Following last weeks exciting meeting at Portway, I have been going through my ideas and trying to build them together to create lesson plans for the 5 weeks with the children. I know that until I meet the children and have a better understanding of them I won’t be able to finalise any of these plans but for now I have been working on a skeleton outline for these lessons. For example:
Cornell box: Show- Example of a box representing me, discuss the different elements. Ask the class what kind of things they would put in their box.
Follow up- Ask them to bring in their own images/ texts of things they love so they can create a cornell box in the class. Incase a student forgets to bring stuff, take notes of what the class discuss and bring in extra bits and bobs for them to work with- laptop and printer to access internet and print bits out?
Make- Help the students create their boxes, chat with them about why they have chosen specific things for their boxes, if possible record these conversations.
Discussion and collaboration: Show each other their boxes and discuss what links there are between the boxes, how they found the exercise and what they think of their boxes.
I have also been working on more of my own work, I finished editing all the interviews that I could and began experimenting with new ways of displaying it.
This is my most recent idea, looking at displaying 4 films on one screen or projection, depending on the quality of the image. With this method I could display the stories accompanying the films around the room, so the audience can look at the film and find the text around the room at their own pace. While the studio space downstairs is free I intend to experiment both projecting and having one on a television, spacing the text around the room at ‘random.’
The highlight of this week was having an associates meeting in Winchester, as having a residency at the studio’s also includes being part of Chapel Arts Associate Artists; many of whom I already know and it was great to meet up. We discussed upcoming projects, upcoming group exhibition opportunities and the discussing the idea of dissent. This was decided as a theme of discussion after finding out the converted chapel that the studios are in, was originally a chapel of dissent. It was suggested we have a think about what dissent means to us before the meeting, with Lydia (one of the associate artists) putting our a message ‘As artists, no matter how varied our practices, I think this applies to us as we all question and challenge the norms.’ This is what I focused my idea of dissent on. In my work I try to give people a place to voice their opinions, thoughts or feelings without being judged in the process. I want to give people a place to talk about what they want to talk about, to say that x,y or z is still upsetting them, or x,y or z is making them really happy either way. I’m not sure if this is really a dissident act, but I try to question the norms of what we should be talking about. Everyone had something different to say about dissent, not just about politics, we had a very interesting discussion about experiences as well as artworks.
