Course title: The Waiting Room – Working into the x-ray waiting room at the National University Hospital of Iceland
Responsible teacher: Bjarki Bragason
Level: BA
Dates: 05.10. – 27.10. (also possible to start the course on October 10)
Number of available KUNO places: 2
How to apply: Application must consist of a letter of intent (max. 250 words) and an example of 2 works (max. 6 images). Send by Email to Bjarki Bragason: bjarkibragason@lhi.is
Application deadline: October 2
As part ‘surface plane’, a semester long course in the second year BA programme at the Iceland Acdemy of the Arts, ‘The waiting room’ is a three week workshop focusing on two dimensional ways of approaching a space.
Students in this course will work site specifically, developing work for, and through observing, the waiting room in the x-ray department of the National University Hospital of Iceland. The waiting room is situated in the basement of the early 20th century main building of the hospital, it is a place where people spend time inbetween cycles of cancer treatments, surveys of the body and checkups. As a site for a multitude of emotions of its users, it is one of the most delicate kinds of public spaces. The x-ray department focuses on looking at the body from inside, through the skin, the uniting surface. Students will be asked to approach the space and dwell into its specificity, developing works which tackle questions of two dimensionality, the surface of the body, ideas of the skin as a uniting factor, covering the unknown beneath. Sensitivity towards to function of the space is important; and may be demanding. Students will work with hospital staff and will be encouraged to make experiments. Group meetings will take place in the hospital and in the classroom.
About the teachers: The course instructor is Bjarki Bragason, visual artist and assistant professor and BA programme director at the Iceland Academy of the Arts. He will be accompanied by art theorist Jón Proppé for a part of the course, in which the idea of skin will be looked at, through art history and the history of painting specifically. A short introduction into the subject of what framing does to two dimensional works will be given by artist Unndór Egill Jónsson.
