A Curious Choreography: for Pigments on Paper, Forty People Paired and Aalto University Campus

Art is an essential aspect of future transformations of people and societies. As we are in an intensely digital era, we need to anchor our biological entities with activated bodies and brains. This workshop will re-engage with time, place, materials, bodies, imaginations and physical realities. This is where new approaches will be born. The workshop aims to collaboratively create, collect and share visions and teachings of a future ecological art education. What will matter in art education in our posthuman world? The workshop foregrounds taking turns in an intra-active material-discursive dance that doesn’t stop at dichotomies such as practice and theory. Instead, in every turn of the dance and especially the “re-turnings” making and talking together breathes more and more life into the processes of an ethical art education that matters. For an outdoor session, we will entangle bodymemory, body-sensations and intellectual thoughts on the question of an art education of ecology awareness. This 1205 Synnyt / Origins | 2 / 2019 | Non-peer reviewed | Visual Essay is done through frottage, an ancient art technique of rubbing to create a ghost of surface texture on a matrix. The Curious Choreography emphasizes taking turns; paired people discuss and make frottage together, and then re-turn to it again and again. This layered and embodied interaction is presented as a material itself, and as a dance. The iterative process will be shared with others at the conference. The workshop has the overall aim of energizing people into a state of hope and action towards an Ecological Art Education for a sustainable future.

Art is an essential aspect of future transformations of people and societies.As we are in an intensely digital era, we need to anchor our biological entities with activated bodies and brains.
The workshop that took place at Aalto University on Monday 18th June 2018, re-engaged with time, place, materials, bodies, imaginations and physical realities.This is where new approaches will be born.
The workshop aimed to collaboratively create, collect and share visions and teachings of a future ecological art education.
The workshop foregrounds taking turns in an intra-active materialdiscursive dance that doesn´t stop at dichotomies such as practice and theory.Instead, in every turn of the dance, making and talking together breathes more and more life into the processes of an ethical art education that matters.

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Synnyt / Origins | 2 / 2019 | Non-peer reviewed | Visual Essay the outdoor session, we entangled our body-memories, body-sensations and intellectual thoughts on the question of an art education of ecology awareness.
This was done through the technique frottage, and handling a long, large piece of thin mulberry paper dancing with the participants and the wind.
Frottage is the ancient art technique of rubbing to create a ghost of surface texture on a matrix.The Curious Choreography emphasizes taking turns; paired people discuss and make frottage together, and then re-turn to it again and again.This layered and embodied interaction is presented as a material itself, and as a dance.
The workshop hopes it has and can energize everyone and everything that took and are taking part into a state of hope and action towards an Ecological Art Education for a sustainable future.
Curious Choreography for Pigments on Paper 100 m scroll of Aalto scale 1:1.
Place the paper on top of something or someone part of Aalto Campus; rub gently with a crayon or pen on top of the paper.
But what actually happened during the workshop?
We all meet up in the designated room at the conference.Everyone was given a handout with information about the workshop, and then paired up along a 50-meter long piece of mulberry paper.In procession we together carried the paper along the corridors of Aalto University and went for the exit.Outdoors we placed the paper on the ground and started making rubbings with graphite and charcoal.It was windy, so the paper started to do its dance on its own while we tried to carry on the rubbing and collecting imprints from the surroundings on the paper.It was nice and sunny outdoors, and everyone was in a good mood talking about how fun it was to do some art activity.It was a break from the more talk-based sessions in the conference.
When times was up we realized that the door we had exited the building from was locked, and we couldn't get back in.
What to do with a 50 meter long piece of collective intra-active art and about 20-something conference people who need to get back to their next session?
Another way had to be found, and we started, but this time in a more chaotic procession and festive mood looking for another door.We found one, through the math department, the same department we earlier had seen a sign saying that this part of the building is NOT part of the conference.
But hey, we needed to get back in and back to the next session, so we carried on.People started to talk about different things, and some started to talk about the questions that were asked in the handout.
Who and what is right here right now?
Who and what is invited, who and what is not?
Someone said that it was only women taking part, well except from one of the two in charge of the workshop, but except from him it was all female.
Another needed to clean her hands, it´s easy to get a bit dirty doing street rubbing with graphite and charcoal.
I think a deconstructing of the traditional frottage technique could take it even further.We could think of a kind of rubbing and scrubbing away our petrol-detachment to a material and alive world and a material and alive you.We could expand rubbing materials to other things than art materials, what is around us? Grass, dirt, lipstick…