Aesthetic Transformation & Sources of Inspiration

This seminar allows for immersing into an interdisciplinary process of aesthetic transformation, with the Berlin city space as a starting point. The main focus lies on the idea-generating process: How do we find ideas and how is inspiration passed on to another discipline or another artist?

The methodology of Aesthetic Transformation is based on the fundamental idea that every creative work operates in a system of relationships to other fields and to what has been created before.  

The course is aimed at artists, designers, architects, and people who work in the creative sector and who would like to experiment within an interdisciplinary framework. The participants will use a transformative strategy to generate ideas and critically explore contemporary art practices through group conversations and readings. Furthermore, we will initiate a transformation process in which participants from various disciplines will find their inspiration and create new works based on it. This will include the application of chance operations and improvisational strategies in order to accelerate the creative process.

A transformation process needs a starting point which will be determined together with all participants (e.g. choosing a location in the city of Berlin). Sound, performance, dance, sculpture, visual or conceptual artists, designers or architects will produce artworks as their first response to the chosen topic. Participants will develop sequential works that act upon multiple interpretative statements. Individual works will connect to those of others and thus a collective and multi-perspective investigation of the chosen topic will unfold.

Participants will be encouraged to focus on the hidden aspects of inspiration and influence by posing the following questions at the end of the course: What was referred to or emphasized on in the transformation process?   Where does an idea pull itself through? What was dropped? And looking back at their own work: What impact did it have? 

SCHEDULE

Day 1

Morning:

• Introduction: Lecturers and Seminar participants
• Lecture Hufschmid/Schild: From Inkling to the First Idea – How to Start an Aesthetic Transformation Process
• Group work. Shaping the transformation process: jointly determining the process set-up and framework

Afternoon:

• Field trip: Visiting places in Berlin City
• Exercise: Generating the first inkling
• Interspace 1: Reflection of inklings, conversation
• Dialogical response and Aesthetic Transformation, Step 1

Day 2

Morning:

• Interspace 2: Review and exchange of works
• Lecture Hufschmid: Limiting Factors in Creative Processes
• Group work: Determining limiting factors for Transformation step 2
• Dialogical response and Aesthetic Transformation, Step 2

Afternoon:

• Interspace 3: Conversation and reflection
• Discussion of works: What are the connecting points? Which elements in the predecessor’s work triggered a new idea?
• Lecture: Introduction in Aesthetic Transformation theory based on Kathrin Busch’s text: Grafting, contaminating, parasitizing. On the aesthetics of transformation and Ursula Brandstätter: Transformations between the Arts: An Attempt at Systematization.

Day 3

Morning:

• Interspace 4: Review and exchange of works
• “Blind” transfer of works
• Lecture M. Schild: On Chance Operations & Improvisation
• Discussion

Afternoon:

• Lecture: Douglas Hofstadter: Surfaces and Essences – On Thinking in Analogies.
• Discussion based on the given input: What is inspiration?
• Dialogical response and Aesthetic Transformation, Step 3
• Exercise: Working with time constraints to enhance the creative process
• Interspace 5: Conversation and Reflection

 
Day 4:

• Interspace 6: Review the responses and exchange of works
• Lecture M. Schild: Collective authorship + Exercise
• Dialogical response and Aesthetic Transformation, Step 4
• Conversation and Reflection

Day 5:

• Interspace 7: Review the responses and exchange of works
• Review of Transformation Process and ‘Fabric’ of artworks
• Interspace 8: Conversation and Reflection
• Closing contributions

Syllabus may be subject to change.

Elvira Hufschmid is a multi-media artist, curator, and author in the field of processes of aesthetic transformation and temporary art spaces. She collaborates with Dr. Margit Schild as a fellow/affiliated researcher at the Berlin Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts & Sciences (BAS) at the Berlin University of the Arts, with the research project Leaning Out of Windows – Art & Physics Collaborations through Aesthetic Transformations. Associated to Emily Carr University in Vancouver, Canada, the project brings international scholars and researchers from major particle physics laboratories (TRIUMF Vancouver, Fermilab Chicago) into a conversation with an international team of contemporary artists in order to explore how knowledge can be translated across (disciplinary) communities. Elvira received her MA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute, US, and is currently a first-year Ph.D. candidate in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University, Canada.

elvira-hufschmid.de
leaningoutofwindows.org

 

Dr.-Ing. Margit Schild is a filmmaker, artist, and curator. She received a doctorate at the University of Hanover and studied Landscape and Open Space Planning, and worked as a lecturer and guest professor at various universities, including the Berlin University of the Arts and Emily Carr University in Vancouver, Canada. She collaborates with Elvira Hufschmid as a fellow/affiliated researcher at the Berlin Centre for Advanced Studies in Arts & Sciences (BAS) at the Berlin University of the Arts, with the research project Leaning Out of Windows – Art & Physics Collaborations through aesthetic transformations. In 2015, she directed her first documentary film Drifting on flight and migration. The documentary Orten is her first full-length film. In addition to her work as a director, she is a co-founder of the School of the Provisional. In Autumn 2020, Margit was curating a symposium on Improvisation at the HKW House of World Cultures. She lives and works in Berlin as well as in Canada.

leaningoutofwindows.org
less-art.de