Sketching Potential: The hope booth

Breakout Session 1: Thursday 21 November 14:30 - 16:30
Ilga Leimanis, University of the Arts London, United Kingdom

Join this speculative space for thinking through a question, using sketching and diagramming as tools to decipher, explore, and engage with the idea of emergence. The session will take both the form of a practical workshop as well as sharing practice following a pilot year facilitating Sketching Potential at University of the Arts London. The approach draws on diverse concepts such as hope as action, drawing to see, and notation as a refuge, and affect theory's bloom-space. Bloom-spaces, described as excess, autonomous, and collective, capture the essence of these workshops. The facilitator delves into the transformative potential of sketching, addressing aspects like idea development, problem-solving, anxiety management, and fostering multiple perspectives. Join this session to unleash the emergent possibilities of visual thinking and collaborative exploration.

 

Writing one: Others

Breakout Session 1: Thursday 21 November 14:30 - 16:30
Delphine Chapuis Schmitz, Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland

Embark on an illuminating exploration of collective thinking through writing in this artistic workshop. Facilitated by a seasoned practitioner, the session seeks to unravel the intricacies of thinking collectively without overshadowing individual uniqueness. Rooted in a transversal approach to writing, the workshop unfolds as an iterative process, featuring a carefully curated selection of texts by eminent authors. Participants engage in a dynamic exchange, reading aloud and responding through individual and collective writing sequences. The focus lies on the experimental nature of the process, fostering relationalities beyond conventional categories. The resulting textualities, both shared and relevant, contribute to the communal understanding of sustainable modes of thinking together. Join this unique session to partake in a transformative journey of shared creativity and collective intellect.

 

Thinking Through Making

Breakout Session 2: Thursday 21 November 17:00 - 18:30
Bridgette Ashton, Mel Brown, Arts University Plymouth, United Kingdom

Dive into a transformative workshop inspired by Tim Ingold's exploration of the vitality of materials and intentional action. Following the success of our ‘Curiosity Incubator’ at the ELIA Academy in 2023, this session challenges traditional research cycles and embraces play and imagination to tackle global challenges. Shifting from 'What?' to 'What-if?' thinking, we encourage participants to prioritise experimentation and engage directly with materials, fostering a profound connection with purposeful action. Stripping back the design process, we revisit fundamental making aspects and tap into a universal skill set. Amidst the prevailing digital landscape, our workshop emphasises the unique qualities of analogue making, promoting hands-on experiences in a world influenced by AI. Explore spontaneous moments and engage tangibly with creativity, sparking perspectives that extend beyond the workshop. Join us in harnessing the power of play and imagination to approach global challenges in a meaningful, tangible way.

 

On Your Feet: Moving into the uncontrollable and unforeseen in a creative process

Breakout Session 2: Thursday 21 November 17:00 - 18:30
Annette Kriszat, Linn Skoglund, Kristiania University College, Oslo, Norway

Embark on a dynamic creative journey with the workshop ‘On Your Feet’. This project merges writing, painting, and various creative tasks, fostering unexpected outcomes that surprise both participants and facilitators. Delving into the interplay between premises, obstacles, coincidence, and free associations, the workshop encourages multidimensional learning experiences related to creative thinking and problem-solving. Grounded in the belief that creative writing and visual art embody research, pedagogy, and art, the project explores prompts used in the pedagogy of these fields. By challenging participants with obstacles for the mind and body, the workshop aims to cultivate graduates who excel in creative thinking—individuals unafraid to experiment, challenge authority, and navigate within existing systems. It invites participants to embrace spontaneity, navigate limitations, and experience the fusion of aesthetic and cognitive breakthroughs within the creative process.

 

Choreographing Consciousness: An Improvisatory Look at What Is Possible

Breakout Session 2: Thursday 21 November 17:00 - 18:30
Markéta Fagan, London Contemporary Dance School, The Place, United Kingdom

Explore the uncharted realms of consciousness and choreography in this intriguing session led by a researcher delving into the symbiotic relationship between these two realms. Bridging psychology, philosophy, phenomenology, and choreography, the exploration aims to redefine the very essence of choreography. The session navigates the intersection of disciplines, addressing concerns about the current lack of symbiosis between choreography and other fields. The presenter seeks to inspire a shift in perspective, envisaging a conscious choreography that incorporates choreography as a discipline within broader philosophical learning. Join this unique journey of expanding consciousness and reimagining choreographic possibilities, challenging preconceptions and fostering a more interconnected approach to the art of choreography.

 

Mind Wandering during Lectures

Breakout Session 2: Thursday 21 November 17:00 - 18:30
Magda Stanová, Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Czech Republic

Join this short, drawing-based lecture showing how the attention of members of an audience diverges and converges with that of the lecturer. Conferences, lectures, and panel discussions took on conventions that make perception difficult: reading aloud texts that are too complicated for listening, speaking very fast in order to squeeze in as much material as possible, showing slides with long texts. We feel guilty when we stop paying attention and start mind wandering. But mind wandering is necessary for creative thinking. This lecture show will dissect the decorum of conventional presentation formats, distinguish various kinds of mind wandering, and invite the members of the audience to share their experiences with mind wandering.

 

Disobedient

Breakout Session 3: Friday 22 November 09:00 - 11:00
Bettina Benedikte Teiman Iversen, Kamilla Berge, Ragnhild Weltzien, Linn Skoglund, Lene Utigard, Kristiania University College, Oslo, Norway

‘Disobedient’, a student-led event from the Bachelor of Text and Writing programme, is making its mark in Milan. This inclusive gathering invites participants from diverse creative fields to showcase their interpretations of a given task on stage. Participants will receive the task three days before the event, fostering a spontaneous and varied array of performances. The organisers aim to recreate an intensified version of Disobedient, highlighting how artistic intelligence thrives amid chaos and limitations. The specific task remains a secret until the conference, promising relevance to the theme of celebrating and questioning artistic intelligence. The event encourages audience members to present their own unique solutions to the undisclosed challenge.

 

Workshopping Artistic Intelligence and Radical Change: An Archive of Art School Dissent

Breakout Session 3: Friday 22 November 09:00 - 11:00
Magnus Quaife, University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland & Chris Evans, LUCA School of Arts, Belgium

Explore the intersection of artistic intelligence and its potential for social and political change within art schools through the lens of dissent histories. Join the participatory workshops of the Archive of Art School Dissent, established in Helsinki in March 2024 and extended to Tilburg in April, with ongoing iterations in the months that followed. These workshops collectively map genealogies of dissent within art schools, analysing instances where subversive actions triggered significant shifts in our understanding of the world. The workshop serves as a reflective moment, consolidating previous insights and uncovering hidden histories. Delegates contribute incidents to the living archive, collectively identifying materials for critical examination. The session culminates in evaluating broader social implications through diverse lenses, recording the process through a collective mapping that reinterprets previous iterations of the archive. Engage in this exploration of artistic pedagogies and thinking to envision transformative futures.

 

Being-Together-Being

Breakout Session 3: Friday 22 November 09:00 - 11:00
Lars Koens, Nottingham Trent University, United Kingdom
JuJu Kusanagi, Tokyo University of the Arts, Japan

JuJu Kusanangi, a choreographer, and Lars Koens, a sound artist, present an experiential movement and vocalisation workshop. This session aims to unite participants through improvisation, responding to ecological soundscapes and prompts. Grounded in embodied touch and influenced by Japanese language-inspired ontology, the workshop explores an intersensorial language of movement and vocalisation. Stemming from their practice-based research for the choreographed piece ‘1:1:1’ (Kusanagi, 2023), the workshop delves into the convergence of objecthood and eventhood, fostering a dynamic state of being: ‘I am the space, and the space is me’. Rejecting dualistic and hierarchical approaches, JuJu and Lars cultivate awareness, care, and compassion, encouraging collaborative and participatory movement art. The workshop promotes inclusivity, asking participants to be self-aware, adopt a perspective rooted in totality, and practice inclusivity within the unified whole. Embracing post-humanist modes of being, the session offers a unique exploration of ecological connectivity and embodied expression.

 

Where are we? Performative strategies of encounter

Breakout Session 3: Friday 22 November 09:00 - 11:00
Beatriz Cantinho, University of Évora, Susana Mendes Silva, CEIS20 – Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal

In this performative lecture, Beatriz Cantinho and Susana Mendes Silva revisit their immersive performative walk, initially presented at the ELIA Academy 2023, bringing its transformative essence to the ELIA Biennial audience. Drawing from choreography, performance, and visual arts, they employ composition strategies involving written instructions, historical narratives, sounds, and human landscapes. These strategies, previously shared with students, become a catalyst for discussions on aesthetic and political dimensions. The duo delves into the legacy of the situationist drift, exploring how movement and performance can redefine experiences of territories, visible and invisible spaces, durations, and relations. By sharing their compositional methodologies, Cantinho and Mendes Silva aim to challenge perceptions, fostering a collaborative exploration of diverse possibilities within the realms of visual arts and choreography. This session invites artists and researchers to engage in a collective dialogue on the transformative power of movement and encounter.