Tim Renshaw – Tues AM, Weeks 2, 3 and 4 Landscape Painting: clouds, blots and any form whatsoever ‘I like a canvas to breath and be alive. Be alive is the point’, Lee Krasner

Guo Xi, Early Spring (1072) These sessions will investigate ways to look, think and depict landscape through painting. The sessions will comprise online discussion about material and techniques artist use to depict landscape and discussion on the meaning and creative potential of working from landscape. The sessions will include practice-based experiments that will involve you making work directly from landscape. Landscape painting as a subject in itself occurs relatively late in European painting and was often tied to questions of property and nature as something to be colonised. Cozen’s New Method of Assisting the Invention of Drawing Original Compositions of Landscape (London, 1785) suggests a different and more deviant strand of thinking. Here landscapes attraction as a subject is related to the challenge it presents to the artist in representing the liveliness, flux and fluidity of landscape. The challenge to invent a new model of depicting runs through Turner, Cezanne, Monet and expands on through the non-representational paintings of Krasner, Frankenthaler, Mitchell, Kirkerby and Grosse. Session 1 – the online session will begin with Cozen’s blot method of drawing landscape and then consider different techniques painter’s use to respond to the flux and formless states of nature For the practical component you will need paper, brushes and a water based mediums such as ink, gouache, acrylic or watercolour. Session 2 – in this session we will look at ways colour may be used to animate landscape space. This will include some basic colour theory and some ideas about colour composition that develop in twentieth century modernism that emphasise

circulation, expansion and tension over depth and modelling. For the practical component you will need paper or canvas and brushes and either water based colour mediums such as ink, gouache, acrylic or watercolour or oil paint Session 3 - this session will consider the relationship between non-representation painting and landscape. We will look at different methods of applying paint to different surfaces and consider the affective potential of colour and composition. We will consider how the complex form of natural phenomena may inform the structure and space of painting. For the practical component you will need paper or canvas and brushes and either water based colour mediums such as ink, gouache, acrylic or watercolour or oil paint Christine Eliison Mon AM, Weeks 2, 3 and 4 Title of Material Session: Sonic Interventions Location of each session: Teams Overall brief description: This fieldwork project will consider sound in the environment and how it can be exploited in art practice. You will be introduced to ways of listening, recording and composing in a sonic exploration of your surroundings -interior and exterior. It will involve group discussion and interaction during online interactive sessions as well as individual development in between each session. At the end of the 3 sessions you will be equipped with skills to create your own sound works. It is suitable for anyone with an interest in sound. No previous experience is required. But it will also help anyone already working with sound to further develop practice in this area. (It is also open to anyone who came to this session last term as it will be quite different now that we are doing it online.) Description of what will be happing in each session: In Session 1 we will focus on listening in a variety of environments – you will be supported in identifying areas of sonic interest in your surroundings. In Session 2 we will look at different ways to record and capture sounds. In Session 3 we will experiment with composition and design – you will be introduced to sound editing software and ways of creating your own compositions and audio outputs. List of materials required: If you have a recording device please have it to hand. If you have a device with a microphone input please bring a microphone. Most phones will already have a recording app but otherwise there are a range of free recording apps you can download. A notepad and basic drawing/mark-making materials will also be useful.

James Hellings Tues PM Weeks 3, 4 and 5 Title of Material Session: Romantic Conceptualism Location of each session: TBC (three online, and an individual walk in your local area) Overall brief description: In this fieldwork session we will discover what it means to talk of 'the idea or concept of an emotion.' We'll also see how two art historical movements - romanticism and conceptualism - have been brought together by the writer and curator Jörg Heiser, in an exhibition and book of the same name. Description of what will be happing in each session: 1) introductory lecture, online, PowerPoint. 2) reading seminar. 3) walking and working in your local area. List of materials that the student will be required to bring along: Something romantic, something conceptual. Annabel Frearson, Friday AM, Weeks 3, 4 and 5 Text-based art Overview brief description: In these online sessions we will examine and develop text-based artworks across a range of media and contexts. This might include works that are ephemeral and/or performative. We will discuss the work of other artists who work with text, as well as ideas and techniques of re-purposing existing ‘found’ texts and materials, and making site-specific interventions. We will consider how different human (and non-human) participants might help produce, encounter and read or consume our works. If you have any queries or concerns about any aspect of these sessions, including any access requirements that might affect your full participation, please contact Annabel well ahead to discuss: a.frearson@reading.ac.uk. All sessions will be online via Teams. A link will be sent ahead. We will share research and examples of work via this Padlet: https://padlet.com/Annabel_Frearson/x29fb5im92zdw53k Session 1: Context In this introductory session I will give an overview of what we will cover across the group of sessions and give a background to the concepts and practices of text-based art, with a brief to produce your own work/s. We will share and discuss examples of text-based artworks by other artists that we find interesting, taking into account elements such as:

- use and origin of text

- language used - materials/media - scale, font, form, etc - context (time, place, cultural refs) - duration - meanings and ideas - artist & wider body of work.

Preparation:

- research and upload an example of text-based artwork by any artist to this Padlet: https://padlet.com/Annabel_Frearson/x29fb5im92zdw53k [click on the + sign in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen to add a link, image, file, etc and brief description]

- bring notes based on the above criteria, and other considerations as relevant. Session 2: ‘Uncreative’ writing; writing under constraint; various techniques This session will be focussed around the concept of ‘uncreative’ writing – working with existing/found texts. We will look at the work of the OuLiPo and the idea of writing following rules and constraints, and consider different tools and techniques for working with existing texts, such as: cut ups; anagrams/paragrams; systems for ordering; mash-ups; transposition; etc. Preparation:

- To practise some of these techniques, please bring some existing texts; literally anything, eg: text messages/social media posts, extracts from books, packaging labels, train tickets, song lyrics, junk mail, political text, single words, weather reports, instructions, legal/religious texts, etc etc. These can be hard copy, but also bring some digital text.

- Ensure that you have access to and basic familiarity with Microsoft Excel (any issues with this, please let Annabel know ahead).

Session 3: Outputs This session will be focussed on different forms (materials, scale) of text-based works, as well as modes of output and sites of dissemination, taking into account the role of audience/reader. Preparation:

- research and upload to the Padlet examples of text-based artworks in five different media/forms and five different contexts

- research and upload to the Padlet five different fonts, with a brief description of their origins and uses

- bring a selection of materials and tools for making, eg paint, clay, papier maché, collage, card, voice recorder/sound editing.

Alun Rowlands & Susanne Clausen, Monday PM, Weeks 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11 On Waiting (for the host to join) Performance and Writing Out Loud Workshop Led by Susanne Clausen and Alun Rowlands This extended fieldwork session is for students interested in Performance, Writing and Literature. It is also an opportunity to take part in an international student exchange project to collaborate with students from the F+F School in Zurich who will join this workshop. Together we will be working towards an exhibition project at Literaturmuseum in Zurich Autumn 2021. In this workshop we will explore both live and filmed or mediated digital performance practice through writing, speaking, reading. We will explore how artists use literature and text to produce as scripts and scores for performances, images or other artworks. Workshop participants will support each other to develop individual or collaborative projects, explore writing and performance technique and audio-visual tools. We will explore, read, research and share writing ideas, prompts and exercises that takes us from the page to performance. Call them schemas, scripts, cognitive maps, mental models, metaphors, or narratives, the scripts within our practices are how we explain the world to ourselves and share our worldview with others. How can we write scores for each other to help with this process? We tell ourselves stories about ourselves (identity), write about the world (perceptions), raise our voices to others (relationships), alongside the drama of our experiences (interpretation). What kind of scripts do we produce about and through art, and for whom? We will also consider translation between languages, between texts and literature, but also between different art practices. How do we act, write and speak to understand, misunderstand each other productively. How do we counter the prevalence of English as language of the artwork. What other models can we propose? We will look at art and texts that involve differences and collisions and that therefore requires constant negotiation process, where ‘writing out loud’, and our multiple voices represent the relationship between translation and our work. … Fieldwork blog https://padlet.com/Alun/hdbcmor51erds99c There are three Artist Talks scheduled that support this project by Annabel Frearson (week 7), Una Lee (week 8), Ceylan Öztrük (week 9) Workshops will be on Teams and Zoom Provisional Schedule Week 3 (25 Jan) Meeting and introduction with F+F Zurich students and staff, short presentations or work and interests in the project via Zoom

Week 4 (1 Feb) Performance and Writing and workshops session on Teams Week 5 (8 Feb) Performance and Writing and workshops session on Teams

Week 6 (15 Feb) Production, Production, Production – student led session

Week 8 (1 March) Performance and Writing Joint Presentation with F+F Zurich students via Zoom Week 10 (15 March) Performance and Writing Joint Presentation with F+F Zurich students via Zoom Week 11 (15 March) Joint Reading & Zurich Planning for exhibition, Text and scores via Zoom Tina O’Connell – Thurs PM, Weeks 2, 3 and 4 Title of Material Session: Sculpture: Theft by Finding

Title of Fieldwork Session: Sculpture: Theft by Finding Location of each session: on-line Session 1 Introduction session, laying out the pathway of the Sculpture fieldwork sessions Session 2 Materials session with one to one’s on-line Session 3 performative presentation of all work produced. Overall brief description: Sculpture: Theft by Finding The aim of this materials session is to explore the unique role of sculpture as the subject of politics as well as an artistic form. Exploring sculpture and monumental works within such a context is a means to address social, cultural and personal attitudes, as well as that of museums and cultural institutions whose decisions shape

our perceived cultural heritage. Working through artists vision of where to draw inspiration, the title is borrowed from a room in the exhibition Modern British Sculpture, Royal Academy in 2011, which exhibited objects collected by the British Museum from across its empire and globally. A range of activities will extend from personal artistic approaches towards examination of critical sculptural practices emerging in Britain today. Description of what will be happing in each session: Session 1: Thursday the 21st The session asks; What do I think sculpture is? What do you think sculpture is? Session 2: Thursday the 28th Equipment/materials/demonstration, What tools, processes and forms shape sculpture and encounters with material practices today. This session addresses emergent approaches to new technologies and the production of new experiences, events and objects. Session 3: Thursday the 4th As part of the participation in the online exhibition event we will present sculptures we have made as part of a Performance Parade. List of materials that the student will be required to bring along: Notebooks, papers and pens. Any recording devices, including good cameras, laptops or phones if you have Kate Allen, Mon PM, Weeks 2, 3 and 4 Title of Fieldwork Session: Participatory Art In a Pandemic Location of each session: On-line These sessions with are experimental and exploratory, looking at how community engagement/participation is using digital media including Zoom, Apps etc to continue to offer engagement opportunities to community groups to support and create artwork during Lock Down/Social Distancing. We will refer to Fluxus, Participatory and Relational Art in the community. We will explore the potential of creating accessible workshop content for online engagement sessions and events at a distance. We will investigate the potential of Geo location Apps to capture stories, create awareness of sensory experiences to be experienced at a distance. We will create online workshop materials, develop transient interventions, socially distanced conversations on UoR Campus and around Reading Station to collect sound clips which can be accessed using apps. and create a Geo Located Sensory Walk for The Museum of English Rural Life. Session One: 18th Jan : Intro exploring how artists have continued to engage with communities during lockdown. Session Two: 25th Jan : Research and Develop event/workshop to make museum collections more diverse and inclusive to share with children from local schools in response to The MERL and/or Reading Museums online collections.

Session Three: 1st Feb : Develop and facilitate an engagement activity during the session devised for a particular community group that you would like to connect with. Pil Kollectiv, Thurs AM, Weeks 2, 3 and 4 1. Your name Pil Kollectiv 2. Title Pop music as art 3. Description (200 words) Popular music is one of the most neglected forms of art and it often doesn’t

receive the serious critical discussion it deserves. Pop combines music, performance, visuals and text to deliver complex ideas about class, race, gender, boredom, addiction, comradery and technology. In this workshop we will talk about how to talk about pop music. Encountering some leading critical voices on pop, we will try and see how to understand songs, what musical styles and forms can tell us and what the history of pop can teach us about the present. The focus of these sessions will be a consideration of the use of music in the context of art and we will also try a few simple techniques to manipulate sound digitally to use pop as an art material.

4. Short description of each session 1. Remote: Listening to pop music - ideology, culture industry, identity

2. Remote: conceptual pop - how to make art with popular music 3. Remote: Image sound and text - covers, press, live on TV, lyrics

5. Materials required

computer (for sound editing), headphones would be good 6. Dates/Times 21.1.21, 28.1.21, 4.2.21, 4.3.21 and 11.3.21 from 10:00 - 12:00. 7. Image Please supply

Galia Kollectiv, Wed PM, Weeks 2, 3 and 4 1. Your name Galia Kollectiv 2. Title Wearable Futures: Textiles and Costume for Performance 3. Description (200 words) Artists often use the tools of garment construction to create costumes for

performance. Using textiles as a sculptural material has allowed artists to inhabit objects, envision new bodies and challenge the ways in which fashion reflects and organises social experience. In these sessions, we will look at historical and contemporary examples of artists reimagining clothing and learn basic construction techniques for working with textiles. Students will represent their own ideas of the future through experimental garment design, supported by online presentations and tutorials. We will then meet to present the work outdoors for a live catwalk performance and document the resulting projects.

4. Short description of each session 1. Remote: Introduction to costume in art

2. Remote: Pattern cutting and tutorials to develop project 3. Remote: Sewing techniques and tutorials supporting construction

5. Materials required

long sheets of paper, fabric, thread, sewing machine, scissors, ruler, pencil, pins, needles.

6. Dates/Times 21.1.21, 28.1.21, 4.2.21, 4.3.21 and 11.3.21 from 10:00 - 12:00. 7. Image Please supply

Anna kontopolou, Thurs PM, Weeks 3, 4 and 5

In these fieldwork sessions we will research, develop and deliver together a student-led programme of socially engaging, participatory and collaborative activities that respond to the theme of CARE. This programme will then be presented as part of this year’s Reading Assembly: Care, (Summer Term 2021). Reading Assembly: Care is a platform that connects students of different ages, artists, curators, Reading-based community groups and arts organisations as co-investigators on urgent issues around ‘care’. Through this project you will be able to work collaboratively with various co-investigators from the Department of Typography and Visual Communication, Department of Film, Theatre and Television, Reading-based Secondary Schools, community groups like Reading Refugee Support Group, Starting Point, Compass Recovery College, and Whitley Researchers, as well as Postgraduate Research-Curators from Zurich University of the Arts. The programme will be supported by Reading Borough Council and will be broadcasted as part of Reading Culture Live (Summer term). Together we will explore: • The politics of care: Care-work has a central social function in all of our lives, yet it

often remains invisible and under-acknowledged. How can the invisibility of care be made visible through artistic projects?

• Caring under covid-19: Practices of care during the global pandemic.

• The radical potentials of curatorial/artistic research: focusing on practices that don’t necessary conclude with the production of exhibitions, but instead aim to produce long-term participatory projects as informed by participation-action-research (PAR), Institutional Analysis, Militant Sound Research methodologies (Ultra-red), as well as Paulo Freire’s grass roots emancipatory pedagogy project.

• Institutional critique: How can artists/ curators work with grass roots and community-based groups on urgent social issues of our times without subsuming their surplus into institutional discourse? How do we create relationships between words and actions? What is the role of the artist/ curator in this maze of contradictions?

• Group work: all work is conversational, experimental and collaborative and all is based in working together on the theme of Care without a preconceived outcome or end product. The theme anchors all activities together, but students have the flexibility to take it in any direction that interests them according to their own individual studio practice (ie self care, social justice, reproductive labour, care work, family/neighbourhood/community, care for the earth, care home, pirate care etc).

• Public engagement: practising accessibility and inclusivity in action.

• Curatorial practicalities: from gallery space arrangement to digital curating, health n safety issues and equipment logistics, budgets and funding applications, to more important questions around the ethics of participation.

• Marketing techniques: social media, digital audiences, social channels etc

• Afterlife: How do you continue your work outside this project? Evaluation

Session 1: Introduction to Relational Aesthetics/ Participatory Art/ Militant Sound Investigations, Participation Action Research. Introduction to Reading Assembly: Care

Session 2: Development of individual/ group proposals. The ethics of participation, Active citizenship, Mutual Aid, Social Practice, Social Engagement at Covid-19 times.

Session 3: Final Production, Promotion, Rehearsal for Reading Assembly: Care (live streaming event in Summer Term).

No specific materials are needed. Location: online and in participant’s local environments. John Russell Wed AM, Weeks 3, 4 and 5 Title: Images – Visualising - Picturing Brief description: This FIELDWORK session is an opportunity to produce, develop or think about im ages, whether these are painting, prints, digital images, drawings or any other media.

‘Images’ are all around us and, as such, can appear to be simple and trivial things. The intention of these sessions is to experiment with the ways in which images can be made and the ways in which they might have force. For instance, how might images be expressive, persuasive, affective, seductive and so on? At the same time we will consider questions such as: what is an image? What do images do? How do they exist? How do we ‘see’ them (are images always ‘visual’)? The workshops will enable you to either develop or extend existing work or try something new. You can work in whichever medium you want - as we know, images can take many forms, drawing, painting, photography, digital images, printing, animation, film, carving, sculpture, embroidery, performance etc If you have any queries or concerns about any aspect of these sessions, including any access requirements that might affect your full participation, please contact John well ahead to discuss: j.a.russell@reading.ac.uk For all external sessions please come suitably dressed in warm and waterproof clothing and footwear (as required). Also bring art materials: pencils, sketchbooks, cameras etc as required. You might also like to bring snacks and a drink. Session 1: What is an image? Online talk and seminar. - What is an image? How do images exist? How are they consumed and looked at? What do we mean by looking? - How to collect and combine images: drawing, downloading, copying, appropriating. Session 2: Development of images Part 1. Seminar: Looking at the images we’ve made so far. Part 2. Individual tutorials to discuss work. Session 3: Online exhibition of work and crit Details to be confirmed Angus Wyatt, Mon AM, Weeks 3, 4, 5 Film Details tbc Lauren Little. Tuesday AM, Weeks 3, 4, 5 Title of Material Session: Photographic Breakdown Location of each session: Online Overall brief description: These are practical sessions exploring analogue and digital collage making as a tool to break down and rebuild images. You will create a number of collages that create a new visual narrative in response to pre-existing imagery. Sessions will explore a

range of artists (from past to present) using this medium and you will investigate a variety of visual techniques such as repetition, pattern making, layering and distortion. I'll share my favourite places to find photographic images, as well as easy apps and tools to create digital collages. Description of what will be happening in each session: We'll begin with a seminar introducing artists or styles of collage before breaking off into a segment of making your own. We'll end with a sharing session to discuss and consider each others creations. List of materials materials that the student will be required to bring along: Magazines or Newspaper Scraps of Coloured Paper Glue stick scissors pens or markers A4 or A3 plain paper any colour Computer or tablet with the ability to download apps Preview for mac (optional) Photoshop, Illustrator or similar (optional) Tina Jenkins. Mon PM, Weeks 3, 4, 5 Expanded Painting Practical Expanded Painting In these sessions we will look at Expanded Painting: What is Expanded Painting? Why is Painting Expanding? How is Painting Expanding? Through a series of practical workshops you will be introduced to unconventional and experimental ways of painting. We will look at a range of techniques and materials that can be used, including materials you can find around the house. Have you ever painted on polythene? Have you tried painting on glass? What happens when you paint on an inflated balloon and then deflate it. Have you utilised internet imagery or text within your work? Could a film be considered a painting? Each week we will look at artists that work in the field of Expanded Painting alongside practical sessions where we will work together experimenting and sharing ideas.

The idea is that this should be a fun, interesting and productive way of experimenting and utilising materials that you may not have previously considered within your practice. Ideally you will continue to work on these ideas throughout the week so that over the course of three weeks you will produce a body of work that could count towards your final documentation as either experimentation or in some cases it may even inform a final piece. For the first session please bring along examples of your studio practice whatever that may be and ensure that in addition to your usual materials (paint/pens etc) you bring:- Any easy to find Household materials such as - Recycled plastic, plastic food containers, Balloons, Carrier Bags, Tape of any kind, Beads, Thread, Ribbon, Paper, Card, Old Magazines, Sponges, Rags, old Clothes, toilet roll tubes, any surface or thing that grabs your interest etc And any imagery or text you would like to work with. You may also want to bring along a craft knife, scissors, glue etc Looking forward to working alongside you all.