Several Persons

Day 1
 

A day of collective readings of the work of the 15 students: each brings to the studio prints of their images, dating from periods of creation as far apart as possible, so as to cover a broad temporal spectrum of their creation. These may be trial prints or small formats. By default, a paper portfolio, or digital (as a last resort).

Day 2
 

We meet in front of the Arba entrance. Students suit up for a long walk around Brussels, and grab their cameras. A situationist-style march begins: each student takes it in turn to lead the march and set the pace for a given period of time. The destination of the march is not known in advance. It can take us a long way from school. Throughout the walk, the aim is for each person to produce an image for each other workshop participant. An image/donation, an image/offering. But that's not all. In short, it's an image/translation, an image/language, at the crossroads of one's own photographic language and that of the other person. All captured in the public space. Images can be linked immediately or metaphorically, by analogy or metonymy. The important thing is to capture the essence of the other person's poetics. The aim is to come away from the walk with 15 (students) x 15 images. At 4 p.m., the walk ends where we arrived, at the random (and capricious) whim of successive guides.

Day 3
 

We meet at Arba, in the classrooms. Each student brings an image (or even a group of images) from his or her work that he or she would like to exhibit. We print the 15 x 15 images gleaned the day before in small format (like 10 x 15 cm). The group is divided into three groups of five people. Each group is then responsible for curating the work of five students, represented not only by their personal works, but also by the 15 images/offers, now accompanying the original image (and differing from it in format). The student in question will also have made an additional image, in Brussels, doubling his or her own work. Each group decides on the scenography, as well as any adjacent writing/mediation work.
 

Workshop photos: Florine Maitre

How does the creative process work on an individual level?

Is individual creation exclusively individual or is it under the influence of a collective dimension?

How does art history deal with individual and collective creation?

You are this artist playing with words. 
You are that "young artist with promise". 
You are the artist with a sense of humor. 
You are that animal artist. 
You are that artist who makes pornographic works, aesthetically very elaborate. 
You are that artist who uses the English language in his art.
You are the artist who is interested in the body.
You are the artist who works on memory. 
You are that forgotten historical artist who is suddenly being revalued.   
You are that artist obsessed with lines.
You are that miniaturist artist.
You are that artist working in the manner of the Düsseldorf school (all distance and geometry).  
You are that geometric abstract artist.
You are that artist who works only with numbers...
You are that artist who works with color. 
You are that committed artist. 
You are the artist who hides everything.
You are that artist who says nothing.
You are the artist who plays with gravity, showing everything in a strange way. 
You are the artist who is inspired by history.
You are that artist who is inspired by the history of art. 
You are that artist who makes Land Art from the living room.
You are that artist who has researched a subject.
You are that artist who says it all. 
You are that artist who talks about himself. 
You are that artist who makes very saleable works. 
You are that artist who makes unsellable work. 
You are that artist who does too much.
You are that artist who values what is unique. 
You are that artist who values what is generic.
You are that artist who repeats himself.
You are that artist who travels.  
You are that artist who analyzes Brussels. 
You are that artist who is not of his time.
You are that artist who is of his time.
You are that artist whose work functions on the principle of Russian dolls.
You are that artist who turns sad situations into funny ones.
You are that artist whose work unfolds according to the mirror principle.
You are the artist whose works are unique in the detail, where they seem banal in the whole.
You are that artist who creates works of an event that may happen soon.
You are that artist who creates works about what happened this morning.
You are that artist who makes works that exist only in the air.
You are that artist who makes the kind of art that your father or mother would make if they were artists.
You are the artist who makes works that are based on assembly plans.
You are that artist who makes works that are easily stored.
You are that angry artist.
You are that distracted artist.
You are that happy artist.

With the exceptional participation of Daniele Coppola, Gianmarco Falcone, Jacopo Pagin, Linda Carrara, Stefano Moras, Laura Viale, Robberto & Milena Atzori

Fluid dynamics

We delve into the database of the Italian imagination, focusing on the way in which the works engage the notion of space. We analyse the approaches to space that Italian artists, whether painters, photographers, sculptors or architects, show in their works... What are the games of proportions, orientation, formats, gaps between volumes, perspectives, trompe l'oeil, the layering of planes, the attention to the near, the far, the off-camera...? This analysis can be done through sketches, through explanations of the observed approaches to space through drawing. Let us think of those art historians who were interested in the mathematical dimension of Renaissance paintings, revealing the principles underlying certain compositions of frescoes or paintings.

Crossed portraits

Each student has uploaded his/her portfolio and the work done so far in the module to a common online data storage space for all to see. Each student is then asked to walk around the perimeter of the Abbaye de la Cambre (including the gardens and the streets surrounding the site) with a view to making a photographic report and/or collecting found objects. The subject of this report and/or collection is the work of each pupil in the class (if the choice is made on the principle of found objects, at least three objects must be collected for each practice pointed out). Each pupil thus paints a diagonal, metaphorical but no less precise portrait of the practice of each of his/her classmates. This is based on the distinctive features of each practice, which we will have learned to know as we go along, and on the involvement of each one in the exercises. Each student also makes a self-portrait of his/her own creative practice, based on the same collection of found objects or photographic speculation.

Remake

Each student chooses one of the features of the Italian collective imagination that has been identified in the course of the research by the group. He/she then chooses one of his/her personal creations from the past, and undertakes to remake it, incorporating, integrating, the trait of the selected imaginary within it. In the case where the original work involves work that cannot be literally taken up in the time allotted, and with the tools available, the student is given the freedom to consider the original version in a "lighter" light, and then to create an equally light Italian variant, adapted to the technical means that can be engaged within the framework of the module and the time available.

Pictorial portrait of our guests

We create a portrait of the practice of each guest we have received in the module, by gathering, in a free mode, sets of images of works from our Italian database. The sets of images resonate, extend and share the specific characteristics of the practice of each artist we met. We then try to observe whether, under cover of these characteristics, a common, collective characteristic emerges.

An ephemeral exhibition

In our Italian database, we detect a feature of the Italian collective imagination that has not yet been highlighted, or we base ourselves on a feature already identified by the group. We then create an installation (which can be miniature) in the physical, real space, deploying this feature. This ephemeral plastic intervention is documented through photography. The archival images are organised into a document on the computer. The class is then shown both the physical result of the work and its digital documentation.

Genealogy

Armed with a line from the Italian collective imagination, identified through contact with contemporary art, we delve into the Italian database on the ancient art side. We try to find the historical roots of this trait, which would have been taken up by the younger generation. The so-called "ancient" art may not be so ancient: 18th century, or 19th century. Or even the beginning of the 20th century. To establish this comparison, one proceeds by associating images, in the form of plates, or by any other textual, visual, or even audiovisual or sound means. Another method may consist in choosing a historical figure of Italian art (for example Masaccio), then associating with the work of this historical artist, the works of artists who came after him (or even much later) who would be his heirs, in the form of a genealogical derivation/derivation (see also the definition of this science called phylogenesis).

City-Country

We dive into our database of the Italian imagination and identify artists from the same Italian cities, or from places close to these cities (it is likely that the cities sufficiently represented, in terms of numbers, are cities such as Turin, Venice, Rome, Milan, or even Naples - if you are interested in a city that is not well represented, it is possible to look for other artists who come from it and who are not yet in our database). You copy the files of works by these artists onto your personal computer. We then try to see if an aesthetic identity, linked to the city, emerges. You establish a visual thesis about this. This geographically based research can also be extended by using images of the city and its surroundings that can explain the attraction of the artists in the city to a particular subject, landscape configuration, political statement, ethic or poetic. We can also use everything that makes up the historical substratum of this city, particularly in its folkloric and vernacular aspects, but also in its more official aspects.

Chromatic palette

A chromatic study of the Italian collective imagination is carried out. We try to distinguish the palette of each city/region of Italy represented in our database, through the artists that make it up, and who come from this or that area. This chromatic research is expressed in the form of a map, or in any other form that seems appropriate. We can deal with tints, as well as intensities. The analysis can be specified by distinguishing the way in which the colour is treated (in flat tones, in muted tones, in brightness, as a counterpoint to a black, a white, a yellow, in a sparing, parsimonious way, or abundantly, loudly). The analysis will address both the colour and the way in which artists use it.

World's Fair

Find a way to show all the research carried out during the course on the Italian collective imagination. We eventually print the documents you have created, from exercise to exercise, and we find a way to spatialise all this material, to create a kind of exhibition, which can be presented to our last guests of the course, on December 22nd. This exhibition serves as a support for a final debate between the students of the class and our guests.

We are told: Brussels Drawing Week, the week of drawing, in this very city, at the beginning of October 2022. We are told that there are events everywhere that honour this medium in all its variations. So the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels says: get involved! It's the drawing festival: it will be this week, not the week before, not the week after: this week. Before, it will be too early. After, it will be too late. This will be his launch window, his shooting window! Let's give it a party! Paper, the first of all guilty media: it loses nothing by waiting. We will cover it with intelligible and unintelligible signs. We will colour it, and colour it. We will sculpt it. We will put it away, only to disturb it again. We will photograph it and it will photograph us. It will upset us. It will surprise us. We will punch it. We will punch holes in it. We will make round holes in it, and square holes, punctuated with rectangular comments. We'll take care of it, we'll pamper it, we'll dirty it, then, magnanimously, we'll clean it. It will be cut up. We will project buildings and benches on it: we will come back to it. We will crumple it up, we will print it. We will lithograph it. It will be laid out and folded. It can be woven and silk-screened. We will hide it, seal it, buy it too (alas). We will sell it (hopefully). We will shelter it from the sunlight. We will expose it to the glare of Saturn. We will make candy wrappers, bank notes, aeroplanes. We will glue it. We will sign it. We will write it, we will define it. We will have fun. We will exaggerate. We will make tons and tons of it. As for the cardboard, the wood, the fabric, everything that accommodates trace and action? Don't make me reveal the fruit of your imagination already!

The Botanique in Brussels is an art centre that holds temporary exhibitions. Although not a museum, they do have a small collection of works donated by artists who have exhibited there over the years. 

In 2022, the wish was expressed to do a project around this collection with a class of secondary school students from the Athénée Joseph Bracops in Anderlecht. 

Under the direction of Mathilde Manche and Grégory Thirion, a project of initiation to contemporary art and the creation of an exhibition with works from the Botanique collection was set up.

From late winter to early spring, various workshops are offered. 

The first workshop focuses on the portrait. Instructions are distributed to the students at random. They are asked to draw a certain type of portrait. For example: "Draw a self-portrait when you are no longer alive".

The second workshop focuses on the representation of space. Two types of instructions are randomly crossed, a space and a way to represent it: "a map of a lake city / only with headlines cut from newspapers".

The third workshop is devoted to the idea of classification. An identical sheet of paper is handed out to each student. Instructions are shown on a screen, and each one makes a similar drawing, discreetly singling out the whims of each personality. 

The fourth workshop is an opportunity to try out video. A film genre (for example: a thriller) is crossed with a plot (for example: the last day of the sales), and from there an improvisation is woven. Each film crew makes a film of a few minutes. 

The fifth workshop focuses on the works in the Botanique collection. A wacky questionnaire is distributed to each student, who is assigned a work. Written or drawn answers are written on the questionnaire, becoming de facto an explanatory note on the work. 

The sixth workshop puts the pupils in the shoes of the exhibition curator. Miniature reproductions of the works in the collection are distributed, so that each pupil makes a sketch of a display, supported by a guiding idea.

Other contributors continue the work with the students. The project concludes with an exhibition at the Botanique with the real works.