Martin Herbert: The ability to render complex ideas in clear and comprehensible language, not hiding behind jargon Relatedly: readability. The ability to describe evocatively – to give a sense of what it was like to be in front of the work, and to think it through. Again relatedly: the capacity to see what is in front of you, not just what the press release says, and to put it into some kind of context. 

[Course of Jennifer Allen, 2014 Summer Academy, photo: Pia Streicher] 

S: What represents a good, let’s say, art review for you?

M: Aside from the above, I think there should be a balance of description and analysis. Writers, particularly nowadays, often tend to think that just describing is enough. This leads to very cautious criticism. Ideally the writing should also have some style; style, how you say something, can be as communicative as direct argument. 

[Martin Herbert: Tell Them I Said No, Sternberg Press, New York 2016] 

S: What are you going to teach your students?

M: How different aspects of art writing work, and how they differ: the review, the feature, the catalogue essay, the interview, the press text. We’re going to move from looking at art to writing about it, to consider the structures underlying each kind of critical writing (and how writers have moved experimentally beyond them). I’d also like to propose that writing about things is a way of understanding what we think, and how we think, that enriches the experience of looking at art.

Aisha Khalid: It's a water based medium and usually we use natural pigments ... there are on the one hand several things involved in this technique like paper making, brush making, colour mixing etc. and on the other hand the whole way of looking at things in miniature painting is different.

Actually it's a traditional technique and very near to my nature of working. This is not just technique but the whole way of working in which we sit on the floor and mainly do everything in that position. It is a very meditative process of painting where one can spend hours on one surface as it is very calming and peaceful. I love this process and I get everything from the process.

I am a traditionally trained miniature painter and with this background I am working as an independent artist for the last 25 years. The wish to thread the thin line between the demands of the discipline and to break away from conventionalities of the discipline has been the focus of my initial work.

[Photo: At if Saeed and Kamran Saleem]

S: What is your contemporary approach to this traditional technique?

A: I believe tradition is not a static form it's something which evolves with the time. I take this technique and and have been evolving it from small scale paintings and books and albums to a large scale works and from two dimensional to three dimensional sculptures to four dimensional site-specific installations in architectural spaces in different countries.  So I don't see any limitation in this technique just because it's coming from a traditional background.

Now I am more engaged with the forms and its relationship with mechanical/geometrical patterns, division and transformation of space within a multilayered approach. I am more playing with form and space and it’s more personalised as well as political.

I wanted to share my own artistic, practice and experiences with this technique where I am doing contemporary paintings on traditional surface and medium, but the size of these paintings is no more miniature they are 4x8 feet large scale with the same minute details. I am also working with the same medium on site-specific installations, where I am dealing with architectural space. Also the city scape of Kabul became part of my work (done with same technique of miniature painting), there this two dimensional technique became interactive, and the audience saw themselves in the mirror with painted images of vortex which became a wound on their own bodies.

S: What is the special thing about the Salzburg Summer Academy for you? What do you like about it?

A: I like the idea of the Summer Academy, especially I like that students and teachers are from diverse backgrounds and from different countries, it is a quite international place so students can get exposure. I think the duration of courses and the time when it happened is a great opportunity for those who can not afford to spend more time outside there homes or studios.

I also like the idea of having this academy in an old fortress. This city has so many beautiful museums and galleries and historical references, the richness of the culture of this city fascinates me. 

Deadline: May 15, 2018

The Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts is planning the conference

Global Academy II, Examples of Transcultural Exchange

August 11–12, 2018

Concept: Hildegund Amanshauser, Kimberly Bradley

For the past several years, the Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts has hosted the Global Academy project – a series of conferences and exchanges that focus on questions of learning and teaching art in a global context.

The 2016 conference addressed alternative academies in the Global South; the meetings in 2018 will present various models of transcultural artistic exchange and ask the following questions: How does (or could) transcultural exchange occur beyond the current binary categories of colonial-postcolonial or north-south, never forgetting our colonial pasts and the current situations that frame this kind of exchange? What projects exist and how do they work? How do artists, curators, and institutions address transcultural issues? Which methods do they use to root themselves in various regions of the world and make themselves understood?

Open Call Pecha Kucha

We are looking for artists, curators, activists and other cultural workers who have developed new, innovative projects in the field of transcultural exchange – either already realized or still in the conceptual stage – with a special focus on projects rooted in the Global South. We would like you to talk about the concept, objective, people involved, audiences you want to reach, financing, and challenges.

Who can apply?

Anyone whose work deals with the subject matter of the conference (see conference description and lineup below). Artists, curators, cultural workers, writers, teachers, researchers, activists, or students who wants to present a specific project in the Pecha Kucha format are welcome to apply.

What is Pecha Kucha? 

Pecha Kucha 20 x 20 is a simple presentation format where the speaker shows 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images advance automatically and the speaker explains them as they appear.

What do you get?

Travel costs (flight, train, bus, public transport); hotel (max. three nights); plus an expense allowance of 25 euros per day.

Application documents: CV, and a short description of the project you would like to present (no more than 300 words, and please note a website, if you have one).

Please state your point of departure and mode of travel (flight, train, etc.).

Application deadline May 15, 2018 Submit your written applications to office@summeracademy.at

A jury will select the participants.

Further details: office@summeracademy.at, www.summeracademy.at

tel. +43 662 842 113

[Global Academy conference 2016, photo: Mira Turba]
                                                                                                                 
Schedule for participants

Saturday, August 11, 2018

Keynote lecture: Shuddhabrata Sengupta

Panel 1

Negotiation: Which models allow new modes of transcultural artistic exchange?

Alexander Koch; gallerist/New Patrons, Europe

Charles Esche; director Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, NL

Marina Fokidis; writer, editor, curator, South magazine, Kunsthalle Athina

Clementine Deliss; curator, researcher, publisher

Panel 2

Beyond the binary: What (could) come(s) after North/South, colonial/postcolonial, Eurocentric/“global”?
Bouchra Khalili, artist

Will Furtado, contemporary & deputy editor

Natasha Ginwala; curator, researcher, and writer

Paul Feigelfeld; artist, media theorist (to be confirmed)

18:30 Pecha Kucha, four presentations, open call

Sunday, August 12

Panel 3

(Re)writing (art) history now: who does it, how, and where?

Diana Campbell Betancourt; curator, art historian, Dhaka Art Summit, Samdani Art Foundation

Stephanie Bailey; Ibraaz senior editor, Ocula editor-at-large, art critic and theorist

Ahlam Shibli, artist

Eva Barois De Caevel; independent curator, curator at RAW Material Company + coordinator of the RAW Academy (Senegal).

Pecha Kucha,  four presentations, open call

Panel 4

Where do we go from here?

Tony Chakar, artist

Marina Fokidis, writer, editor, curator, South magazine, Kunsthalle Athina

Emeka Okereke, artist (to be confirmed)

Sabine B Vogel (art critic)

Observers: Cristina Bogdan, art critic and editor, Martin Herbert, art critic and editor

Moderators: Hildegund Amanshauser, Cristina Bogdan, Kimberly Bradley, Martin Herbert

Yorgos Sapountzis: I worked in the theater for years. From the age of 20 to 25 I was a stage designer and assistant direc­ttor for a theater group in Athens.  Even today I’m fascinated by that moment of self­abandonment that’s always there when some­ one exposes themselves before an audience and starts playing a role. This moment is so important because it’s precisely this we need to learn: the ability to feel through and with others. This is why, as far as my own work is concerned, I only call those works performances where I have an audience. And because this special element of feeling through others can only take place given human presence, I hardly ever turn such performances into video works after the event.



[Yorgos Sapountzis, Performance]

There’s one idea underlying all of my performances: “Here I am! I’m here for you now!” Time plays a role, the audience’s gaze, and their empathy with me, the performer. You can’t translate that into videos. Each time I have to overcome my fear of presenting myself to people again. 
 

So there I stand with my materials, and with their aid I try to construct a story or an experience. Basically, everything that I do as an artist is born of this element of performance. Experiences during a performance are so strong that they often eclipse everything else in my memory. My memories of my performances point the way to my other works. 

[Yorgos Sapountzis, Performance, The Kitchen, NY, 2014]
 

Summeracademy: Why drawing? (And why figurative drawing?)
 

Till Megerle: You can basically start drawing right away, not much preparation needed.This accessibility of drawing is a nice thing, it's easier to overcome doubt and hesitation. You don't have to change your clothes, material is cheap and your pictures don't take up much space (which doesn't mean that they can't be strong statements). Figurative drawing offers the possibility to include the visible world into ones's pictures. Thus it is a nice tool to reflect upon your surroundings and deal with your interests. (There's nothing wrong with non-figurative drawing.)

[Till Megerle, Untitled, 2016, ink on paper, courtesy of the artist and Christian Andersen, Copenhagen]
 

S: Where does your inspiration come from?

T: Inspiration comes from life to rap culture.

[Class of Till Megerle, 2017, photo: Mira Turba]
 

S: What do you like about the Summer Academy?

T: At the Summer Academy you can find  exchange with people who are seriously and deeply interested in art. I like to think, talk and work together with them.

Andreas Lolis: The relation between me and my material is a little bit strange. I think that the material chose me. This relation is a very good conversation in which I try to understand what is inside of the material and to see what it is for me, how we can go on respecting each other. I think it’s not without reason that the first drawing I did was on a marble surface.

 

[Andreas Lolis, Small home, 2017, courtesy of the artist and The Breeder]

S: What is the special thing about that material?

A: The most important thing for me working with this material is the soul. How I manage to figure it out and to work with that. In this way I find the solution to do something now with this given material continues to the Greek ancient sculpture. 


[Class of Andreas Lolis, 2017, photo: Mira Turba]

S: What do you like about the Summer Academy?

A: The fact that I’m coming for the third time means a lot to me. Giving the knowledge in a very good level to the students the Summer Academy helps a lot to connect different mentalities and cultures from students from all over the world.

Jakob Kolding: To me collage is a way of working with images that in a very immediate sense shows how meaning is constructed, and at the same time, how it can be challenged. You take an image of one thing and put it into a new context or combine with other elements and everything changes. It’s a very direct way of appropriating the surrounding world and in that sense it is also a way of looking at the construction of meaning in and through the images that surround us in our daily life. That may be the one aspect of collage that is the most important to me. It is a way to investigate and re-work the world around us, the things we take for granted and the things we don’t. To look at how the power to define us, both individually and as societies, is represented through images and language and can potentially be de-stabilised and re-defined, by taking the images that form the world around us and try and make them our own. Such subjective interpretations, and all the associative narratives that they potentially open up, points to explorations of identity as created in a continuous dialogue between the given surroundings and individual action.
 

Another aspect of collage that I find it important to mention is that you don’t really need any technical skills to get started. Of course, as you go along, you always learn, but at it’s most basic everyone can cut and paste. With scissors and glue, or with only a minimum of skill, on a computer too. The focus can be on the images and their meaning and less on the technical skills. 


[Jakob Kolding, Inspired by nature, collage on paper, courtesy Galerie Martin Janda]

S: What is your preferred material to work with and why?

J: My own starting point was the traditional collage of paper, scissors and glue and while that is still something very important to me, I am now working with what I would still call collage as method, but which would perhaps not always be immediately defined as such. For instance my work has gradually developed towards installation and sculpture and I’ve recently made a stage design for an opera. A lot of these works, as well as many posters and large scale prints of mine are made on a computer, in Photoshop, and then produced in a variety of ways, a variety of materials, in a variety of contexts.

Many recent works also include found objects rather than images of those objects and some of these works are in a material sense quite different from the traditional collages but they are still, at least to me, in essence collages. They are still made from found images, or found objects, that are re-contextualized into new configurations. They are often spatial works, where the space itself and the people in that space become a crucial part of the work. In the stage design time also became a crucial element as it gave me the opportunity to make a work that develops in front of the viewer, along with the music and the performance. It started with an empty stage and was then gradually built by the performers.
All this to say that I don’t have a preferred material as such, but in a more general sense I would say that my preferred materials are images. Which as a visual artist admittedly may not be so surprising. I have gradually over the years build up an archive of mages from many different contexts and situations, but what they have in common is that they are images I have come across in pursuing my general interests, and interests coming out of specific projects and exhibitions I’ve been working on. If you looked through them all they would in a sense form a, rather kaleidoscopic, portrait of me, or you could say that I have gradually build up a personal vocabular.

[Studio detail, Jakob Kolding]

S: What are you going to teach your students?
 

J: I hope that we during the course of the workshop can look at and discuss how images form the world around us and explore ways of using those images. To get a heightened sense of how meaning, and power, is created, how it can be challenged, changed, re-made. How we construct our own worlds, our own identities. I think it’s important that this happens both individually and collectively, that everyone define their own interests, and use them to form their work, bring their own images to start from, but that we at the same time discuss our works and considerations with each other. I would like to look at collage in what I before called an expanded sense, so that beside the cutting and pasting of images by hand, or by computer, we also consider the context we are working in. That could for instance be social media where images are constantly being posted and re-posted and thereby change their meaning, but it could also very well be the public space of the city. How by placing a new object or image in an existing space we potentially influence the “image”, and maybe even use, of that space. 

And I feel I should say, although I hope that is obvious, that I also hope that we come to experience the joy of making new work, this re-working of the world and the attempts to define our own views.