Course 2: Notes, models, and study drawings as liminal objects
by Bernhard Rüdiger and Yann Annicchiarico
8 – 19 August 2022
5 ECTS
Course Description
The production of forms in the workshop is often supported by notes, study drawings or models. These are stages of work that we tend to forget, considering them as incomplete stages of a finished piece.
The " Notes, models and study drawings as liminal objects " course will focus on this moment of preparatory work and "vision" of what will be or should be the final piece. The course is divided into two parts. The first part, under the direction of Bernhard Rüdiger, is dedicated to the understanding of the project and the physical processes of the various forms of note taking.
A second part, under the direction of Yann Annicchiarico the course participants will consider models as objects that per their nature allow the passing between dimensions – most usually the passage between a mental and a physical dimension but we will also see other kinds of models; some are as such finished forms that were never intended as steps in a process of enlargement but rather build on this potential to connect to aforementionned other dimensions. Other worlds like that of moths that inhabit our world in a complementary way.
The course is based on the observation that all the forms of note-taking that we accumulate throughout the maturation of a piece of work are often felt by artists as essential moments and drawings or models as complete objects, objects that often give us the impression of being more open, even richer than the finished work. It is clear that all note-taking has above all a practical purpose which serves to imagine the process of creation; a process which is often and in the first-place material: if I want to create a glass plate I must imagine the process of vitrification at high temperature which allows it to become crystalline. We can therefore presuppose that any preparatory drawing or model is first and foremost the taking of note of a shaping process, a testing of the material, an intelligence of the operation, a thought involved in the process itself. The ancient Greeks called it techné.
Models in their liminal aspect might facilitate such an operating in the transition of spaces after the end of a world. We will look at the ineffable aspects of some artworks that relate to modelization and course participants will confront themselves trough the building of models to the question of what would allow a new range of possible for Post-Future Adolescents.
Now artists use the model also or at the same time to "see" the object to be realized. The model or the preparatory drawing are therefore also objects for perception. In front of an object out of scale, the perception seems to become more complex. It is exercised on two distinct perceptive levels. We are indeed in front of a concrete object realized in cardboard and some pieces of string, but we are at the same time projected in a modeled elsewhere, the place which is at another scale and that our glance is henceforth occupied to transpose as if we were there. The complexity lies in the fact that we look at a model as if it were elsewhere and, in another dimension, in another material. Our perceptive capacity adapts to a dimension that is only presupposed and never confirmed by our senses. To the activation of the intelligence of our senses, necessary to understand the object in front of us, is added an imaginative perception that we can say potential.
This projection of oneself into another dimension has been used for a long time in various fields, such as appreciating an architect's model and imagining the structure built in the space of a city we know. It is less obvious when applied to art. The fact that I can use a double perceptive dimension, concrete and sensitive, but at the same time imaginative and disembodied, opens in a very particular way the field of the imagination, because the place of the potentiality to which the artist's model gives access always remains open and undetermined.
Biographies
Bernhard Rüdiger was born in Italy (Rome, 1964) and lives and works in Paris. He graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan with Luciano Fabro and, after stints as a teacher in Tours and Valenciennes, he currently teaches in Lyon. He is editor of the magazine Tiracorrendo and was co-founder of the artists’ gallery Lo Spazio di Via Lazzaro Palazzi, a busy venue in the Milan art scene from 1989 to 1993. His works confront visitors with a physical experience involving object, body and space. At once sculptures, monumental models and architectural pieces, through their meticulous spatial and acoustic arrangement his works seek to investigate history, particularly the history of places. One example is in the semi-private garden of the Antonin Perrin residence in Lyon, in which Rüdiger installed a scaled-down model of the two old low-rise buildings destroyed in 2004 during the zone’s renovation, which recalled the history of the site and its industrial culture. Rüdiger’s works also propose direct physical experiences and the possibility that the work can react to the visitor’s presence or to natural elements. All of Rüdiger’s projects are systematically accompanied by studies and models in cardboard, wood, iron, etc., as well as drawings, but they are far more than mere stages in a creative process. They constitute part of the fully-fledged work, and are involved in specific presentations in an arrangement encompassing some 30 display stands. (Excerpts from Nadine Labedade, FRAC Centre Orléans).
The work of Yann Annicchiarico addresses our perceptions and confronts our human nature with worlds that are inaccessible to them. Inseparable from the still or moving bodies exploring a space, the act of seeing in Annicchiarico’s work prompts an awareness of the limits of our own understanding and the possibility of transcending these limits. A shift from intelligibility to sensibility occurs when we grasp the impenetrability of dimensions that are foreign, yet close. Interacting with their environment through an interplay of different scales and temporalities, Yann Annicchiarico’s installations allow one to experience the physical sensation of being on a threshold, of finding oneself in an in-between.
Yann Annicchiarico (b. 1983) has held solo exhibitions at KIT – Kunst im Tunnel in Düsseldorf (2020); Nosbaum Reding Projects, Luxembourg (2019); Centre des Arts Pluriels, Ettelbruck (2018) and has participated in group exhibitions in MUDAM - musée d'art moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg (2021); Museo Archeologico del Chianti Senese, Castellina in Chianti, Italy (2019). He is an artist-researcher with ACTH (Contemporary Art and Historical Time) since 2011. He has participated in residency programmes at Fonderie Darling, Montreal (2019) and at Villa Médicis, Académie de France, Rome (2015). He was awarded the Bourse Francis-André in 2020 for his first solo exhibition in a public institution at KIT – Kunst im Tunnel à Düsseldorf (2020).
Participation
10 participants will be selected to participate in this course. Eligible participants must read the Terms information, fill out the application form, upload the required documents and submit the application form. Incomplete applications will not be considered.
The participation fee 500€.
Scholarships are available for participants from Kosovo.