Workshop / Benjamin Lignel: ‘You are now leaving Switzerland – Or a crash course on how to occupy the public space’
introduction
As soon as you leave the relative safety of school, you will become an expert in translating your work into image and texts, or setting it up in exhibitions. This is called ‘making public’, and the general point of the exercise is (1) to substitute to a physical object you made the manufactured evidence of its existence or (2) put it ‘on show’ in such a way that advertises its qualities without the benefit of touch, let alone use.
In about 98% of the cases, people who know about your work will never handle it. Which does not mean that it won\'t be ‘seen’ in the wide sense of the term: in fact, it will be seen often and well, but in media that are not its own: in text and images mostly, on video sometimes, or immersed in someone else’s curatorial efforts. And so, we will consider all the equipment (discursive or physical) that surrounds, protects, modifies, promotes, exaggerates the work you produced as so many arguments, stating a particular claim about your work, and what it means to do.
During this five-day workshop we will look at the curious and exciting transformations that take place when a work is photographed, written about, exhibited. We will discuss - and hopefully help you test - your own approach to these supposed ‘filters’: the text, the image, the environment in which your work is ‘received’. The workshop will be concluded by a presentation of your experiments in the medium you have chosen.
What is this workshop about? Taking control of all that is transmissible in your work: view this as different stages in a process of making the work disappear, and reconstruct it on the other side of the mirror.
In about 98% of the cases, people who know about your work will never handle it. Which does not mean that it won\'t be ‘seen’ in the wide sense of the term: in fact, it will be seen often and well, but in media that are not its own: in text and images mostly, on video sometimes, or immersed in someone else’s curatorial efforts. And so, we will consider all the equipment (discursive or physical) that surrounds, protects, modifies, promotes, exaggerates the work you produced as so many arguments, stating a particular claim about your work, and what it means to do.
During this five-day workshop we will look at the curious and exciting transformations that take place when a work is photographed, written about, exhibited. We will discuss - and hopefully help you test - your own approach to these supposed ‘filters’: the text, the image, the environment in which your work is ‘received’. The workshop will be concluded by a presentation of your experiments in the medium you have chosen.
What is this workshop about? Taking control of all that is transmissible in your work: view this as different stages in a process of making the work disappear, and reconstruct it on the other side of the mirror.
Short biography
Benjamin Lignel first trained in philosophy & literature, then in art history, at New York University, and finally in furniture design, at the Royal College (London). Most of his time is devoted to creating jewellery, but the laws of gravity have recently been steering him back towards desktop adventures, including, but not limited to, curatorial, associative and writing endeavours.
Lignel is a co-founder of la garantie, association pour le bijou, a French association with a mission to study and promote jewellery. In this capacity, he co-curated ‘Also known as jewellery’, an exhibition of French contemporary jewellery that traveled seven cities, and helped program and organize the 44th Zimmerhof symposium (2012) in Germany. He started contributing essays and op-eds to magazines and publications in 2006, and became a member of ‘Think Tank. A European Initiative for the Applied Arts’, in 2009. He will become editor of Art Jewelry Forum in january 2013.
Lignel is a co-founder of la garantie, association pour le bijou, a French association with a mission to study and promote jewellery. In this capacity, he co-curated ‘Also known as jewellery’, an exhibition of French contemporary jewellery that traveled seven cities, and helped program and organize the 44th Zimmerhof symposium (2012) in Germany. He started contributing essays and op-eds to magazines and publications in 2006, and became a member of ‘Think Tank. A European Initiative for the Applied Arts’, in 2009. He will become editor of Art Jewelry Forum in january 2013.
