Art School 2012 - stage 3

In October 2012 Five Years organised a  programme of talks / performances to coincide with the publication of (im)possible school book: as found. Appendix. 

These were the instructions for my piece:





Mapping the Im(possible): action and response
In the session I want to map participant’s (and others’) responses to the project, from the initial concept for pieces through the experience of being part of document and its subsequent use, to how the document was actually used and later responses. I want to ask people to come up with responses verbally but also with diagrams and illustrations

I want to do this by flip charts of similar, one A2 (larger?) sheet of paper for each of the following questions / discussion prompts (with responses written on each, under the heading):

· Your initial concept (for people who submitted for the booklet)(relationship to pedagogy, group work, context of presentation, aims, intentions etc)

· Your response to (Im)Possible School Book (for people who submitted) (invitation to present, new contexualisation of work, new understandings of work, thoughts about education/pedagogy/school etc)

· Responses to the use of the document in the Tate / as part of ‘Summer School’, regardless of whether you had experience of this or not (as part of the school, as located in the Tanks, as part of a wider network which in part makes up the ‘artworld’)

· Wider contexts (thoughts about learning /art teaching / art teaching in schools / universities / outside this context / school as event / role of museum / debate between participation and viewing in the context of the relationship between theory and that which is theorised / relationship between the theatrical and the sincere / relationship between an ‘objective’, ‘communicable’ knowledge and radical subjectivity).



Images from the performance/workshop:

Art School 2012 - Stage 2

I never found out if my proposal had been used during the summer school, as the event was closed to the public (for teachers and students).  This links to the flyer for the event, and there is also a text / book for the event.

We did make some worked examples independently of the event though, here's a selection of fictional art school characters:

Art School 2012 - Stage 1

This was a reworking of a project I first carried out sometime between 2008 and 2010 at the Wiebke Morgan gallery. It was in response to a call for submissions from Five Years gallery for their 'Tanks' Summer School project at the Tate ((Im)Possible School Book: As Found). All who submitted work were included in the project - a concept I very much liked, as I'm a dismal failure at submitting work and getting it accepted.


This is my original proposal:

Art school
Art school invites a group of participants to explore the theatricality of being at art school through creating a group of characters and a drama to tie them together. 

Materials
 Participants
Large sheets of paper / affixed to wall / on table
Coloured felt tip pens / other writing/drawing instruments
Instructions
Cards of Direction

Instructions
 Each large piece of paper represents one character in the drama ‘Art School’.  Each character needs to have the following characteristics defined by the group:

·    Name
·    Appearance
·    Overt personality
·    Hidden personality / motivations
·    Theoretical / artistic interests / encapsulation of work
·    Frequently occurring dramatic situations

There is one large sheet of paper per participant. The work is made in a number of stages, which divide into two meta-stages

Meta-stage One
1. First, everyone makes up a name for a character who might play a part in the art school drama. They write this at the top middle of the paper.

2. They pass the paper to the person on the left (or, if paper is attached to wall, the participants move to next piece of paper).    On this sheet, the participant draws the character (appearance) inspired by the name which has already been given. Drawings can be as sophisticated or crude as desired, but remember the next person needs to use them as a basis for character development, so some degree of representationality would be appreciated.  

3. Sheets are passed on again (or participants move to a new sheet).  The next task is to write down some words to capture the overt personality of the student / tutor / other participant drawn and named on the paper. 

4. The sheets pass to another participant. Next, the participant looks at the available information on the sheet (name, representation of the character, overt personality) and, on the basis of this, writes down elsewhere on the sheet the hidden personality and motivations of the character.

5.  The sheets are passed to the next participant. Again, taking into account everything that has been written or drawn so far, the participant writes down some notes about t the artistic work, theoretical interests and/or cultural position of that character.  Here, images as well as writing might be appropriate.

6. The sheets are passed again (or participants move to the next sheet).  Finally, participants look at the information on the sheet and develop 3 or 4 possible dramatic situations which would work cohesively for that character

Meta-stage Two
In this stage, the set of characters developed at stage 1 above are incorporated into a narrative / drama, authored jointly by all participants.  Three new, large, sheets of paper are pinned to wall (or placed where all can see them) and a rough plot / set of storylines mapped out.

Notes
·    Remember to leave space for further stages, but be bold in writing  / drawing
·    If there are few participants, you might end up, writing dramatic situations for someone you named. This isn’t a bad thing.


 This was a 'character map' I designed to help with the process of developing characters:

Name
Fiction Name
Appearance
Character
Life situation
Sayings / sentence structure
Plot possibilities
Other