and creatively circumvent new and unjustified borders suddenly appearing in the middle of public space, enforced to curtail movement and habituate the public to an increasingly authoritarian form of government, ostensibly to protect its citizens. It seems important to try to imagine the how to of other outcomes since it looks like this form of repression will increasingly mark our experience of moving through public space in Europe and beyond.