Final works 2016
During the workshop the students turned into “cooldigas”, working with broad image sources that they brought to the workshop and transforming those into site-specific installations. Their final presentations included a floating exhibition in a pond in Pelči, a feeling experience, hidden photos in the center of Kuldīga, people’s portraits placed on the floors of the palace to stumble upon, and more.
Asya Zhetvina (RU/IT):
Elena Anosova (RU):
Yuxin Jiang (CN/UK)
Natalie Maximova (RU):
Photography has its own language. This means that to photograph one has to learn and master it’s vocabulary and grammar, and its history, inevitably. But more than ever today, a photographic work becomes interesting and necessary if the images are charged with a narrative. Throughout the week, each student has worked on completing their previously started project as an original and individual story, paying attention to all aspects from language to ethics, from structure to style.
Photography is currently undergoing a major process of change. During the workshop, we aimed to achieve a more authentic and humanistic way of telling stories. Students were encouraged to develop their personal voice in photography through experimentation, using light as one of the tools to expand on their practice and represent reality in different ways.
What is space? And what is the space of photographs? How do we inhabit the spaces opened up to us by images? This workshop revolved around these questions by proposing a theoretical walk through disciplines as diverse as philosophy, poetry, painting, sculpture, contemporary art, comics, and folk wisdom - as well as four practical assignments carried out during the week. The resulting work was edited together in a collective process.
A workshop revolved around fashion, style and photography – the participants made work in groups sharing ideas and responsibilities and engaged intuitively in a series of exercises that placed them actively on both sides of the lens. Each of the participants was invited to create visual associations responding to cosmically selected instructions. This is not about understanding, more about feeling.
This workshop encouraged students to be active creators, while staying loose, running with new ideas and using photography as a tool to record the creative process. Using the new environment as a place to begin digging, they sought out the extraordinary in the everyday. The “treasure” they found was only the starting point – they constructed tableaux, build props, staged events and put objects into action.
Workshop tutors: Vika Eksta and Anete Skuja (LV)
During the workshop we worked together with the inhabitants of the Pelči village, re-creating stories from their local history.
Darbnīcas ietvaros kopā ar dažāda vecuma Pelču novada iedzīvotājiem strādājām ar mutiskiem un fotogrāfiskiem stāstiem no vietējās vēstures.
