Dienstag, 3. August 2010

WORKSHOP SIX - The final workshop - AUSSTRAHLUNG-RADIANCE - Ruairí O'Brien

Workshop Six

Report VI
Ausstrahlung or Radiance
The last workshop took place as planned on the 23rd of June.

If you look into an english/german Dictionary
for the translation of the word "Ausstrahlung"
you come across such beautiful words as;
vibes, emission, radiance, emanation, radiation,
presence, aura, charism, radiosity, emission of light

A the beginning of the series of workshops I emphasized the importance of growth and change and how “change” influences in turn “growth” which in turn causes further changes…this is an expression of lives secret dynamic path, more often then not adults believe that this can be planned…one can make rational decisions and take logical steps which seduce us to think that we have the control over our destiny this may mean that life can be planned but it is certainly not always “planable”……children have this wonderful ability to interact with the situation as they find it, to improvise, to develop intuitively new worlds out of hints, ….new directions appear that lead to further changes of plan that cause and ask for new interpretations……
This last workshop was with a group of children from a local school, 12 years of age on average….which were brought together with a small group of 3 young women who were members of the “Friends of the Museum” society. The School children were accompanied by two young teachers.
This last group of children were truely radiant, strong and confident. They had "Ausstrahlung"!



After a first chat with children about “who am I and who are you?” followed by “what is a castle?” and “what is a museum?” we talked about the project.
I explained that I had built the “museums laboratory” so that one could see in a small room how a big museum works and how they grow, we talked about collecting and what that means. They told me about their collections from stamps and football stars to stones and snail shells collected on holidays. Wonderful collections…I showed them what we had collected as part of the project and how we had documented the objects ranging from very valuable personal objects like my fathers book to cheap but beautiful plastic jewels. I told that today we were going to finish the project with their work.
To work...…!..I asked the children split into small teams with which I could develop smaller workshops simultaneously dealing with different themes. I needed a team for the Polaroid documentation, a team for the tone documentation, interviews, a cameraman for the general photographs of the day, a team to draw a picture for a beautiful heavily jewelled frame without a drawing, a technical team to help me rebuild the museums laboratory installation, (this was due to the fact that the last workshop had taken place in another room, see workshop 5) a team to build structures out of pencils, a team to draw shadows on the museum wall of Fame, a team to sort the exhibition objects into their right boxes and crosscheck them with the inventory list …every one found work that corresponded to their inclination and interests.
In between we visited the exhibition in the Museum outside our “Lab space”, were we discussed light and preciousness, windows and doors, fruit and decay.

After the intense work, interviews, photo sessions, drawings, discussions, laughter, excitement, struggling with electric cables and mirrors for the installation lighting. Documents, debates, we put all the work together and I closed the curtains and put the lights out.
Silence, expectation….
Then I switched the lights on from the Museums laboratory, the kids stared at their work…they walked around it, peering into it, from above from underneath, some started drawing shadows on the wall others sat and just enjoyed the silence.

It was very beautiful.

A wonderful end to a very rewarding project, seeing the kids eyes in the light of the museum laboratory sparkling was worth all the hard work….I thank all who took part….all the teachers and all the children and the SKD, Frau Schmidt, Frau Nietzold and Frau Stübing.

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