Workshops 2012

The Performance Art Workshop T.a.T. takes place with max. 6 participants

Workshop begins Monday 04.06. 2012 at 9:30 am
Workshop ends Thursday 07.06. 2012 at 5 pm

Costs: € 200 per Person (4 days contact teaching)

Application 2 month prior date (UK with £ 20 deposit) via kunstwirkstoff.de
Pay full amount 21 days in advance, see date
Cancellation pay 50 % after 14 days prior start date

email your name and dates to: contact@kunstwirkstoff.de

Participants must have their own insurance - organiser kunstwirkstoff is not liable
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individual request for travel information

Accommodation at Hotel am Park
(www.hotel-cafeampark.de) 5 min walk to workshop location
Wolfenbüttelerstrasse 67
38102 Braunschweig
single room € 34 (shared shower) per night/per person, Breakfast Buffet € 5
for reservation email: info@hotel-cafeampark.de

or

Bed and Breakfast in private house
€ 10 per night/person
Braunschweig-Mascherode
20 min to workshop location using Bus and Tram

workshop location: Atelier Dagmar Glausnitzer-Smith
Wolfenbüttelerstrasse 39
38102 Braunschweig

Optional Trip to dOCUMENTA (13): opening on June 9, 2012
Day Ticket reduced € 14
Journey by car € 35 pp return, leaving at 8 am

kunstwirkstoff und T.a.T. Performance Art Workshops

T.a.T. means pure action

Each workshop is an introduction into the serious play: the relationship of body, space, object and time. Space becomes part of the idea of the world during live experience of action and observation. Creative life, and the process of making art and being the artist are seen as conjunctive and inseparable from every day life. The concept combines various ways of individual perception and states of awareness. It is an introduction to the shifting of personal perspective. Please bring an object, a written piece of text.

Is it possible to teach Performance Art?
If teaching allows for the potential of self-realisation and self-experience , then the answer is, yes.
If one's expectation is based on the idea of ' "how to be...?" then the answer is, no.

The objective of the workshop is to bring together all creative effort into one whole.
The workshop setting is an intimate, intense group situation where like-minded people strive to share, exchange and challenge their interests and concerns. Art arises of all methods, which can be instructed and suggested however methods are means of training to individually develop towards the transition to independent art. But furthermore a method can be defined and understood as personal procedure where its key activities are a series of authentic inventions within an individual, creative process. A personally approved method in one's working approach confirms the validity of the idea.

The self-development in a workshop arises from teaching methods, which are reflective at all times and mirror certain views and attitudes towards materials, objects and their relationships. The character of the workshop is combined:

• intuitive skills to differentiate presentation and representation
• avoidance of rigidity: priority of creativity, freedom of originality
• initiation of inventive strategies towards the image relation of body and object
• new research into the nature of exhibition and presentation and communication
• participation of ceremonial gatherings like open days or the transit station event which encourage networking, platform of exchange and cross fertilization, collaborations and relations between people of all creative activities
• the free and courageous confrontation with a public or audience situation whilst maintaining authentic intentions for the sake of the work
• engagement with experimental and practical sites such as explored during the 'Werktag' marathon performance art workshops in foreign cities (werktag)

The feeling of kinship with the elements of one field of art increases with the invention of relationships and connections. These relationships as part of a whole problem on a broader philosophical base become the search for synthesis in general.

The taught workshop T.a.T. for performance art is not the practice of extreme specializations of a singular art form or media or method. It is the body as object placed into a different context. This would separate the artistic endeavour and process and create a wall in front of the origins of idea creation, which has been explored during the workshop situation. It means training of fingertip sensitivity, understanding creative principles and nature's intrinsic kinship to Art. The most powerful dream of the artist is of no value if his or her fingertips are incapable of following the 'dictates' of this dream with utmost precision and concentration. This is made visible by passion, (a strike of energy.)

A clearly recognizable goal enables one to distinguish between concerns of fundamental visual relationships and concerns for their representation, only to reject the latter and move into 'objecthood'.

Joseph Beuys said once :" ...if things are not calling me, I will not go to them."

Content overview

¦ T.a.T. pure Action, preparation and identifying materials
¦ Moving with the object
¦ Mover and witness
¦ Towards authentic movement
¦ Language, image and text, understanding the paradoxical relationship
¦ Documentation and presentation
¦ In-situ, spaces and location understanding methodology

The body is the medium of creative fluids reaching the world. Each participant explores the body's independent notions and in close observation risks to disembark from known, conventional behavior patterns. The workshop opens possibilities for different interpretations and points of view. A so-called identity can be left behind.

The practical experience starts with identifying a moment in time and an action taking place in it. The artist /student learns to become 'Ambassador' between the world of materials, objects and the source of his/her own ideas, influences and interventions. Performance as art is not a medium or a style, it is a situation where the artist is aware of the material relationship of cause and effect but with the focus for a non-reflective 'self': ... it is a paradigm, the relationship between transformation and translation  (Boris Nieslony, 2002).

The ability to expand and to create images

The workshop's exercises concentrate on ways to experience a material expansion and mental expansion in relation to spaces or locations. The presence or absence of body and space already establishes a certain image to the viewer. It is the aim to gain full consciousness and observe how this image is being transmitted. Most familiar aspects of personality and understanding of 'self' can be observed and analyzed. Therefore the sense of 'self' can be objectified releasing spontaneity and unplanned action. The physical and mental body expands.

in-situ

The viewer of the Performance Art Action (free from theatrical implications) in the public field is fixated towards 'the reading' of an image and to make sense according to known conventional situations. However the created images of the artists reach towards the frontiers of familiar faculties and provoke different questions.

It is important to learn and to inquire how the action can take place. The meaning of locations and places have to be re-interpreted.

Some key words:
¦ space and limitations, unlimited approach
¦ Architecture and buildings
¦ Specific locations and their meaning, attributes
¦ Meeting, assembly, gathering
¦ Information
¦ Traces and found objects, found situations
¦ Depiction of the Action Location
¦ Gathering of objects and installation
¦ Position of the viewer
¦ Performance Art has nothing to do with street performance or theater

The objective is a sensitive fusion of individual, inner-images and awareness, which is being transpired through the action

This is the place for dialog.

© Dagmar I. Glausnitzer-Smith 2012, Germany