Michael Beutler

In the conglomerate

22 July–10 August 2019

Media
Sculpture, installation

Location
Hohensalzburg Fortress

Teaching language
English (teacher also speaks German, co-teacher also speaks Swedish)

What to bring
Materials are provided, but you may bring your own preferred materials and tools.

Requirements
None

Maximum number of participants
20

Co-teacher
Gerry Bibby, Ida Lennartsson

Participation fee
€ 950.– (€ 710.–)

Starting from the rock on which Hohensalzburg Fortress stands, this course makes an excursion into the world of the conglomerates – in the broadest sense.

A conglomerate is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of gravel or pebbles. Generally speaking, it is a mixture of different components that combine to form something else. It is rare for something in our environment to be made of a single material; thus in art, too, multiple materials are combined in art-works.

The course aims to encourage participants’ individual work, particularly reflecting the choice and combination of materials. Can the range of materials in a work be extended, or even exchanged? How far does this entail an altered interpretation of the work? What influence does the material have on the surroundings, the space, also in its social dimension? What kinds of freedom or limitations arise from decisions about materials? What happens with material-related experiences if the artist rejects one material in favour of another?

The basic materials will be borrowed partly from one of the store-rooms in the Fortress, partly found and collected in and around Salzburg, or brought by the students themselves, and supplemented by non-material, abstract, performative or theoretical and pictorial materials.

With all these activities, the course is itself a conglomerate, all the participants constantly collaborating in its form, composition and presence in the Fortress rooms.