Despite the pouring rain, a steady stream of visitors made it up to the quarry to see the smaller works of the stonemasonry class displayed in an exhibition and the larger stones to be seen directly in the places they had been formed. The teachers and students of the class ceaselessly guided visitors through the quarry, explaining about the different stones and their creators, which gave a very nice insight into the works but also the community that had formed there in the last 4 weeks.

Like the others, our tour ended seated at a huge wooden table, being offered tea and food, talking to satisfied students and amazed visitors. Some of the students, especially those coming from further away places like Egypt, will not be taking all of their works with them. Those not taken in by galleries or gardens will remain in the quarry to inspire next years students. The ones from this year celebrated their last evening together in high spirits, hoping to return next year, as does the writer of these lines. It has been  fantastic 4 weeks in the peace of the quarry, working directly at the heart of the stone. Hopefully, this can be continued for man years to come. For now, let us raise our glasses to this one. Cheers!

 

Yesterday a lot of excited and curiouse visitors streamed up to the fortress Hohensalzburg to finally enter the, normaly for public locked, halls of Summer Academy. Four classes, leaded by Marco Lulic, Liliana Moro, Martin Schmiedl and Christina Zurfluh, presented their sculptures, installations and paintings from three weeks working. The spectators got to see many different pieces from nearly 80 students from all over the world. The results were very impressive and also the feedback of the visitors showed that students and teachers did an amazing work together.

 

Thanks to the great technical support we had on the fortress everything worked out very well and the exhibition seemed to be very professional and well planed. It was so surprising what great works artists can create within three weeks and also the teachers were pretty impressed by the working motivation of their students. In the end people were working till late in the night to finish their projects and be ready for the big day when everybody comes to visit. What I really liked was that also students and professors from Hallein and the Kiefer quarry came to visit and see what happend on the fortress the last weeks. That really showed the huge interest in Summer Academy projects and that there is more about the chourses than just beeing around with your specific class. I think many people enjoyed to exchance and connect with other artist and also some exiciting colaboration projects will have their origin in Summer Academy 2010.

So sadly the Academy is over for this season but it really seemed that every participant and also the team is allready looking forward to next year when it's time for Summer Academy again.

 

Yesterday night students, teachers, friends and artlovers came together to gaze at the results of three weeks (except Katrina Daschners class - 2 weeks and Manuel Vilhenas class 4 weeks) work. In her welcome speech, the director of the Summer Academy, Dr. Hildegund Amanshauser told the visitors that she was impressed of the great results and also very proud of the amazing work the students and teachers created together. But not only the director seemed affected by the students presentations also the visitors and teachers from the other classes appeared to marvel about the work of their colleagues. After walking through the exhibition people could come togehter in the courtyard to have a drink, or two and talk about art, their experiences in Salzburg and Hallein or just to relax from three very intense hardworking weeks. The courtyard, where the exhibition was opened, was also the place where the night ended but nobody knows when this excatly was. All we know is that people seemed to have a lot of fun, dancing enjoying theirselves and celebrated an amazing 2nd term of Summer Academy 2010.

Yesterday, the artistic advisory board discussed the future of the summer academy. Two outsiders, Yilmaz Dziewior, current director of the Bregenz Kunsthaus, and Maria Lind, professor for post-graduate curatorial studies at Bard College in NY, together with two insiders, Ines Doujak and Hildegund Amanshauser talked about their experiences with the summer academy and their ideas for the future in front of an interesting and participating audience. The guests, who had spent the day visiting the different course locations, were thoroughly impressed by the intensity they had found in the classes, the bonds between the teachers and students, and the broad program the summer academy offers. Still, they see quite a bit of room for improvement, especially Maria Lind who would like to have more international students and teachers, and additional courses on subjects like curating an exhibition, or recurring courses that span over 3 years. Ines Doujak, who felt the desire of participating herself upon seeing some of the classes work, would like a leisurely chourse where you could take some time off and just work without any pressure or set goals. According to Hildegund Amanshauser, the summer academy is already a space where students don’t have to bring results at the end but are free to try things out without fear of failure. Yilmaz Dziewior was more interested in how the gap is bridged between professional and amateurs, and what is done if problems occur. As some of the professors say, their students are on so many different levels and have so many different approaches, that it rarely becomes a problem. The students come from all walks of life and are aged between 17 and 82 years old, but all are driven by the wish to create. Another idea, provided by Ines Doujak, is trying to intensify the exchange between students from different classes, but also with other teachers. Hildegund Amanshauser, who founded the artistic advisory board last year, seemed very pleased with the feedback, but also the plethora of ideas provided, and said she will keep thinking about them in the months and years to come. So watch out, art world! If the ambitious drift of tonight prevails, the summer academy will become a fixed point on the international art map.

 

Yesterday at the Alte Saline Hallein Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann were not talking about their artistic work or special artistic techniques, but about their work as curators. They reported about their experiences and working processes while constituting their exhibition "Principio Potosì" which is actually shown in Madrid. For this exhibition history and colonialism played an important role so it was unavoidable to tell the audience about the history of Potosì. This little city in Bolivia became very famous in the 16th century because of its huge mineral resources. Of chourse the quarrying was pushed by the spanish conquistadors in this time and people were forced to work in the mines. So the paintings from this time were characterized by colonialism and also by the christianisation the conquistadors brought with them. On a research trip to Bolivia Creischer and Siekmann found a lot of those paintings in churches and galleries and they really wanted to bring them to Europe (which was not always easy - or sometimes even impossible - as they told).

So what they did after selecting the paintings and researching about their background was asking several artists from all over the world to create an "answer" to the original. The reason why they didn't choose only bolivian artists but international ones was explained in a very clear way.

"Principio Potosì" stands not only for the city itself but also for the industrial working processes happening there. People were brought from the Philippines to work in the mines and the coins which were produced and embossed in Potosì were probably spread worldwide - as they were found on nearly every coast in the world. So Creischer and Siekmann define Potosì as one of the first capitalistic- and global-economic system we know about.

In the end Alice Creischer and Andreas Siekmann gave a very clear insight into to work as a curator and as they themselfs seemed so enthusiastic about Principio Potosì that a travel to Berlin in October (thats where the exhibition is going next) seems really worth it.

For more information visit: http://www.luzart.ch/ausstellungen/dem-principio-potosi-auf-der-spur.html