MDRW 3 - Preparing for Final Projects
On Monday, PCA was not open as it was Armistice Day. This gave the MDRW students a two day weekend, as they had the masterclass all day on Saturday.
Tuesday, MDRW students had their regularly scheduled class with Chloe from 10am-1pm. At the start of the class, Chloe divided the students into two groups. The first group followed Chloe to a cafe just near Gare de L’est. The cafe is part of the Centre Internationale d’Accueil et d’Echanges des Récollets.
On the walk to and from the cafe, Chloe took students to talk one on one about their final projects and how they were feeling about the works they were making. At the cafe, students and Chloe talked together about current artists they are interested in, general talk about the program, art and studies. The other half of the MDRW students worked on personal work in the studio. The groups then switched.
On Wedesday, MDRW students met Veronique at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris to see the Hans Hartung retrospective exposition. The exhibition titled “La fabrique du gestre,” correlates with the general theme of the first half of the MDRW course, which was focused on process and gesture.
After the exhibition, Veronique and the students visited the permanent collection of the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris before heading back to campus.
Thursday marked the first of three days of the masterclass with Diogo Pimentao. To begin, Diogo and the students presented what they were currently working on. Diogo gave advice and tips to each student, and there was open discussion around each persons work. After discussing each students work, the class watched a portion of a film by Andrei Tarkovsky.
For the rest of the class on Thursday, students got out objects that had meaning to them. The week prior, Diogo told students to bring in an object that is meaningful and that they feel personally connected to. Diogo took these objects and placed them on the floor, against a wall which had a piece of paper taped above them. About a meter away, Diogo marked an X on the floor with tape. Students were instructed to find a way from X to their object, but it had to be justified.
On Friday, students were still working on trying to get from X to their object. Once they were able to reach their object, they were allowed to draw their object on the piece of paper that hung above it. Many students were still working on how to get to their object, and re-did it multiple times. Diogo asked students to push their work and think about how they could transform it into a performative piece. At the end of class, each student presented their current work and the ideas that they had for the performance, which will be in two weeks.
On Saturday, students were still working on these projects. For the second half of the class, Diogo prepared an exercise with ink and paper. He rolled paper onto the wall and secured it with tape, making sure to mark the tape every two centimeters. All the students approached the paper and began to press ink on each two centimeter mark, letting the ink naturally fall and create a straight line until the end of the paper. This created a series of straight lines, sometimes meeting. As Diogo and the students had to wait for the ink to dry to move on to the next part of the project, the exercise for the day finished there. It will be picked up again next class.