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Photo: Alexandra Mitiku |
I arrived with Lavinia on a wet Tuesday morning in Leeuwarden. We were running late for the opening of the international week at Leeuwarden and managed to get slightly lost. Eventually we stumbled into the presentation room of
Minerva Academie voor Popcultuur. My first impression of the school was how liberal they were, from discussions to interior design. Also, how kind they were to offer free coffee.
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Photo: Fanny Niemi Junkola |
We were a part of the Urban Exploration Workshop. Originally we were supposed to make only installations based on the environment, but we ended up joining another workshop ‘Future City planning’ and consequently our workshop description was a fusion of planning a future Leeuwarden and making an art installation. It was an interesting twist in the program!
During the two days of the workshop we interviewed strangers in the street about their ideas about their town, had interesting discussions about the history of the town and the existence of its society, and created a quilt-like installation in the end. The old man with the walking stick in the image below was the most striking character. Isa arrived right when we had come back from our excursion the first day, but she adapted swimmingly into our discussions. We got another arrival on the second day by our teacher Fanny. She helped organize the proceedings of our hybrid workshop so that everyone was content with their projects.
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| Photo: Fanny Niemi-Junkola |
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| Photo: Lavinia Colzani |
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| Photo: Lavinia Colzani |
The intriguing electronic part of the installation was the loudest. A program that translates images into sound presented photos taken by Lavinia Colzani. The interactive live stream on the MacBook had a similar idea where it recorded the movement of passersby, the video of which was translated into sound.
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| Photo: Isa Hedez |
Now if you are wondering about the box with the patterns, there is an interesting story behind it. Tibor Kecskes, a teacher from Hungary, projected the pattern of a broken security glass onto the cardboard boxes and started to carve. He had much to say about patterns that occur by happenstance.
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| Photo: Fanny Niemi-Junkola |
The last day! The day we got to see what all the other workshops were up to. We also listened to very informative lectures about sustainable living, with follow-up debates on how to improve our atmospheres – both social and environmental.
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| Photo: Isa Hedez |
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| Photo: Isa Hedez |
This guy spun the wheel of fortune, a wheel of solving random problems, like how to talk to the dead.
The last presentations were from the music side of the Academy. There were five students from TAMK who had also been participating in a music camp for the entire week, making so much as four songs per day! The atmosphere was like that of a talent show, with the judges voicing their opinions. We were all impressed by their tunes and versatility in styles.
Text by Alexandra Mitiku 2015
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