“There was one task I gave them - everybody has to draw a life size figure,” said Till Megerle about his class of figurative drawing. Admitting that seeing his students work on the large sheets of paper inspires him a lot, we are yet to see if Till will explore a different scale in his own work. For now, we settle on the minute and busy.

The first Summer Academy teaching experience brought new perspectives in the life of Till Megerle. “I’m very excited,” he said, adding that working with other creatives makes him happy, albeit feeling exhausted after each long day. Circulating around the room in constant conversation with the course takers, he encourages unexpected discussions and lively exchange of opinions, approaching those who prefer solitude with tact. The group is diverse, including artists ages from 17 to almost 80! In such a heterogeneous environment, it’s challenging to maintain order and workflow, but Till and his co-teacher Michael Franz manage. Without wanting to impose his personal artistic ideas onto the group, Till brought a stack of books to share. “I show them if anything is interesting in drawing and I do show them a lot of artistic positions in drawing. For example, I brought over 30 catalogs and they’re always circulating around the class.”

There were two major exercises the teachers organized. One involved a very classical life drawing indoors, and the other a study field trip to a public bath. “A lot of my friends told me that the life drawing is very conservative. But I kind of stick to it - not because it’s conservative but because you learn about the human figure and how to play with the human figure if you know just how the human body is constructed. You need to know this if you want to draw a human by heart.” Then, “going to the public bath was not meant to be the exercise, but an inspiration,” he added. With about two-thirds of the class participating, “Mike went, I stayed. They were enjoying it and they got inspired by it very much. I mean there’s this constellation of people and they interact with each other and there are contemporary surroundings with Freizeitarchitektur, all these contemporary items, beards, tattoos, Lagnese ice creams, all in mixture with half-dressed bodies - that’s what’s interesting.”

Talking about the concept of the class, Till said that “it refers to high and low notions of art. For example, life drawing may be in the realm of high art. But my class and I are very interested in the low, such as comics and caricature. I want to offer them a whole palette of possibilities of drawing, there is no distinction between the high and the low anymore.”

On their Open Day on Friday, Till’s and Michael’s class will prepare a fanzine with each one of them providing works for it. “It’s gonna be very funny. There are 20 different people and each of them has done a figurative drawing in a sense. I’m just there to give them a different perspective on things.”

Scroll down for a few images of works in progress. 

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Tonight I will be listening to Michael Beutler and Marc Monzo talks, but tomorrow there is something very special in store. All I can say is - public art.

Stay tuned!

Ana

Secluded in his studios, he would look hundreds, even thousands of image a day in search of that one visual idea he synthesizes and transfers onto the canvas. Curious about how his teaching approach complements his practice, I met with Bernhard Martin on Friday outside of the office for a conversation. Straight away, he gave an impression of a candid, talkative person, happy to share his view with the chronicler. His sporty attire and unusual bling make him stand out in the crowd, in a similar way the chromatic extravaganza of his paintings distinguishes his art. Eager to hear his thoughts, I inquired about the class.

Teaching a relatively large class of 22 people, Bernhard Martin sees himself as a “moderator”. He is there to guide the students on their way of breaking a creative block. “Basically, they are all here because they feel stuck in their current position. So, I try to break it down a bit and show that it’s not necessary to think in verticals or horizontals,” the artist said, adding that he would like to help them leave their zones of comfort for the two weeks that they are there. Working with the students as a group, he also dedicates time to each of them, continuously circling the room. His aim is “to show them that it’s possible to think about visions and life in a completely different way. I tell [the students] to use this time to do something different to that what they are always doing.”

After the first week, Martin’s impression was that the learners are very open, already striving to introduce changes, however small, to their work. Without trying to influence their personal outlooks, he makes an effort to inspire them and animate them to actually break the proverbial mold and enter a new sphere of perception. “It’s about mechanisms, it’s about views, it’s about technical issues, it’s about topics. How to get away from these topics and to step into others,” he said, adding that there will be a public art exercise.

The class is scheduled to paint a billboard, working on a collaborative collage-graffiti image, following only some basic formal rules. The goal of this endeavor is to “play with the shame and blame and to stay in the public,” regardless of weather or other circumstances. For some of Martin’s students, this may be the ultimate step away from their comfort zone. This joint venture will produce a piece in the end, but as he said: “The result is less important than the act itself.”

In the end, I was curious about his own experience with the class and my interviewee admitted that he does take from it. “I get stuck in my procedures too,” he said, defining the teaching as a “giving and taking situation.” Offering the students a platform to experiment, he continues to push them towards their extremes, occasionally seeing the problems he finds in his own work. “It’s pleasure, finally,” he concluded, as we separated on the way back to our daily tasks.

Last week, I hinted that this question has been bothering me for a while. The word “blog” is celebrating its 20th birthday this year and it’s safe to say the Internet has changed a lot over the past two decades. Having started as a personal web log, the blog quickly branched out into a plethora of different versions, from intimate digital diaries to a great variety of online magazines. Naturally, the word itself has gained a much wider meaning over time, encompassing micro-blogging, reporting and different kinds of social media activities.

This is my third week at the Summer Academy in the role of the Blogger in Residence. Ever since the beginning, I have repeatedly asked myself this very question - what does my title here mean and what does it imply? Through different conversations and disclosures, I’ve learned that people have a very different view on what a blog or blogger is. I myself have not formed a definitive opinion yet because blogging can be anything the blogger wants it to be. It can be personal or objective, critical or eulogistic overview of an event or a series of similar events, it can be a way to tell a story or even write a novel. Largely dictated by the subject, blogging is a broad concept and in search for some more clarity I’ve sat down with Sabrina Steinek of http://keenonmag.com/ and shared a few thoughts.

“Being a blogger means to be free and independent.  A blogger follows his or her passion and is passionate about writing and communicating. It means directing the attention of the public. And that is exciting, but sometimes also very challenging.

Most people think that blogging is just fun, and not a serious job.  And it’s true that blogging is a lot of fun. But if you decide to be a professional blogger and to live from it, then it is a really demanding job.” Thinking about my tricky question, Sabrina continued: “I keep asking myself if I am a blogger. And probably the correct answer is that - I am not a blogger. Maybe not anymore. I started my first blog during my studies at the University of Vienna, and I was blogging together with other editors for many years. But in summer of 2016, I stopped blogging and founded my online magazine „keen on“, cause I think it is time for a new type of arts journalism on the internet. Current online sites and blogs only use a small fraction of the opportunities the internet has to offer.”

With each issue of her magazine, Sabrina collaborates with a team of designers and artists in order to enable the reader to get the complete visual and artistic experience. And I remember first seeing keen on online, I was surprised and thrilled in a way because it does push the limits of online publishing.

***

Today is the Open Day for the classes of Melissa Gordon and Lukas Pusch, and the blogging class has come to an end as well. Stay tuned for more Academy talks soon!

;)

Ana

On a slow Thursday, I would like to share highlights from the conversation with Grace Samboh, the co-teacher of the last week’s curatorial course. We sat down for a cup of coffee on Saturday and chatted about her experience at the Summer Academy.

Right from the first moment, I was interested in Grace’s story. Her practice is based in her native Indonesia both physically and conceptually, however, she engages in international exchange and teaching whenever there is an opportunity and there is a sense in it. In 2015, she collaborated with Ruth Noack for the first time, teaching a Roaming Academy class of the Dutch Art Institute. This year, she came to Salzburg to provide knowledge and support to the curating class.

Her two-week experience was an intensive one, working with a rather diverse group of people, some of which did not have any curatorial experience. “I actually really liked the class,” she said, adding that five out of thirteen students were artists, in fact. “We also tried to see it not as a problem, because the whole idea was to think with artworks or through artworks, which we eventually did.”

Without any firm plans, in the beginning, Grace and Ruth developed the course embedding a trip to Vienna into it. The class was divided into groups and one of the challenges that presented itself was the collaborative work. “I don’t think it’s common in western context for people to not be allowed to be individual - you’re just expected to function in a certain way together,” Grace said and added that the trip, which was designed to be the individual research time, ended up being a group activity after all.

The Open Days presentation of the class was the presentation of the invented “Collection” the students gathered and presented in the “storage” - the classroom equipped with old, wooden lockers - giving short tours to the interested visitors through the display. As the crown of their joint effort, in which the students decided on the structure, works, and modes of display. And while a good portion of time went on different negotiations, the storage idea came up quickly. “I was seriously impressed, that was like 1.5-hour conversation and they have come up with a structure. And everyone agreed - not bad!” Comparing the experience of teaching here and in Indonesia, Grace said that the two were “very different.” While here she had more freedom in making decisions, back home she was performing within a pre-made structure, filling a predefined position, trying to make the most of it.

While she talked, Grace often referred to the dynamics, the emotional state of the class and students, mentioning moments of frustration as well as moments of collective joy. This is when I came to understand her words “Curating is working with people, so it is about talking and it is about managing relationships.” And, indeed, this intangible, intellectual effort in learning and gaining insights is what was the purpose of the curating class after which many experiences and several friendships emerged.

“I first thought of Charles Baudelaire and his words saying he found the words of his poems in the streets of Paris. It’s a beautiful thought,” said Tony Chakar answering my question about his course. In the third day of his multi-disciplinary class, the majority of the students are already out, wandering through the city, aiming for nothing in particular, but rather absorbing the local atmosphere and life.

Two years ago, Tony Chakar held a lecture in Salzburg and this is his first time teaching a course at the Summer Academy. As an architect, writer, and contemporary flâneur, he spends his days exploring the urban environment wandering through city streets, learning about what is not immediately visible. The link to his website shows that Tony acts as an artistic tour guide in Beirut, aside from his professorial activities.

“On seeking incuriously” is the name of his Summer Academy course. “It’s a word,” he said after my asking what it meant. It means that a person can walk through the streets without being curious, without looking for something, but just to wander around with the aim being the walk itself.

I can only imagine how different Beirut is from Salzburg and Tony admitted his experience is only one of a tourist. “But when you go out of the center a little bit, not everything is so neat, people live there their normal lives. It’s a city, yes, although small.” Thinking about these words and about the Seeing tour I attended two days ago, I must admit that Salzburg does have the “real” side to it, filled with new construction sites, ordinary houses and different inhabitants.

In the moment of our conversation, the classroom was empty. Tony has sent out his students to explore the town. Later, they will talk about their views and experiences, hoping to gather ideas and eventually, present works towards the end of the class.

For now, the teacher and the students have set some basic grounds. A very diverse class includes seventeen people of different ages and experiences, some of which are not artists. They are divided into collaborative groups, encouraged to work together and learn from sharing ideas. It is still much too early to predict what we will see during the Open Days, but I am curious about the results of this joint effort. Next week, the class will gain a new teacher,  Marwa Arsanios, who will follow this process till the end.

Tonight, we will have the chance to view “one of the best horror films from Canada”, Pontypool, a different take on a zombie story. Tony Chakar’s interest in zombies comes from him seeing the undead walkers as a metaphor of consumerist society. The choice is also a subtle nod to the recently deceased filmmaker George A. Romero, the author of cult films Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, both of which are cleverly infused with critical elements directed toward modern American (capitalist) society. “I believe that zombieism spreads through language,” he added. As a horror fan, I am beyond curious to see what he meant. It might inspire me to do a zombie story of my own.

So, till later! Braaaains!

Ana