Sommerakademie
August 16 - 26, 2011

Juicy Contaminated Circle
From Art to Life and Back

During the Sommerakademie 2011, we tried to close the circle from art production by way of the curator, art education, observation, comprehension, oral and visual feedback back to production.
Art affects the viewer and vice versa. This interaction is visible. The curators, artists, art educators and the audience itself are involved in this process. The circular movement replaces the one-way street. Art as a transmitter and the receivers return it, as if they were going back and forth on a see-saw. The orbits of art and art viewing are being made visible.

It's not about art alone, but about the visualisation of seeing or reading in art. Artists seek exchanges and in return incorporate the results into their own work. This creates new forms of exchange, of participation. The inside and outside of art are interwoven and growing. Not only the art work itself but the act of watching and absorbing it, performed by a counterpart, a public are at the centre.
Artists/curators/educators always provide procedures for the acquisition of aesthetic literacy. But how do we get the necessary response and information as to whether our visions and statements are being received and are fertile? Aesthetic literacy means being able to read the built environment – as well as art – for what they are. How this happens, what literary traces arise and what new knowledge is being created, we showed by artistic means and the study of historical documents. In practical work and discussions we designed, together and reciprocally, translation and documentation techniques that will help generate reactions and feedback. Another focus was directed to the jump-starts available in the absence of a connecting spark when looking at art. We explored effect and reaction, curiosity or rejection in the encounter with art. Access to different views on art – even with people who see art as a new territory – allowed others’ or one’s own art to be experienced in a new perspective.