Burak Arikan and Defne Ayas at the Open Academy
Time: July 1st to 5th, 2011
New media artist Burak Arikan and Arthub Asia Director Defne Ayas will be headed to the Open Academy in Ulaanbaatar Mongolia the first week of July for a number of workshops and seminars. Prior to their UB visit, Arikan will be leading a workshop in Shanghai.
Turkish new media artist Burak Arikan will lead workshops relating to mapping networks, focusing on the design and understanding of complex networks through mapping and visual analysis. Starting from hands on simple drawing exercises participants gradually build complex compositions on the computer. Emphasis on network topology, relationship types, information modeling, visual analysis, centralization, and clustering. Participants learn the most through observing, sketching, collaborating, and participating in the discussions. Graph Commons will be used for the exercises.
PART I: How to map networks?
Graph theory, relationship types, network topologies, modeling
PART II: How to analyze networks?
Centralization, clustering, structural holes
More info about Arikan’s work here.
Arthub Asia Director Defne Ayas will be specifically targeting her presentations on Curating and Evaluating Contemporary Art Projects (see below), encouraging participants to understand and evaluate intentions, approaches and acts of representation and interpretation within contemporary art projects and events across a range of cultural domains, scales and media.
Open Academy Ulaanbaatar Phase 2, Mongolia
May–October, 2011
Objectives
Open Academy Ulaanbaatar is conceived as a 3-phase project conceived to focus on practical training targeted at facilitating the development of contemporary art practices in Mongolia and assist Mongolian artists, curators, cultural activists and art students to connect to contemporary knowledge, opportunities and experiences in international art and cultural fields. Artists, writers, curators and other cultural workers will be placed in learning situations where they can identify and address their own learning needs. After a basic and broad-based exposure to various aspects of contemporary art practice and management in the first phase, participants will decide on the content, direction and approaches of the following programmes.
The project will expand participants’ visual and creative thinking and knowledge and skills in art practice, management, research, documentation, organization and evaluation. They will be exposed to issues, scenarios, contexts, systems and structures in contemporary cultural production, with the aim of developing their abilities to identify important issues within contemporary Mongolian contexts, so as to be able to actively contribute to and nurture their own cultural development.
Special attention will be given to the workings of knowledge transfer and knowledge generation across cultural and belief systems as a response to the globalisation of contemporary art. As information and different bodies of knowledge cross cultures, it is also important to recognise the effects of these cross cultural influences on existing local memories and knowledge and the impact of applying this knowledge into local contexts.
Motivation
The Open Academy programme is developed as a response to situations encountered by Chu Chu Yuan and Jay Koh when working in the arts and cultural field. In the various countries they have worked in, they noted that resources are allocated and employed according to certain prescribed systems of values that leave huge pockets of ‘dis-benefit’ – human and other resources that are undervalued, under-utilised and lying in fallow and in waste due to non-cultivation. They envisioned that alternative systems and structures could be set up where local participants could identify and activate the employment and utilization of their own abilities and energies toward certain ends that they deem important, as well as learn how to work together with others to find the resources and support structures necessary to bring their efforts into fruition.
The Open Academy therefore provides a semi-structured informal programme where the learner/participant identifies and influences the content of the programme. Participants are encouraged to develop their resourcefulness and ability to see and imagine their environment in different ways, to identify unexplored opportunities, develop collaborative actions and initiatives on the ground.
In view of a globalised and internationalized world, the Open Academy programme encourages a redistribution and re-utilisation of resources (e.g. skills, expertise, knowledge, energies) by connecting organizations, institutions and self-organized groups from different countries and contexts to develop arrangements of exchange and collaboration, whereby resources that are deemed of little value or use in one may in fact be of great value and use in another.
Target Participants
Artists, curators, art managers, writers, cultural practitioners and students of the Fine Art Institute, Mongolian NGOs, cultural organisations, civil society groups, interested individuals.
Open Academy Phase 1 ran from September 2008 to September 2009. Open Academy Ulaanbaatar Phase 2 will reconvene in April 2011 and will give equal attention to workshops, which will continue to build upon the teaching and training carried out in phase 1, and projects, which will ground the learning in real life projects that are developed, led and run by local artists and arts managers, with mentorship and guidance by peers and visiting specialists.
Workshops
May–July 2011
1. Developing discursive, critical thinking skills
Participants will learn to critically ‘read’ events and other texts, differentiate different levels of knowledge transmission/acquisition and learn to engage in discourse and constructive criticism. The workshop will facilitate participants in:
– developing analyses, interpretation, critique, evaluation through case studies
– learning problem solving, exploring and developing alternatives
2. Evolving appropriate management and organisational structures
This workshop will facilitate participants into investigating and articulating their own local contexts and needs, and evolve suitable management and organisational structures to meet those needs and conditions. A second component focuses on expanding participation, developing community involved and negotiated initiatives. Activities include:
– looking at various kinds of organisational structures, scale and working relationships
– understanding and devising structures of organisation in response to available resources and needs
– working in response to local cultures, patterns, environments and belief systems
– developing working relationships and initiatives with various collaborators/co-participants; learning to negotiate relationships with and interests of collaborators
3. Curating and evaluating contemporary art projects
This part of the workshop is designed to encourage participants to understand and evaluate intentions, approaches and acts of representation and interpretation within contemporary art projects and events across a range of cultural domains, scales and media. They will also be guided on basic curatorial knowledge including acquiring curatorial and institutional frameworks/ways of seeing and thinking; developing writing and articulation skills and developing their own curatorial direction. Topics to be covered include:
– working with issues, themes, spaces, different forms of organisations
– developing concepts, duration, depth and scale of events
(e.g. white cube, site and place specificity; spectacle, process-based, durational projects, small events and biennials
– developing curatorial text, research, proposal writing, selecting and working with artists
– evaluating contemporary art projects and curated events
4. Using local historical and contemporary cultural research to inform and drive new art and cultural production
This provides participants a chance to learn of the process of carrying out research around particular issues or topics of interest that they have identified from the local contexts. The workshop will provide a macro view of the effects of globalisation and internationalisation on the state of cultural production and the environment. The emphasis is on encouraging participants to think about cultural and environmental vitality, without imposing any particular direction or solution to their research.
Working together, the components of the various workshops can enable participants to develop their levels of historical and cultural awareness and critical thinking, cultural resourcefulness as well as gain the practical knowledge necessary to support their creative engagement and sustained professional practice in an informed direction of their choice an increasingly internationalised environment.
Local Led Projects
June–October 2011
For OAU Phase 2, after consultation with coordinators and participants from Ulaanbaatar, we are forwarding the idea that an important component of OAU Phase 2 should be on creating indepth local led art projects, with clear objectives and processes. These projects will be led by OAU participants from the phase 1 programme. These would be carried out in collaboration with members of the wider cultural sectors (e.g. architects, teachers, writers, historians, activists etc.) in Mongolia.
Two younger Blue Sun artists, Enkhbold (also a teacher with Fine Arts Institute) and Ganzug, will take on responsibility of leading these projects. They will be joined by Agnessa Tseika, a student of art history at the Mongolian University of Culture. All 3 have shown deep interest to create works with the wider communities and society, and in advancing contemporary art practices in Mongolia. Tseika is also working with a women artists group in Mongolia to involve them in OA’s future activities.
Some of the project ideas that have been discussed are:
1. A multidisciplinary and cross sectoral durational project with an architect to create LOVE GARDENS, to create community collaboratively run and cared for gardens carved out within public spaces in Ulaanbaatar. This project is in response to the fact that Ulaanbaatar’s visual environment is not pleasant for city dwellers, and not conducive for interaction and neighborly/community relations. This project will provide inspiration to members of the public and serve as a platform for cross pollination of ideas and for promotion of cross sectoral activities with the wider public.
2. A practice-led project to nurture and support art and cultural management and curatorial knowledge base and discourse of a new generation of Mongolian art managers and coordinators. This project will pair up interested young curators with arts managers and will provide practical training, developmental approaches and catalytic opportunities for them to collaborate and try out new ideas. Participants will be mentored by experienced managers and curators, with tutorials or pointers given on researching relevant art theory, developing appropriate supportive and collaborative relationships, models of engagements, and proposal and curatorial writing, project management, documentation etc.
3. A project using local historical and culturally relevant materials (Mongolian material, image and text archives, research, contemporary issues and narratives) to connect the past to present contemporary practices, narratives and structures and to explore, through collaboration and participation with members of the public, alternatives for the future. This project can be implemented in various levels, with students from the Fine Arts Institute, artists from the community that participated in OAU Phase 1 and with members of the public and other cultural organizations.
4. A project on Land and Environmental Art to explore durational creative engagements with the ecology of communities whose livelihood depends on the land. This project will utilise long term engagements centred on research based, collaborative and participative methodology to inspire and develop sustainable activities that support the ecological, social and environmental system on and of the land. The project will transmit and translate concepts and usage of environmental friendly and viable technology to assist natural lifestyles and safe keep the environment.
These projects should take place between May to October 2011. Depending on available funding, a visiting artist/ cultural worker/curator will work alongside students and artists in each project.
Open Academy Ulaanbaatar is supported by Prince Claus Fund (The Netherlands), Arthub Asia, IFIMA – International Forum for InterMedia Art, Arts Council Mongolia, Institute of Fine Art Mongolia, and Blue Sun Contemporary Art.
The Open Academy has also been conducted in Rangoon, Burma and in Hanoi and Hue, Vietnam, supported by numerous organisations including Prince Claus Fund, Netherlands; Heinrich Boell (Asia) Foundation, Thailand; Ford Foundation USA; Asian Arts Council, USA and Japan Foundation Asia Center, Thailand.