Teaching period: 22nd – 26th March 2021 from 10 – 16 hours
Teacher(s): Uffe Isolotto
Study Points: 2,5
Number of available place for KUNO students: 4
Level: (BA/MA) all
Application deadline: 1st February
How to apply: Email with short motivation to frontdesk@djk.nu (Susanne)
1st February 2021 at the latest. Make sure to write KUNO application as subject.
Course description:
Worldbuilding is a method that is most often used in literature, role-playing games or visual media such as films, computer games, and comics, but which is not so often used in contemporary art. This workshop will open up aspects of making use of worldbuilding as a tool in an artistic practice.
Worldbuilding is the process of creating a fictional world, an imaginary framework for the narrative of your desire, with cohesive elements of geography, history, ecology, science, culture, and language. The idea is that the world you have created will help shape the story, as opposed to a narrative driven by a core, personified by, for example, a character's internal or external conflicts.
What happens if you replace the character with an object, a sound, or a thought? Can one imagine that the artwork is part of a fictional world? A fictional world that helps shape the outcome of the work, so that it is not only the sensitivity with the material, channeled through the artist, but the sensitivity with the surrounding fictional world that helps to determine the outcome? And what does art look like then?
In the workshop I will give an introduction to worldbuilding, examples of the use of worldbuilding in literature, visual media and contemporary art. Based on my own practice, I will present a newly started project, where I use worldbuilding both as a method and as a goal. The project is connected to two artworks that will be exhibited in Nikolaj Kunsthal and Den Frie Centre for Contemporary Art, respectively, at the beginning of 2021.
The workshop will run for 5 consecutive days. In the beginning of the workshop there will be an introduction to and discussion about the topic, which hopefully will take us far and beyond. Feel free to bring any material or reference you find relevant to the table. During the next days you will work on your own, in smaller groups or as a larger team, depending on the course of the workshop. Ultimately, we will have a look at, a listen to or/and a smell of what have been produced.
This is a very classic format, and it is totally in line with pedagogical ideas about learning, but there is always the possibility that the workshop will be a work of fiction in itself and that these guidelines will not apply.
Bio:
Working with the self, the body, sexuality, and technology, the work by artist Uffe Isolotto (b. 1976) spans from video, 3D animation, sculpture, and performances. Isolotto graduated from The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2007 and has since then co-founded the artist organization TOVES, which from 2010-2017 ran exhibition spaces and produced contemporary art exhibitions in Denmark and internationally. He is currently the co-founder and curator of the exhibition platform Age of Aquarius in Copenhagen.
Additional information: Teaching in English. Course takes place at our academy in Mejlgade 32-34, 8000 Aarhus.
