Friday 22nd January 2021
The Transdiscipinary studio with Alex Coles
Todays session for the creative studio module was delivered by Alex Coles who wrote 'Studio Olafur Eliasson'. Our task for the start of the week was to read and annotate the passage given to us by the Roddy on Brightspace, then after Alex gave his lecture on the passage we split into small groups for review sessions. I was put with a group of the students and Alex himself for the next hour session, we started by speaking about the lecture Alec had just given to the course and if we had any questions he was able to answer these for us. This specific text was good to read, easy to understand and annotate for myself. We then looked and spoke about some key moments in the text, looking at words and phrases that jumped out to students, one section where in the text it explains that Eliasson takes up studio spaces that are dissed or uncontempory studio spaces and how he has transformed these spaces for collaborative and practical work within art and design. Looking at how the buildings can hold and showcase exhibitions around the world for upcoming and published artists was great to hear along with the huge collaborative aspect of the studio, the whole organisation if you will is based on collaborative work with different artists and Olafur Eliasson with a sense of never working alone in the studio. This also brings a different argument to the table however, if the work created in the studio space is all collaborative and under Olafur Eliasson who can take single credit for the artwork? When asked by a student for artists that relate to the text, Alex mentioned James Clifford, 'Routes' and Paul Rabinow and his text 'Reflections of field work in Morocco' and their links to Ethnography, Alex gave a brief explanation of these texts and how he sees them relating to his text. After our discussion of the texts and the related artists research, he then wanted us to share our ideas and project plans with the group, one by one we spoke about our final project ideas and Alex was able to listen and give any advice on artist research or directions in which we could take the project to improve or expand upon.
After a short break we all got back together in a teams meeting to wrap up the session and it was a chance to ask Alex any final questions from today's session. But we started with the lectures, Roddy and Rowan stating what their groups got up to in the previous session, talking about how the Barbara Hepworth University building was a mirror image of the Studio by Olafur Eliasson. They had the same conversation as our group looking at the collaborative stages of the text and how working together builds artwork. Discussing the way in which the studio is a network for creative practitioners and that if we wish we can start to connect with other students from different backgrounds to create collaborative artwork. Roddy then moved on to explain that this module is built up in three sections; Key Concepts - Workflow Labs - Critical Processes - and these are the way in which the modules weekly lectures will pan out, having lectures on key ideas and artists, then being able to participate in physical creations over teams meeting with Ryan and Stephen (technicians) and finally looking at critical processes and three crit group sessions over the 13 week course. Finally, the session started to come to an end and the final notes that Roddy spoke about were to keep note making during these Friday sessions and start the process of our blog writing.
University of Huddersfield. (2021,01,22) Week 1: Key Concepts - The Transdiciplinary Studio. Brightspace . https://brightspace.hud.ac.uk/d2l/le/content/134131/Home
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