Akram Zaatari 25th of August - 2nd of September After Presence

Akram Zaatari

Akram Zaatari will use his work on intangible concepts such as invisible borders (geographical and psychological), manifestations of desire (through dress codes and political gender activism), and his work on collecting and studying photographic and other archives as a tool to further explore the ties between art and politics on the one hand, and facts and documents on the other. The participants have to choose between different areas of study, eventually narrowing down their work on specific interventions.

These interventions include:
- City locations charged with intense past experiences, such as military, social or urban violence.
- The personal histories of individuals whose recent lives were marked by constant mobility, immigration, and displacement, such as in the case of worker immigrants, also known as the invisible class.
- Historical events and facts, such as particular incidents that happened in the city - collecting data, and developing narratives around them. The course will collect data from various media including the Internet or from one-to-one interviews; the students will take pictures, look in archives, etc., with the goal of developing methodologies of work approaching different topics.

The course will establish stimulating concepts that cut across different disciplines, and is an initiation into working in politically- and socially- charged situations.

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Hans Weigand
3rd of September - 6th of September

Warsaw Condensed

Snapshots: the Old Quarter of the city restored after the war, the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage: a backdrop; the MDM, the Marszalkowska residential quarter: "national in form - socialist in content" from 1952; the Palace of Culture, an unwelcome present from Moscow: Soviet neoclassicism with a Polish attic pediment 230 metres above the ground; the foreign hotel chains that came with the construction boom of 1990, all the "Centers" everywhere; Communist- Capitalist - City: Helicopter architecture; the huge parks with their wild beauty: the whole city can be crossed along leafy paths - Warsaw still has a strangely torn look to it, with empty spaces, deserted areas, places that cannot speak, decompressed, riddled with the asphalt strips of vast highways, with gigantic pedestrian labyrinths below them where people lose their way only to re-emerge into the daylight at the wrong location.

The most recent large-format works by Weigand are psychedelic picture puzzles, collapsing views of the city surrounded by superimposed layers of landscape containing numerous scenographic details. You surf through the pictures as you would through the architecture of Venetian visionary Giovanni Battista Piranesi, or the Dutch psychodelic Hieronymus Bosch.

Religion ist Opium für das Volk, Hans Weigand 2005,
Photo:Gabriela Senn Galerie, Vienna

The course will take a cautious, critical and detailed photographic look at Warsaw, using a hallucinatory technique to capture the essence of the city. The objective is to create a collective picture story.

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Olaf Breuning
7th of September - 10th of September

Zombies: A Collective Photograph at the End of the Mobile Academy

"There should be a photo. It should include about 30 extras that are dressed up in cardboard boxes. They will remind one of robots or of zombies who have just climbed out of the garbage bin. Each of them will be wearing a large box over the body, a small one over the head, and yet an even smaller one for the hands and feet. A text will be written on the large box reading from the upper left to lower right. All of the other boxes should be painted in bright colours. The whole thing should have the effect of an oversized kindergarten project, i.e. it will appear harmless, but the text will be to the contrary. Some parts of the photo should come from completely miscellaneous sources, and nevertheless, the overall forms a coherent yet strange landscape. What will be will be. Perhaps the concept will change completely. Ideas have to be adapted to the time when something happens, and as the photo will be done in September, it is difficult to predict. Whatever finally ends up being in the picture, the most important thing is that all participants should have a good time working on this crafty and elaborate photo." (O.B.)

Ghosts, Photo by Olaf Breuning

www.olafbreuning.com

The course for Photography will be realized in cooperation with Akademia Fotografii.

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