Next month I will be coordinating a workshop entitled Miscellaneous expertise: performance, unlearning stories and public speech at the MoKS Kunsti ja Sotsiaalpraktika Keskus AVAMAA sympsium in Mooste, Estonia.  This is a collaboration with my good friend Giles Bailey, and the workshop will take place over five days with the dissemination on the sixth.

We proposed Miscellaneous expertise as an experiment using the workshop format; we hope to explore some of the structural components of performance through a patchwork aesthetic, with a concentration on “found” materials, chance, and non-linear constructions.  One potential subtitle was “Performance for non-performers AND non-performance for performers”, though that's a bit too constrictive and I think "unlearning" is a better term to use.

The outcome of the workshop will be a panel discussion that dissects the nature of performance, which of course will itself be a performance, which of course will not be.  If you remember my post about last year’s Mutopia workshop @ AVAMAA, then you’ll know I valued the MoKS approach to creative practice, a flame that will hopefully burn through this.  

Details about the workshop (how to attend, as well as info on the other workshops and projects occurring during the AVAMAA week [Natalia Borissova’s workshop looks amazing, and I wish there was some way to clone myself and do both]) are available on the MoKS website.  If you’re thinking of participating in Miscellaneous expertise, feel free to drop me a line or comment here.  See you in Estonia!

Summer is almost here, and summer will (almost certainly) bring us a large empty shipping container, "permanently" landlocked in the Kalasatama harbour.  This is part of an initiative between the city and Part which will be an ongoing 25-year project to revitalise Kalasatama.  We're looking forward to using the container as a classroom for most Public School events this summer, and I'm also curious to see what sort of community we end up with down there, as other organisations (Dodo and Kuvataideakatemia, for starters) will also have their own containers.

Last weekend Ptarmigan hosted back-to-back Public School classes.  Friday brought the second meeting of Drawing, aka Dinosaur Drawing or Drawing Marathon, faciliated by Cathérine Kuebel and Sarah Alden.  This time the class was extended to be 6 PM til 9 PM, though most people petered out before 5 AM.
 
 

 
 


Lots of catching up to do here!  This is my biannual attempt to post more, documenting some of the things I've seen and some of the projects I've been involved with. 

So here's a few reports from Pixelache 2010 in Helsinki, which happened last weekend.

The highlight of the whole festival, for me, was the Vivoarts Workshop led by Adam Zaretsky.   

I spent the last 10 days in Estonia, mostly at the MoKS AVAMAA 2009 ArtSymposium.  While the symposium offered traditional workshops (on printmaking and sound electronics), I participated in Mutopia 3, an exploration of collaborative creative practices that is quite difficult to describe.



Led by MoKS coordinator John Grzinich, the name is intended to combine the idea of Utopia with the process of mutation.  And Mooste, Estonia does seem like some type of Utopia to my city-stained soul.  A village of 500 people, about 40km from the also-charming Tartu, Mooste was far away from the distractions of my everyday life.  The workshop was very focused on Mooste itself (though Mutopia 2 was held in Portugal) – the ideas of place and space were perhaps the one common theme throughout.