My main anchor since moving to Genk is the Live drawing classes I give to Re-Anima. I am not sure what I am doing or how I am doing it sometimes, yet, this class has been nothing short of magic.

The text bellow is how I explained it at the EARN conference… 

 

Last year, when they offered me this class, they thought I would be giving a regular anatomical drawing class but little did they know. 

During my first ever lesson, I had an idea to play an ‘exquisite corpse’ type of game, but in my version they could see the drawings. I told them that I wanted them to get into a sort of dialogue with each other through lines. React, stay quiet, react again by exchanging drawings frequently. The class was wonderful, the students left with BIG eyes. And of course after the success of the first class, I started to come up with different games/tasks/ ideas for the others. I focused on different forms of art like poetry, sculpture, music, performance during each class… Some classes I would bring a jar full of words and they would randomly pick them. I would ask them to focus on the word and the meaning, the letters, the associations. And take those thoughts as a base to draw the model. Last year, there were some incredible breakthroughs in the students. They discovered parts about themselves as artists but also as people. With every student, I took a different personal approach. There were students who were very receptive and ready to take crazy suggestions and go wild but there were also students who struggled to come out of their comfort zone and their idea of beauty. 

I built trust with them all in a very different way. 

 

The classes led up to a final class in which I decided to play the gamest game of it all. I was nervous about this but somehow I knew it would work. I came up with an idea of creating a LARP. I gave each student a role a few days before and a brief explanation of what they would do. I became the model and I was completely passive. 

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The roles were

 

The Disruptor : complete rebel, disrupted the space all the time

The Music Master : had control of the music, played with genres and tones

The Material Manager : brought in different material, papers etc and could give or take materials from everyone

The Space Dancer : had control over the space, moved people around, told them to turn around while drawing, changed the pose of the model

The Writer : brought in text, words, poetry, added sentences to peoples drawings

and more..

 

The game started as soon as they entered the room. Their objective was to become their roles, be aware of the space and interact with each other in their roles without talking. The experience ended with a moment of coming out of roles, sitting together, reflecting, looking at the drawings. We had so much fun that we repeated the game one more time.

 

One of the things I experienced was that the game was so beautiful and completely improvised dialogue between these artists was like a performance. I know it would not have been the way it was if there was an audience in the room, and it belonged at that moment and at that time. We were the lucky ones to have been there and witnessed it. 

 

This year, I am in doubt of repeating this game. I don’t feel the same trust in the group as I did last year. Although all my lessons so far have gone great and have been unique in their own way, the dynamic of the group feels rather different. 

 

Since the presentation, I had about 4 more classes in which I tried new things such as taking my dog as a model, another jar with prompts which were based on interaction with peers and live animating. I concluded this year's classes by leading them into creating an exhibition with their work. Overall, I feel very happy about having this playground during the two school years where a lot of my ideas and approach solidified. I am ready to explore the same attitude outside of the classroom and the live drawing context and put it into my next steps in this research. For example, I am planning on giving an automatic animation workshop for 2 days aimed at immigrants living in Barcelona, at an artist-run space.

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Genk still remains a very interesting geolocation for my research although it won’t only remain here. During one of the beginning convestations I had with Virgilio, I told him that since moving to Genk, I was yet to feel grounded. This brought the idea of creating a form of a atelier,station,laboratory based on ground level of Genk. I decided that I wanted to create a sort of hub where moments can happen. I wanted to organise events to collect and archive stories, humour and emotions of the immigrant groups living here. originally , i wanted to have this space independently but soon it proved itself to be a bit above my head (for the moment…) so i got in contact with the artistic collectives based in Genk. Werkhuis and The Building. They both seemed enthusiastic about the idea of this laboratory i wanted to create. I decided to work with Werkhuis in the end as they had been planning a big move from their original location and they were already wishing to incorporate some similar ideas and values that I was bringing together with my project. We stayed up to date with each other and had meetings throughout the year. The move to the new space will happen at the end of 2024 and I soon hope to start physically creating this space in which my research can take physical forms.