BIP program in Mainz, Germany
May 20–24, 2024
As part of an ongoing Erasmus+ Blended Intensive Program (BIP) initiated by the Studio ART and INTERVENTION/Concept (PCAP)/IBK and supported by the International Office of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, a fourth encounter will take place from May 20–24, 2024. This time BIP is in Mainz, Germany, conceived by the Kunsthochschule Mainz by professors Shannon Bool and Tamara Grcic.
The fourth BIP program in Mainz, entitled PRACTICE CHAOS, is a collaboration between students and professors from 3 academies: the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna with the students of the Studio ART and INTERVENTION/Concept (PCAP)/IBK with prof. Marina Grzinic and researcher Jovita Pristovšek; the Kunsthochschule Mainz students with the profs. Shannon Bool and Tamara Grcic; and the Marseille Academy of Fine Arts students with prof. Frederic Pradeau.
BIP is based on the idea that participants conduct specific research with virtual components, exchange, travel and meet in the respective EU countries where the partner institutions are located.
Kunsthochschule Mainz proposed the title of the encounter: Practice Chaos. Students will intermix in new configurations to approach parallels and synergies in an exhibition context. Students from 3 academies and with different dimensions of artistic production (material practice, film, activism, performance) are to explore modes of display in a group exhibition setting. This process will be guided and developed through workshops by Rodney LaTourelle and Louise Witthoff, engaged by Kunsthochschule Mainz.
Program
Exhibition Creation – Practice Chaos; crash course in collaborative exhibition making – display as agency
With Special Guests Witthöft & Latourelle
Featuring students from the Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien with Prof. Marina Gržinić and doc. Jovita Pristovšek, students from Les Beaux-Arts de Marseille with Prof. Frederic Pradeau, Students from the Kunsthochschule Mainz with Prof. Tamara Grcic and Prof. Shannon Bool
Introduction to exhibition making: empowering students to actively shape the display and presentation of their work under conditions of experimentation and spontaneous collaboration. The collaboration aims to situate students in uncharted territories of overlaps and exchanges to reveal new cultural, political, and formal contexts through a greater whole. This involves recognizing the various possibilities and potentials for showcasing artwork within a spatial and contextual framework; considering the visitor’s experience; understanding how an artwork relates to other works within an exhibition setting; and fostering collaborative agency and creativity.
Schedule of online meetings
Online Meeting 1: STUDENTS ONLY with Witthöft & Latourelle: Date: 09.04. / 11:00: Introduction Practice Chaos – Exhibition-making
Short introduction of Witthöft & Latourelle’s work and approach to exhibition-making.
• Introduction to the process of this exhibition – Practice Chaos
• Inspiration: showing examples of contemporary exhibition design – display as agency
Online Meeting 2: STUDENTS ONLY with Witthöft & Latourelle Date: 29.04. / 11:00: Assignment of Groups, Space Allocation; followed by individual meetings with groups.
• Assign students into groups; assign rooms for their exhibitions.
• Individual meetings with each group:
• Each student briefly presents and discusses their practice and ideas for exhibiting their work. Group discussion on practice; exchange and the potential of group member inter-action and artwork dialogue.
Online Meeting Team and Visiting Staff and Profs (without Students) 29.04. / 10:00-10:45: Update of schedule, description of activities.
Program in Mainz
Practice Chaos Workshop: Dates: May 20-22: Collaborative Installation of Student Works (more detailed schedule will follow)
• 20.05. / 18:00 Arrival in Mainz – Dinner (all meals catered by Chenchanna/Schlöder) and casual introduction at Kunsthochschule.
• 21.05. / 9:30-17:00 Practice Chaos Workshop DAY 1: Installing/overlapping/reconceiving artwork in assigned rooms according to group decisions. Ensure proper setup and arrangement of artwork. Discussions and exchange. Delicious lunch served at 14:00 in Kunsthochschule.
• 21.05. / 18:00 Public Lecture Witthöft & Latourelle (Artist Talk): Kunsthochschule Mainz Aula:
• 22.05. / 10:30-17:00 Practice Chaos Workshop DAY 2: Finish installation
• 22.05. / 18:30-21:00 Public Opening of Practice Chaos Exhibition, including introductions, performances, spontaneous actions…
• 23.05. / 10:00-17:00 Exploring Mainz (Program T.B.A)
• 23.05. / 18:00 Public Screening in Aula of “Insurgent Flows. Trans*Decolonial and Black Marxist Futures (2023) 90 mins. By Marina Gržinić, Tjaša Kancler, Jovita Pristovšek
• 23.05. / 20:00 Open end, final party, BBQ diner, Karaoke, DJs, spontaneous actions
• 24.05: 10:00-13:00 Deinstall exhibition, final breakfast, farewell ceremony.
A short historiat of our BIP encounters:
In the first phase of this project (June – September 2022), students from three institutions participated: Studio PCAP, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna; Multidimensional Strategies class, Department of Fine Arts, University of Kassel; and students from the Department of Visual Arts and Design – Section for Arts and Visual Culture, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Barcelona. The program entitled “Artistic Correspondence. Documenta 15, ‘in situ’” was based on virtual meetings and a week-long workshop around the visit to the international exhibition documenta fifteen. Through the exchange and use of digital platforms, documenta fifteen tours, conferences and collaborative work, the specific methodologies related to critical and situated artistic practices were shared and the forms in which new transformative artistic proposals are configured in the current political and cultural context were analyzed.
The second phase of the project (October 2022 – January 2023) was taking place through online work and meeting in Vienna – BIP VISITS PCAP: THE 2023 TOUR (January 16–20, 2023), organized by the Studio PCAP at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and held during the open door of the academy, Rundgang 2023 (January 19–22, 2023). It had a title “Contemporary Art at the Crossroads of the Social and the Political.” We organized a joint exhibition and a rich program. We were joined by the students from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Mainz and students from the Department of Visual Arts and Design – Section for Arts and Visual Culture, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Barcelona. Students worked together intensively, exchanging ideas, building a community, inventing new forms of collaboration and expanding horizons. In addition through lectures by invited important positions of contemporary art, representatives of the Austrian activist scene, and by visiting main cultural and independent research centers in Vienna.
In the third phase of the BIP project (February – June 2023), our host was the Department of Visual Arts and Design – Section for Arts and Visual Culture, Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Barcelona. BIP meeting was titled “Intersections: Art, Institutions, Autonomous Spaces and Activism,” and tackled the relationships between autonomous and institutional spaces in contemporary art. The general idea was to find new transdisciplinary ways to make art and think culture against discrimination through a diversity of positions, and to locate the points of tension, conflict, contradiction and transformative potentialities in the articulation of micropolitical collective artistic practices. In contrast to the systemic tendencies of individualization, isolation and fragmentation, during the week-long program we visited numerous collectives and engaged in debates, sharing different experiences, artistic and activist practices from which the possibility of collective un/learning emerges, which also implies thinking beyond academic conventions and the dominant art system.
