New Seminar on Lanzarote

Making Time is designed for individuals in adult education and the arts to refresh and expand their working processes. The course examines the relationships between art, education and re-localized societies in an age of increasingly scarce energy sources. It attempts to elaborate on the idea that artistic process offers a re-imagining of social situations yet often fails to translate into the vocabulary of everyday visual languages.

Lanzarote's complex relationship with central Europe - as both participating EU member and peripheral holiday destination, serves to highlight issues now being faced globally: economic downturn and escapism are mapped across the island's sublime yet haunting landscapes.

During last year's course the subject of Peak Oil was discussed as a somewhat abstract, economic issue, this year Lanzarotian's are fighting to stop the drilling of a new oil well off the coast of this UNESCO protected island. This years course will ask 'does art serve us best as a tool to interpret our immediate realities, or to foster new ideas for the future?'

EU funding for Making Time is available. Deadline April 30 2012

Apply Here

Special thanks to art aspects and LAPAS

Artprozess & Kunst in Publikum Seminar

Hosted by Von Erlenbach Kunstschule, Kreuzburg, Berlin




















Students working to complete their Portfolio Course were introduced to ideas concerning Public and process based Art. I drew on my experiences working with Cabin Exchange and other projects in Glasgow, Scotland to introduce the roots of my community projects in London. The presentation spanned an arc between the process based activities of the Flag Making Workshop and the more recent Shield Casting activity. More images here.

We interrupted the linear path of the seminar by exploring a series of abstract drawing exercises. These seem to have more in common with so called 'parlor games', intellectual exercises designed to entertain small groups through the use of logic. However as abstract systems of knowledge management, connecting lines between discrete shapes or ideas they also describe an important part an artworks journey. The emphasis with these tasks is to work through intuition, ascribing rules to which you cannot know the answer (in fact the opposite of a parlor game to which there is always a correct answer).

The closing presentation focused on a number of my projects with Transition Finsbury Park and the subject of Art & Sustainability. Process Art is naturally connected to the idea of transition through a sense of temporal evolution. Those working towards sustainable futures have the task of visioning and responding to continuing change. Process artists may follow a similar formula if not toward the same goals. My aim was to demonstrate that if one develops their working process to be adaptive and open to dialogue the work becomes better suited to collaborative or community projects. The ultimate aim for these projects is to problematise and give identity to groups who may be in need of such support. A good example being Krzysztof Wodiczko's homeless vehicle project (Link).

As a final activity we embarked on a mass Shield Casting though, frustratingly, without the time for students to begin making. Finally the class voted on the best abstract drawing and the winner received a hand grenade full of wild seeds.

Many thanks to the Mappe students and Von Erlenbach Kunstschule

Announcement of New Courses for 2012 to be Confirmed!

Course Notes - Sounds of the Surround, Hosted by art aspects

"(During the course) I became more convinced about the importance of senses and emotions as components of motivation and learning."

- Tarja Toikka, Participant Evaluation









Lanzarote, Spain - six participants hailing from across Europe converged on the volcanic island of Lanzarote for an arts course exploring Nature and Tradition in the context of Peak Oil and Sustainability. Including the invaluable art aspects assistants the breadth of nations represented included Romania, Greece, England, Germany, Hungary and Finland. The course, run in English, was designed and facilitated by Alex Robert Head.

A mind map created by Tarja Toikka during the Artist's talk given by the course facilitator - Click to enlarge

Rather than a chronological statement of our time together these notes convey the perspective of the course facilitator. The program does not follow an academic or art-historic trajectory, instead, activities and cross-disciplinary learning techniques are drawn from a series of heuristic processes developed over time with numerous other groups. The root of these methods stems from an applied interest into non-verbal communication with a focused inquiry into semiotics. The main creative task set by the facilitator was a Shield Casting activity which began early in the week and ran until the closing critique and feedback.
















"In my area there are many villages, places that are looking for opportunities to develop. I am going to present this concept of Sounds... to these people."

- Lenita Nieminen, Participant Evaluation


At the center of Sounds of the Surround lays an open question for artists:

'Through a course, is it possible to engender a significant shift of perspective within an individual's understanding of global resource issues and their personal sense of self in relation to these challenges?'

Saturated with ideas we experienced too a heightened sense of taste, space, sound and light - effective conditions for peering into the horizon.



































Pairing and ultimately dissolving the categories of thinking and doing participants brought their work from the studio to the beaches and back.

"...the solitude and quietness were (the perfect scenario for) an almost Hamlet like fundamental questioning."

- Bogdan Teodorescu, Participant Evaluation
























With such a diverse range of participants (the group brought knowledge from the fields of Psychology, Environmental Science, Performance Art, Public and Land Art, Painting, Design and Entrepreneurial Learning), a wild, ongoing conversation rolled through the week in which topics emerged, were lost or broken off for an activity, then re-emerged at a cliff edge or shoreline.


















Finding the balance between thoughts and activities was an improvised process that aimed to meet the group dynamic as it evolved. Throughout this oscillation of thoughts and ideas, relationships between individuals and the group were also developing - creating a palpable texture to group work such as a large landscape drawing and the critique of each participants 'Shield' at the end of the week.









"...it is the first time that I have responded creatively on issues which were previously treated by me as scientific problems."

- Michail Saringelis, Participant Evaluation


















Perhaps the most exciting (though by no means new) idea to emerge from the cross-disciplinary process of Sounds... is the concept of applying entrepreneurial learning techniques to the concerns of those working towards sustainable re-localization. Through contributing to a paper on such techniques authored by course participant Lenita Nieminen later this year, I aim to move closer to understanding potential obstacles to this goal. However working on this paper is primarily an opportunity to reflect on my personal working methods thus far and to elaborate on my own slowly forming practice - Micro Communities Art.

Sounds of the Surround would like to give special thanks to Michael Von Erlenbach of art aspects for his continued insight into the island of Lanzarote and to Robyn Taylor, specifically for her keen photographic eye throughout this process. The course facilitator would also like to thank Jamie Mayer.

Template for a Course with Art Aspects, Germany, on the island of Lanzarote - 2011

This course is now titled: Sounds of the Surround - Encounters With Nature & Tradition Through Art .