Spatial Negativity and Hijacks Through Hybrid Materiality

About

This course is part of the International Summer Academy Salzburg 2022.

From this perspective, a sustained practice of queer methodology, as an interdisciplinary spatial form of expression, will seek to overwhelm all category definitions of art forms, to open up enough room for interpretation, for speculative "negative space" containing something which can (then) be offered to others as a new aesthetic experience.

The course, as fusion, encourages students to work not only aesthetically but also conceptually in adapting different political strategies, operating towards spatial relational rather than conditional modes of framing a production. Moreover, through group working and research, the course will explore, critically and practically, methods of rearrangement, appropriation, collage and other means of visual abstraction – as a way to find a language resistant to normative spatial demands, and to challenge the relation between object and subject within existing boundaries and conditions in a democratic domain.

"In-betweenness", as a "negative space" of being, enables one to resist and to navigate through different spatial and prescriptive demands – either by reacting/responding to it or by refusing to do so. Such an approach is a way of detouring, where the existing modes of visual production and knowledge can become fluid, and are therefore still susceptible to re-articulation and re-transformation.

Course leader

Flaka Haliti

Target group

Open to anyone interested in fine arts (focus on Sculpture, Installation & Mixed media)

Course aim

In one-on-one and group meetings, we will investigate and discuss the idea of negativity as a method of resisting normative spatial demands that challenge the relation between object and subject, needs and desires. Also, in a diverse group of participants we will actively create time and space for this process to take place, enabling collective desires and understanding to grow, diminish or transform, taking democracy as a basic means of education.

Fee info