Introduction to the Workshop

This blog documents and reflects on work collectively produced as part of a workshop, Spatial (Inter) Relations, developed through dialogue/collaboration between Emma Cocker, Nikolaus Gansterer and students at the Institute for Transmedia Art, Vienna. It is intended as a collaborative space for drawing together work, experiments, ideas, thoughts, reflections developed through a one-day workshop that took place on June 10th 2011 in Vienna. Participants include: Emma Cocker, Nikolaus Gansterer, Tabitha Dottinger, Renate Mihelsch, Charlie Allen, Levi Baubiueler, Sarah Rechberger, Joanna Coleman, Janos Ivan Kavpati, Xaver Gschnitzey, Nicole Weniger

WORKSHOP PARTICIPANTS ARE INVITED TO RESPOND & ADD TO THE LISTED POSTS OR CREATE NEW POSTS

More about the workshop: Fusing practical and conceptual concerns, this one-day workshop with Emma Cocker and Nikolaus Gansterer investigated how the performative practices of wandering, waiting, drawing, writing and reading can operate as creative ‘tactics’ or methods for navigating or negotiating space differently to expectation, convention or habit. By mapping or diagramming how spatial relations are organized and orchestrated within various public spaces, workshop participants were encouraged to devise ways through which to draw attention to or even interrupt these habitual social patterns or flows. The workshop explored and tested how invitations, instructions or even drawn scores can be used to activate different ways of navigating or traversing public space, producing temporary and experimental forms of connectivity and social interaction

Friday, 17 June 2011

1 euro 10


This is a project I´ve done 5 years ago in Innsbruck/Tyrol.
I want to share this, because I think it kind of fits to the topic.


I made an experiment at the trainstation in the citycenter. I wanted to know what will happen if I put an orange chair in front of an escalator .
It was really surprising, cause out of a reason somebody started to put money on the chair. People follwoed this example and after some time there where 1 Euro 10 collected.

There is also a video,but I wasn´t able to upload it. It´s on www.nicoleweniger.com under "projects" --> 1 euro 10.

Thursday, 16 June 2011

A choreographed Line (River Proposition - upstream/downstream)



A sight line is passed along the stretch of the Vienna River.


Documentation and development


Further experiments, tests, responses (see below)

A choreographed Line (Park Proposition)




Documentation and development

Thursday, 9 June 2011

Casting a glance

This 'section' of the blog deals with or explores ideas, experiments, tests, responses, ideas, references which relate to the idea of 'casting a glance'.





Making a Proposition into Space

prop·o·si·tion 
[prop-uh-zish-uhn
1. the act of offering or suggesting something to be considered, accepted, adopted, or done.
2. a plan or scheme proposed.
3. an offer of terms for a transaction
4. a thing, matter, or person considered as something to be dealt with or encountered:
5. stated or affirmed for discussion or illustration.
6. an operation to be performed; a theorem or a problem.
7. a proposal

[in-sin-yoo-eyt] 
1. to suggest or hint
2. to instill or infuse subtly or artfully, as into the mind:
3.to bring or introduce into a position or relation by indirect or artful methods: 

What is a proposition? How is the line propositional? How can a performed action be propositional? How might a performance echo the propositional quality of drawing? Performing As if. Drawing as if. Drawing the subjunctive. Between observation and imagination. Not entirely fiction. Suggestion. Hypothesis. Between intention and actuality. Between what is and what could be. Not the making of a performance as such, as the making of a proposition. Futurity. Suggestion. Insinuation. Proposition. Hypothesis. Drawing a hypothesis.

Exploring line/drawings capacity to insinuate, suggestion or propose new / different / counter / alternative spatial and social relations.

* Use the research conducted in part 1 - knowledge of flows and connectivities - for devising a set of small actions and interventions. How can an action be insinuated into a space (insinuating action/purpose/intention into what is already there. The intervention is the drawn line. The performance of a line.

* Documentation as proposition rather than as record. The propositional document. Document as score. Perform documents. Develop them as scores.

The following diagrams are intended as a set of initial prompts, propositions, provocations for considering these aspects of drawing to performed space:






Images: Emma Cocker, Spatial (Inter) Relations, testing/research for workshop, 2011


Further experiments, tests, responses (see below)

Site / Sight Lines

Propositional sight lines, hypothetical sight lines, imagined sight lines, insinuated sight lines, wishful sight lines, weak and strong lines, intense and fragile lines, temporary and permanent lines, sight lines that are visible and that are not.





Images: Emma Cocker, Spatial (Inter) Relations, testing/research for workshop, 2011

Diagramming Relations

Diagrammatic extractions, using existing spatial configurations as potential diagrammatic scores for future actions.





Image: Emma Cocker, Diagramming Relations, test propositions

The figure and the ground

this section deals with the idea of mapping and recording flows and connectivities.

Part 1: The figure and the ground

Line/drawings capacity to draw attention to or map existing spatial and social relations. Making visible. How does drawing make visible the invisible? Drawing as a recording tool, observation, a making visible of that which is not usually visible? The frequency of drawing – tuning in, drawing attention. Drawing capable of recording the flow of bodies, pedestrian flow, the choreography of city space. Looking and drawing. Drawing flow. Flow drawing. Drawing out. Coaxing process into form. Understanding habitual flows. Between drawing and photography and writing. Working out the conditions - what are the conditions for an action? What is the context of a performance? What is the ground upon which the figure works?
Mapping flow and connectivities – the current of place.

Identifying Location
·      Draw a line or diagram on the map – imagining the idea of cross section of the city. Identify a series of points along the line. Visit. Spend time in each place. Devise ways to measure and record the current of flow and connectivity
·      Or follow Georges Perec and select place by more poetic means. ‘(F)ind a route that would cross [your city] from one side to the other taking only streets beginning with the letter C'. or 'prepare a journey that would enable you to visit or pass through all the places that are 314.60 kilometers from your house’. Draw a circle on a map, or select places alphabetically. Throw a dart to decide your location, flip a coin, cast dice
·      Or take a map and plan more purposefully a set of different locations within easy walking distance, which have different psychological atmospheres.
·      Pick a location randomly (as though out of hat). What places offer a diversity of flow and connectivity, what is the current of a meeting place, a place of transition, a place to be avoided, a place passed through with speed, a place lingered in, a place crossed, a destination, a back street, the high street, a shopping mall, a place of arrivals and departures, a place of protest, a place of silence, places for lying down on the grass, places for drinking coffee.

Research activity
Understanding Ground, the conditions in which a performance happens or could happen. Exploring sites as possible ‘pages’ for intervention, what is the texture of a space. What is the nature of its ground. How receptive is it? How much could it be worked? The focus of the task is one of finding ways to record and show flow and connectivity.

General:
(1) Pay attention (draw map, record) existing flows and connections. Take a measure of a space. Developing understanding of the ground, the context, the page. The existing marks on the page. The page is never blank. Knowing how to act or intervene in response. Repeat or counter, disrupt or maintain. Think about methods of recording: drawing, writing, photographs, sound.
* Draw fast and without hesitation
* Drawing blind – feel/hear/sense the flow
* Focusing on the small localized pattern of one individual
* Focusing on the pathways across one space.
* Map gaps

(2) Emergent choreographies. What shape does a mark take? What is the figure to the ground? Identifying a mode of making a mark. Refrains. Fragments of behaviour. Glean and borrow gestures, gesture as graft, making scores.  What is the nature of the intervening line? What shape is the conscious body operating on the ground.