The MADE IN Platform for Contemporary Crafts and Design Production invites all interested design professionals and students of design, visual arts, architecture, new media and related disciplines, to apply for participation in the Crafts–Design Workshop. Apply Now! Complete and submit the application form by 25 August 2019. 

MADE IN – CRAFT AND DESIGN NARRATIVES is a research, design and heritage initiative encouraging collaboration and knowledge exchange between craftsmen and contemporary designers. The aim of the project is to rediscover craft traditions and production methods and educate designers on material and immaterial culture, thus creating new, authentic and more sustainable conditions for practicing design. The MADE IN project promotes and presents European craft heritage and innovative contemporary design to the general public through an array of different activities: research and mapping of crafts, public conferences and expert seminars, design-craft residencies, design-craft workshops, publications and exhibitions, as well as the development of an online platform that will facilitate the transmission of knowledge and provide professional development opportunities for craftsmen, designers, curators and professionals.  

The MADE IN Platform for Contemporary Crafts and Design Production invites all interested design professionals and students of design, visual arts, architecture, new media and related disciplines, to apply for participation in the Crafts–Design Workshop. 

CRAFT THINKING

The project accompanies craftspeople from different fields who let us look into their traditionally-grounded and highly-developed skills of making and most importantly, their specific knowledge and techniques of sourcing local materials. 

It is this directness of using what we have close at hand that will constitute the focus of our observation. We want to look into “craft thinking” that is in the DNA of locally-working crafts, in those who always adopt to new frameworks, be it social, political or environmental, in order to keep their profession relevant and alive. 

The need to find ways of transforming local materials into objects or architectures has always been a strong source of creativity. In a world that is highly globalized this local creativity has come, in part, to be unlearned. But our fascination with this transformation through simple tools, experience, skills and commitment is more relevant than ever before. We can learn a lot from this direct and pragmatic approach of working with the seemingly most ordinary and directly available matter. 

Crafts have proved to survive in an ever-changing network of conditions, with a scarcity of resources and other challenges. Contrary to our common perception craft is in this sense a vivid and highly contemporary profession, and a rich source of input on local networking and typically natural, eco-friendly ways of producing. We want to learn more about the frameworks of these different professions and the unique or common interlockings in which they are rooted.

From this first encounter with these crafts we want to imagine new possible connections, however odd they may appear upon first sight. We match the potential of connection-making from craft (craft-thinking) with the thinking of an international group composed of entirely other backgrounds. The results will be a mixture of the local and the global, the traditional and the experimental, the tangible and conceptual, the dirty hands-on- and the mental work.

AIMS OF THE WORKSHOP

The workshop will be dedicated to one material and craft. Participants will work together with potter and clay researcher Urban Magušar, practising architects from the BC-Architects collective and designer Lukas Wegwerth on new ways of using soil – and clay in particular – as a base to create building materials and material cycles for the process of making – from objects to architecture. We will match hands-on work evenly, speculating on new ways of using this simple resource we find by simply digging in the very ground on which we walk. 

After a two-day program of collective sourcing, input and round table discussions the participants can choose to work autonomously or in small groups towards tangible- and/or utopian approaches to making use of this seemingly ordinary material. These processes can lead to physical objects, new systems and/or cycles dealing with the material or techniques related to this material.

Ultimately, we’re looking for ways of dealing with the material in a way that breaks with the boundaries and clichés related to the material’s recent use, and which could lead to self-sustaining approaches to using the very ordinary around us. As a result, the material used during the workshop will be exclusively self-sourced material – no purchased materials will be allowed nor needed. 

Over the last three days of the workshop we will work in Mr. Magusar’s workshop and will be able to use a variety of kilns (wood, gas, electric), together with other tools and equipment in his ceramic workshop.

In the course of this cross-disciplinary process we will learn about the unlearned and create new approaches to and models of using what we have here around us, make it visible and find new potentials for this material and related skills, and all in a contemporary setting.

WORKSHOP DIRECTION

LUKAS WEGWERTH is a Berlin-based designer whose work focuses on the potentials of connection-making in a variety of expressions. Through his background in joinery and the influence of the Shaker Movement he focuses on the union of the processes involved in designing and making. He works with the tension between the coincidental and the controllable, and repurposes natural materials that become part of the material systems for his experimentation in a number of contexts – object, social, and environmental.

In this framework he has developed Three+One: a connector system that he uses as a starting point for exchange and collaboration. Like his other projects, Three+One focuses on creating sustainable material cycles from the very local to the global, from hands-on to the conceptual.

ABOUT THE GUEST ARCHITECTS

BC ARCHITECTS (Brussels Cooperation) started in 2006 as a loose form of cooperation between young Brussels-based architects and artists, which resulted in installations, research projects and open source design networks. The company now has two organisational units: BC Architects, an architectural design office in the conventional sense, and BC studies, which does research on the ways social design and architecture can contribute to the contemporary and global Zeitgeist, independently. Wes Degreef, urban visionary and realtopist, is an architect and co-founder of BC Architects and studies. He dreams about integrative urban design and architecture, redesigning the city through intuition and integration. Ken De Cooman, a former audiovisual artist, musician, dancer and philosopher, is an architect and co-founder of BC Architects and studies. He works in collaboration with the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Leuven (Belgium) and is a lecturer at EiABC Addis Ababa (Ethiopia).

APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS

Please submit: 

1) Links, web page etc. to the relevant information about your projects or portfolio with up to 3 project (portfolio can be sent separately to nikola.pongrac@mao.si).

2) a motivation letter (max. 1500 characters)

Apply Now!

Complete and submit the application form by 25 August 2019. 

Application form link

The organizers will select a maximum of 10 participants and notify them by Wednesday 28 August 2019 at the latest.

Who can apply?

We invite all interested design professionals and students of design, visual arts, architecture, new media, craftspeople and anyone else who feels close to the topic to apply. 

TIME AND LOCATION 

9–13 September 2019

Manufaktura Radovljica, Linhartov trg 4, SI–4240 Radovljica

9:30 AM – 5:30 PM daily 

Questions about the programme:

nikola.pongrac@mao.si

Project timeline

25 August 2019 / Application submission deadline

28 August 2019 / Open Call results 

9–13 September 2019 / Workshop 

14 September – 10 October 2019 / Finalization of the prototypes 

December 2019 – May 2020 / Exhibitions in Zagreb, Ljubljana, Belgrade, Andelsbuch

TERMS AND REQUIREMENTS

Participants are expected to be actively engaged during the entire duration of the workshop, and to follow the scheduled fieldwork. 

Resources and tools for modelling in the clay workshops will be sourced collectively during the workshop. You are also very welcome to bring self-sourced materials with you to the workshop. 

Participants are advised to secure personal laptops, cameras and/or other equipment for general use. Please bring weatherproof clothes and workwear for both the field trip and the work in the ceramics workshop. 

The products created at the workshop should be the result of the exchange of ideas and mutual collaboration with the designer, craftspeople and other workshop participants. 

The work process will take place individually or in small teams, in which case all of the team members will be considered co-authors of the designed products. 

The total number of participants is limited to 10.

The workshop will be held in English.

The organizer reserves the right to change the program.

Submitted applications will be assessed by MAO curators Maja Vardjan, Cvetka Požar and Nikola Pongrac, and Lukas Wegwerth (designer) based on responses to the workshop theme.

The workshop is free of charge. Participants are expected to cover the costs of their own accommodation. Organisers will provide lunch and refreshments for each participant during the course of the workshop.

The final prototypes/projects for exhibition are expected to be finalized by the workshop participants by 10 October 2019. 

Selected outcomes of the workshop will be presented within the broader MADE IN exhibition, together with the results of other workshops and residencies produced by other project partners. The international travelling exhibition will be launched in Zagreb (December 2019), followed by hosting organizations in Ljubljana, Belgrade and Andelsbuch over the course of 2020, with the possibility of additional exhibition venues upon completion of the project. Workshop results must therefore be available for exhibition for a period of two years after completion. 

TIME AND LOCATION

9–13 September 2019

Manufaktura Radovljica, Linhartov trg 4, SI–4240 Radovljica

9:30 AM – 5:30 PM daily 

Info

nikola.pongrac@mao.si 

Organization

MADE IN Platform