Ordinary Pleasures

Project Lead: Barbara Mueller

Number of participants:  12

Duration: 5 days

Project Outline:

Ordinary Pleasures names a workshop in which we explore bodily knowledge. We will collect everyday experiences we bodily remember within applied workshops with Claire van Rhyn and myself but also practically gain novel experiences within unfamiliar settings, visiting Stuart Carey’s ceramics studio and Wangxia Ni’s Dim Sum kitchen. Accessing bodily knowledge happens through practice but also theory, thus, we will be in conversation with a ceramicist and a Dim Sum chef to finalise both of our two excursion days. Finally, we will recollect (in terms of those which are retrievable) and rebuild objects (those which are irretrievably lost) we bodily remember but also newly reassemble characteristics of remembered and immediate experiences. These could also be newly invented objects representing an experience. The total collection of our simple everyday objects will be curated in an immersive exhibition which we will open to the public on our last day – passing our bodily knowledge on to our visitors through immediate experiences.

Project Outcome: Every student will have an individual object, a group exhibition and both of its documentation. Moreover, every student will learn the folding techniques required for the making of different types of Dim Sum dumplings and take a self-made, decorated, professionally glazed and fired plate home.

Timetable:

Day 1
Introduction
AM: Workshop with Claire van Rhyn: Bodied Knowing, refamiliarising with the body
PM: Workshop with Barbara Mueller: Bodily engaging with everyday objects

Day 2
Excursion to Ceramics Studio
AM: Practice based visit of Stuart Carey’s and Ben Cooper’s ceramics studio
PM: Talk with Stuart Carey, ceramicist (and RCA alumnus), about his own practice
All artworks will be glazed and fired and are collectable within three weeks after the workshop

Day 3
Excursion to Dim Sum Kitchen
AM: Practice based visit of a Camberwell kitchen creating different types of Dim Sum dumplings
Dim Sum lunch
PM: Talk amongst the makers, followed by collectively looking at the day’s documentation

Day 4
Making time
AM: Collectively looking at the last days’ outcomes
Individual tutorials about project ideas for the final exhibition
PM: Collecting everyday materials in preparation for our exhibition
Visit by a guest critique helping us to develop our ideas

Day 5
ExhibitionAM: Group discussion about projects and their realisation in the exhibition space,
followed by individual conversations about technical realisation
PM: Set up
Exhibition opening