In a moment of global crisis that rises forms of exclusion and segregation, how to foster social cohesion and fruitful exchange among people of different cultures, beliefs, and political orientations?
Appadurai coined the term "ethnoscapes" as "a landscape of persons who make up the shifting world in which we live: tourists, immigrants, refugees, exiles, guest workers, and other moving groups and persons constitute an essential feature of the world and appear to affect the politics of and between nations to a hitherto unprecedented degree." (Projekt Migration, Kölnischer Kunstverein et al., 2005 p. 50) Exactly drawing on this, it is time to "de-ethnify", or better said "de-exoticize" our "inner landscapes", i.e. the way we identify with or reject the other, towards the naturalization of humanity as diverse and egalitarian. As much of these "ethnicities" are connected with food culture - this course proposes a community meal as the central feature of this semester's artistic practice.
Revisiting Judy Chicago and Susanne Lacy feminist Dinner Party projects of the late 1970s, the concepts of hospitality and transcultural dialogue will become the central feature of this form of critical and collaborative intervention in the cityscape. Small gestures that make great changes, in us and in our surroundings: based on the logic of gift economy, students and various local actors connected to the gastronomy sector will jointly design and create a (hopefully memorable) moment of togetherness.
fields:
Socially engaged/ process based artistic practices
Collaborative Art / Dialogical aesthetics
Publicness / Urban transformation
Happening / Gift economy
techniques:
participatory artistic methodologies
free-hand drawing/ observation/ artistic cartography
photography / video / silk-screen
key words:
Migration / Cosmopolitanism / Hospitality / Togetherness
BIBLIOGRAPHY > HERE
SCHEDULE
BLOCK 1 : RESEARCH ON FOODSCAPES AND HOSPITALITY
03.10.: 12 -16, Exercises on Hospitality. > Sharing an imaginary meal. (ALL GROUPS)
10.10.: 12 -16, Mapping the Grazer foodscapes.
Registering techniques > division of the city into zones of investigation. (ALL GROUPS)
17.10.: Explorations.
Please come to your group meeting point
24.10.: Engagements: starting a dialogue
Please come to your group meeting point
31.10 email/ server > uploading the reports and documentation
BLOCK 2 PREPARING A DINNER PARTY
14.11.: intro - (ALL GROUPS)
signing up to thematic and organization groups
21.11.: development/ group meeting
28.11.: development/ group meeting
05.12: setting up the dinner (ALL GROUPS)
19-22 the dinner party
12.12 email/ server > uploading the reports and documentation
BLOCK 3 CREATING A COLLECTIVE BOOK
09. 09.01.: intro print making (ALL GROUPS)
10. 16.01.: design/ print making
11. 23.01: design/ print making
12. 30.01: design/ print making
the final publication will be presented in the Open architecture Sommerfest 16-17