Many thanks to all the Summer Institute participants for the card and beautiful bouquet.

It's a wrap!

 

photos: Alyssa Bornn

Final Project Summaries

This year's Summer Institute has come to a close. Here is a look at some of the final projects participants developed over the course of the month:
(photos courtesy of Alyssa Bornn)

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JNZNBRK

The constructed project is an optical device that expands the limits of the eye and explores the use of light as creative agent. The device attempts to make plays of light, that otherwise cannot be perceived by our un-supplemented eye, visible through image. It uses mirrors and lenses to manipulate and project light-space-time onto a screen. This continuous play of visual motion detaches our eye, temporarily, from its immediate ability to associate the image with something ‘known’. Traces of the known appear in the image as distorted views of reality that occupy a different time than what the un-altered eye typically perceives. As a car moves left to right at a given rate through the window of the gallery, it appears reorientated and moving at a different rate within the device. These light-time manipulations are layered across the screen, allowing one to observe multiple timelines simultaneously.

The device generates both static and kinetic visual results. The kinetic compositions are experienced in real-time, allowing viewer participation as an observer of the phenomena. The static results generate reactions and understandings slowly, providing the opportunity to piece-together captured fragments of the device and its projection. These still images are documents of elapsed time, scattered with elements that exist in a static state of equilibrium.  

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NATHAN BISHOP

Spatial State:

The condition of a space accommodating a particular condition (program, event, desire etc..), as distinct from the same space accommodating a different condition.

Simultaneous:

Occurring at the same time, in the same space. Frictive, interposed, superposed, palpable.

I developed an apparatus that explores an idea of simultaneous spatial states. A series of spatial attributes, instantiated in metaphorical forms of tallness, fluidity, privateness etc…, are made coextensive, and as one moves around the viewing apparatus, one finds that the relationships between these metaphors is in constant flux. Scale is mercurial and boundaries are indeterminate. Viewing the stereoscopic vignettes, one also finds that other vignettes held by the apparatus fall in and out of existence, and new relationships between them are constantly suggested, a quality only discernable through movement and looking. 

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TERESA CARLESIMO

I entered the summer institute with the goal of developing a new approach to my art practice and toward this effort I approached the summer institute as an artist residency rather than a workshop, in that I allowed myself freedom for both play and exploration without pressure of creating a finished work or project. In the past month I have gained experience with new materials, discovered new ways of looking, and perhaps most invaluably I have developed and refined concepts for upcoming exhibitions. 

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MICHAEL BUTTERWORTH

I began the summer institute with the question of “What if Don Quixote built a guesthouse for Sancho Panza?” At the root of this question is a chronic fascination of subverting and displacing mundane expectations. 

With this in mind I began by studying The Hudson Bay shop front windows, particularly the mannequins. In spite of the wide range of mannequin species, each with particular scales of pose and attitude, the scenes that these mannequins inhabit are incredibly passive in terms of their engagement with the outside public. We have become so used to this passive engagement that the public does not even consider that the mannequins in The Bay shop front windows do not possess certain body parts (heads, fully articulated limbs etc.) and that each scene contains peculiar elements such as improperly scaled wildlife.

The first step in the project was obtaining mannequins. Many were considered but the two chosen possessed the most lifelike qualities with fully articulated bodies and highly detailed features. These mannequins were assembled within a constructed set. The dimensions and geometry of this set corresponded to the dimensions of the Bay Shop Front Windows, the geometry of the plugin and the slightly enlarged scale of the mannequins. The life like quality and nudity of the mannequins seemed to offer up a more active engagement with the public, with many stares and sly gestures, but the effect was exclusive to the PlugIn shop front window and did not correspond with The Bay shop front windows across the street.

A series of mechanical prosthetics were made and adapted to the mannequin’s at Plug In. These prosthetics pointed and waved to the mannequins across the street at The Bay as if to have a conversation with them. The overall intention of the piece was for the public to have a sense of displacement in which their understanding and consideration of The Bay mannequins were brought into question via engagement with the shop front window constructed at Plug In.

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JANELLE TOUGAS

Provision Points is a series of vessels scattered throughout the city that provide me with domestic amenities that exist as oddities within the landscape. The project aims to blend some pleasures of home with some pleasures of the city while providing familiar emotional cues within environments that is generally public and shared.

These vessels are fastened to the city's infrastructure with bands that are similar to the ones already found on sign posts and street lights. 

The most developed vessel in this series is a 10 x 8 x 9 cm light pink silicone rubber vessel made to hold a dark red shade of lipstick in its shallow bowl. The object was first carved out of stone then replicated as a cast rubber piece. The rubber vessel takes on some of the unfinished stone and cracked plaster texture. This piece is also equipped with a small round mirror to apply the lipstick and to catch the light and reflect some of the object's 

surroundings. 

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JULIANA KUSYK

The following work emerged out of a interest of how one comes to construct and spatialize knowledge that is gained from a desire to more fully understand the world around them. A series of 'traces' left by an invented species were constructed and then analyzed as a way to generate a dialogue for myself of how one might come to discover and simultaneously compose knowledge that could potentially forge novel possibilities. 

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JAMES RUBIO

The research looks at using the Operating Room as an analog for the workspace in the gallery. Doctor Preference Cards are used in the OR to personalize the OR theatre for each particular surgeon. The rooms morph depending on which surgeon is operating next. For instance, it can range from an Orthopaedic surgeon that trained in the UK to a General surgeon that trained in Canada.

 

Artist Preference Cards were then used to customize the gallery space in the same way that Doctor Preference Cards were used in the OR. I used myself as a case study, analyzing the way I think and work within the existing gallery space; comparing my work space preferences with other artists in the space. The body being operated on in surgery is an analog for the model being “operated” on in the workspace.

I was working on a 1:20 model of the gallery space within the actual 1:1 gallery space, being able to have instant references within the gallery. This would allow direct comparisons of the space at different scales existing simultaneously, creating an ambiguous collection of scales within carefully framed photos. The coexistence and shifting back and forth between scales with precise sight lines shared amongst the model and the actual gallery space was an ongoing theme being studied throughout the research.

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DAGMARA GENDA

Attending the Plug In Summer Institute marked a series of returns for me: a return to Winnipeg after 10 years, a return to a time when I was in between places, a return to old friends and memories. These returns, which have since led me to relocate back to the city, prompted me to contemplate roads not taken, especially in past artistic projects.

 

In grad school I started tracing gestural strokes of paint in a period when my housing arrangements fell through and I was stuck living in between my studio and someone else's house for a month. In my current state of placelessness, I decided to go back to the same tracing methodology while also outlining and collaging together images of all the places I used to live. These buildings became a sort of hybrid memory growth drawn on a paper that is my height, 5'6”, and structured according to how many years I've lived here, 15. The result is a drawing that I have not yet finished but one that acted as a sort of autopsy not only of my memories here, but a body of work that might have been pushed in different directions before I moved on to connected, albeit aesthetically different, concerns. The process yielded new ideas in presentation, mark-making and potential sculptural possibilities.

OPEN STUDIO TOMORROW!

Summer Institute 2015 | Open Studio 

July 29, 2015 - 12pm to July 30, 2015 - 9pm

Plug In ICA | 460 Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, Canada 

Plug In ICA is pleased to host a public presentation of the work and concepts developed during our 2015 Summer Institute, Archival Shadows. Join us Wednesday, July 29^th between 12 and 5PM and Thursday, July 30^th between 4PM and 9PM for a chance to see first-hand what the participants over the month of July have been creating.  

Thirteen architects and artists have participated in Archival Shadows, this year’s iteration of the Summer Institute, which has been loosely themed around contingent architecture with faculty Nat Chard and Perry Kulper. Both faculty and participants will be in attendance over the course of the two days to engage in conversations about their work and the broader ideas developed during their time at the Summer Institute.

All are welcome. The Thursday evening event will be a closing reception.

As a still accumulating record of Archive Shadows, we have been posting daily blogs about the participants, the faculty and their work. Please visit:  http://pluginsummerinstitute2015.blogspot.ca/

- See more at: http://www.plugin.org/events/201507/summer-institute-2015-open-studio#sthash.q541X5lm.dpuf

Artist Talk: Dagmara Genda

Last night Summer Institute participant, Dagmara Genda, gave an artist talk where she shared previous work, and elaborated on recent approaches underway as a part of this month's residency. 

http://www.dagmaragenda.com/index.html

Please join us for Open Studios next week to see what everyone has been working on: 

July 29th and 30th 2-7pm. 

Photos by Alyssa Bornn

Speaking with Nat Chard

Nat Chard is Professor of Experimental Architecture at the Bartlett, University College London, following professorships at the Royal Danish Academy, Copenhagen, the University of Manitoba and the University of Brighton. He is an architect registered in the UK and has practised in London. His research practice develops means of discussing uncertain conditions in architecture and his recent work has been acted out through a series of nine types of drawing instruments. 

More information on Chard's practice can be found at his blog: http://natchard.com/

KI: I’m wondering if you can explain the title you and Perry Kulper have chosen for the Summer Institute workshop? What is indicative of Archive Shadows

NC: It’s an assembly of parts of Perry’s “archive ghosts” and my “paradoxical shadows.” It relates back to latent ideas but not so much in a way that they would influence things.

KI: Can you describe your relationship or approach to technology?

NC: I’m less and less interested in most modern technology, and more in the ways that ideas are embodied in technology; for instance in experimental and didactic instruments. Things like the planetary projector down the road at the Manitoba Museum, which is an East German Zeiss planetarium projector. It is the precise embodiment of a whole range of ideas and yet when you see it in action you might understand part of what is intended but also dream into it. I am interested in this combination where there is enough intellectual precision to engage you and yet enough content that is not immediately graspable and, having engaged, one has to imagine the fullness of the thing.  

KI: Would you say that this approach ties into your thoughts around indeterminacy and contingent architecture in terms of how we look at the function of certain technologies, spaces or objects? Specifically how do these ideas relate to your series of drawing instruments (that catapult paint)?

NC: Yes, the drawing instruments try to do this – they are both straightforwardly instrumental and within their own sets of logic make sense but also their instrumental appearance is a seduction to dream into the drawings they make and to take those drawings seriously.

In terms of the question of indeterminacy, if you look at the way in which architecture is typically framed, that there are ideas such as comfort and convenience (that are highly privileged) where the architect provides for those things that the person commissioning the project wants to happen. While this is partly necessary, the provision of convenience to do a certain thing also sets the expectation that this is the thing that should be done, and the provision of comfort can also encourage us to be passive. An architecture that was analogous to the instruments might provide for the things that need to happen but also provide a disturbance – might tease or seduce us to be more present and lead a more active existence.

KI: What would be a way of dealing with that, of challenging certain expectations so to speak?

The “Bird Automata Test Track” is looking at ways in which this might take place, but is one step removed from being such a proposal. If we were to have an active engagement with architecture it might behave a little more like us – as well as being helpful and compliant it might also tease, be provocative or silly or sometimes irritating, for example. The project was not trying to make the architecture unhelpful or uncomfortable or inconvenient or anything, but rather something that we can’t take for granted. To be like this, architecture might have to be a bit like an automaton. Instead of starting out with a proposal for this I made a project for a bird automata to think through what sort of relationship we might have with them and how it might be different from working with real animals, for example.

The project was also chasing other thoughts about how new programs are not prescribed by architectural typologies as a way of opening up possibilities for indeterminacy and following an interest in research facilities as an example of this possibility.

KI: It seems really appropriate to use the camera, considering the relationship between the two technologies. Both the instrument and camera depend on the release of a trigger in order to capture an image on a 2D surface. Can you explain your role when using these two technologies, in terms of capturing this indeterminate state?

NC: When making a drawing with the paint throwing instruments I would have an idea of where I would like the paint to hit the drawing pieces and a sense of what might be possible. I had not designed paint catapults before and they were more accurate than I had imagined, but the bighting point of the trigger was hard to predict. As a result I had a set of expectations of what would happen, but also a hope that something that expectation might happen. While aiming I also had a hope for what they would produce, the hope of capturing the paint in flight and in seeing what happens in terms of the drawing but all of these conditions were unreliable and unrepeatable. It built up a condition of the sublime, which is one of the conditions I’m interested in evoking in the architectural work. The instruments become as much of a rehearsal of an idea through engagement as they become a rehearsal of the idea through drawing.

 

KI: For the Body Project, I’m wondering if you can explain why you have built up a sort of blueprint of speculative organ structures in relation to architecture and the city?  

NC: The city and architecture make claims to have a close relationship with our bodies. The size of a door, the need for light, temperatures it makes for us, and so on. What the project does is that it looks at these sites and how they relate to the body (hygiene, heating, digestion etc). It brings in some extra organs that operate within those realms. If you take for instance Walter Christaller’s, “Central Place Theory” whereby he developed a theory for why towns and villages and cities are located in relationship to each other. He developed a hexagonal plan where a market town would have 6 villages around it and the city would have a similar number of market towns around it and the dispersal of these things, according to him, had to do with the perishability of the produce. For instance milk that is produced on the farm, goes to the market and then gets taken to the city, and it's important that it doesn’t go sour in that time, and this helps to organize spatial arrangements.

The infrastructure of the city is very determined by the structure of when we have meals, the temporal order of the day and infrastructure of getting rid of the waste. I think that if one started to have a degree of independence from those structures I think maybe we might be more present in the city, but not quite so dependent on it. I was trying to play out those questions; how is it that we can take possession of the city on our own terms, rather than physically changing the city. You could also ask the question dimensionally. Thinking about the city as being larger or smaller than us. Mine is more of an operational understanding of the city than a formal one.