The Skaftfell & Dieter Roth Academy Workshop
Basic information
The workshop is available to groups of 8 students.
Time: The workshop is available in October.
The workshop is two weeks long, starting and ending on a Monday.
Registration deadline: 5 months prior to the beginning of the workshop.
Level: Undergraduate/Graduate
Chief supervisor: A professor of the Dieter Roth Academy
Björn Roth, professor of the DRA will lead the 2011 workshop
Coordinator: Thorunn Eymundardóttir, director at Skaftfell Center for Visual Art.
Language: English
Price: 335.000 ISKR per Person
Included:
The tuition, accommodation and full board, max.15 hours per person at the local workshops, bus transfer from Egilsstaðir Domestic Airport and back, boat trip with a local fisherman.
Not Included:
Flights/Transportation, except bus transfer from Egilsstaðir Domestic Airport to Seyðisfjörður. Material costs are to be paid during the workshop.
Introduction:
The Seydisfjordur workshop was one of the most fantastic experiences I had during my education. What made it so special was the dedication among the inhabitants and companies of Seydisfjordur to let us use their factories and workshops. And of course the curatorial idea of Björn Roth to assist the participants with what ever they wanted help with. This is a five star two weeks experience! – Carl Boutard, student of the DRA/IAA workshop in 2004
Theme
The core of the workshop is action; going from idea to a finished product in the span of two weeks in the exotic small fishing village of Seyðisfjörður located in the narrow East-fjords of Iceland.
The workshop is a close collaboration of Skaftfell Center for Visual Art and the Dieter Roth Academy. The workshop is developed out of very successful ten year collaboration with the Icelandic Art Academy and the Dieter Roth Academy.
Program
During the two-week workshop the students will live and work in surroundings very different from the average academical environment. The program is based on intense field work, group discussions, lectures and independent project work conducted by a professor of the Dieter Roth Academy. The focus of the course is both conceptual and empirical, and both local and global. The studio is the whole fjord; its nature, history, inhabitants and atmosphere. The students are provided with working facilities at various workshops and industries in town, depending on their field of interest.
Final Result
The final result is presented as an exhibition, an event of discussion, performances, publication or whatever method is appropriate for the group in question. The workshops professor will give all the students an independent evaluation.
Program objective
- The students will gain skills in working as artists outside of the academical environment, and outside of their natural environment.
- The student will gain experience and professional insight into a medium of choice by working with the towns’ professional craftsmen and the professor of the workshop.
- The students will gain skills in working under pressure and going from an idea to a finished product in a short span of time.
An art-vacuum in the center of nature by concentrated inputs. In a context of exceptionally cooperative people around town, to challenge the process of work based on the short timed headline of setting up an exhibition. – Marie-Louise Andersen, student of the DRA/IAA workshop in 2009
The program starts on a Monday; Skaftfell coordinator will receive the group at the hotel Snæfell where the group will stay. After settling in at the hotel the group will have a short introduction followed by a dinner with the professor of the workshop and coordinator at Skaftfell’s Bistro. During the two-week period each day starts at 10:00 with a meeting over breakfast at Skaftfell. The first week is devoted to field excursions (including a fishing trip and a mountain walk/drive), lectures and workshop introductions. During the second week the group will work independently on their projects, at the various workshops and at the work base in Skaftfell, under the supervision of the professor and Skaftfell’s technical assistant. On the last Saturday the group will present their work, either by opening an exhibition at Skaftfell or by another appropriate event. On Sunday the group will have the last group discussion, summing up the workshop. Students will receive a confirmation of their participation with an independent evaluation from the workshops professor.
Working facilities
The group will set up a workstation in Skaftfell’s main gallery space, with individual worktables and wireless internet.
The group will have access to the local metal- wood- and wool workshops as well as the local Technical museum and private individuals; artists, farmers and fishermen.
Food and lodging
The group stays at hotel Snæfell in double rooms with WC and shower, towels, duvets etc. The hotel has wireless internet connection and small scale self catering facilities.
The group will get full catering at the Skaftfell Bistro, serving home cooked food from locally grown ingredients.
What to bring
Warm, waterproof clothes, hats, gloves, hiking boots, rubber boots or other good shoes. Private computers, cameras, video recorders etc. as needed.
I loved my time spend in Seydisfjordur. That place is incredibly inspiring. I came without knowing what to expect, spend half of my stay visiting around, meeting great people, cooking, eating, talking and thinking about everything but art. Surprisingly, when we finally started working on our projects the inspiration came naturally and easily, from the place itself. About an year later, in a library in Berlin, I found through a big coincidence, a book by Emmett Williams called My life in Fluxus-And Vice Versa. Among many things, the book included a recipe for an off hand book written by Dieter Roth. I have realized then, that my stay at the Skaftfell Center for Visual Art and what became the creative process for the installation I did there was instinctively what this poem describes.I have transcribed in my notebook half of it but since then I could not find the integral poem anywhere else, but here’s the beginning:
“go to a place
(be invited for instance)
have impressions there
take things from the places where you have impressions
(take really or mentally)
bulbs from lamps,
candy from stores,
symbols from visions in dreams
symbols from visions in places
colors from clothes
[...] ”
Malina Cailean, student of the DRA/IAA workshop in 2009
The Dieter Roth Academy
The DRA was founded in May 2000 in Basel by a spearhead of fifteen of his closest friends and colleagues. It now includes several times that number. In his later years Dieter Roth, who worked for some time at art schools in the USA, UK and Germany, spoke of the idea of an academy as he would like it. Central to this was the notion of an institution unbound to any one place or building or curriculum. As a passionate traveler, he realized that the experiences that young artists require would be best gained by traveling and encountering new people and situations. Consequently the Dieter Roth Academy is located there where its members live and work from North America across Europe to China. The students are encouraged to move from place to place and to contact the teachers Dieter’s friends and collaborators and gather their own experiences. The Academy members meet for their part once a year in different countries for a conference to discuss their future plans, often accompanied by an exhibition of works by the members, friends and students. This has resulted in a number of publications, including CD’s. The intensification of communications between the various members has also led to a number of additional projects that can be seen as part of the DRA ethos.
The Academy responds the this great legacy with two agendas: firstly, by finishing projects Dieter Roth was actively involved in during his last years, and by initiating new projects that are in keeping with Dieter’s plans and thoughts; and secondly, by acting as a forum for Dieter’s ideas, whether directly as a teaching academy, or as an academy of friends, scholars and interested parties to discuss and develop ideas that Dieter Roth has left us in his writings, work, and above all in his living example in daily life. Dieter Roth was a great teacher, not only in his years in art schools, but in his everyday dealings with his friends and acquaintances and the complicated world beyond. The Dieter Roth Academy is here to promote the artistic and above all human insights he gave us all.
Dieter Roth (1930-1998)
Dieter Roth was born 1930 in Hannover, to German-Swiss parents. He was in school in Zurich from 1943 onwards. 1947-1951 he did training at the Berner Kunstgewerbeschule, in graphics and lithography. During this period made his first contacts with other artists like Daniel Spoerri, Marcel Wyss and Franz Eggenschwiler. Co-founder and -editor of the journal Spirale (1953-) which specializes in literature, theoretical texts and Druckgraphik. He worked as a designer and ad graphics Werbegestalter in Basel, Bern, Copenhagen, and New York. In 1957 Roth moves to Iceland. His work in the 50s is characterized as constructive. An exhibition of Jean Tinguely 1960 in Basel deeply impressed Roth and lead to a change in his approach. Representative for this period of change are the two works Zeitungs-Illustrationen (1963/64) and the first Literaturwurst (1961). During this period Roth creates a large number of book objects in which newspapers are integrated as material. For the work following thereafter, found materials are essential. In 1974 Roth creates a Literaturwurst out of the 20 volumes oeuvre of G.W.F. Hegel. He increasingly turns to organic materials, such as spices, fruit, chocolate and sausages, which he encloses in Plexiglas or plastic foil and leaves to rot. The book medium is inseparably connected with Dieter Roth. His first Kinderbuch appears in 1957. In 1971, he edits his collected works together with the Edition Hansjorg Mayer. Roth is co-founder of several publishing companies, such as Dieter Roth Verlag, Taucher Verlag, Wasserpresse, Regenverlag. In the late 70s/early 80s, he produces copied diaries, using notebooks from the 60s. In the 80s, Roth takes on a more documentary approach; also, his works expand into space. His installations are arbitrary collections of objects; often they stand in his atelier for years and are constantly changed. The last decade in his life Dieter Roth spent long periods in Seyðisförður where he lived and worked. Dieter Roth died June 5th, 1998, from heart failure, in Basel.
Skaftfell – Center for Visual Art
Skaftfell is dedicated to nurturing and exhibiting visual art, running a exhibition-, education- and residency program. Skaftfell is a meeting point for artists and locals and serves as a center for visual art in all East-Iceland.
Skaftfell was founded in the year 1998 by a group of art enthusiasts in the town of Seyðisfjörður in East-Iceland. The center is situated in a grand old house, built in 1907. In addition to the main exhibition space with running exhibitions the whole year through, Skaftfell houses a beautiful artist’s residency available for visual artists and scholars and a Bistro with a good library of book-art, art-books and related material, the Bistro hosts the West-wall gallery, a space dedicated to showing the works of young, experimental artists. In addition Skaftfell runs the residency program in two other houses in town as well as the project space The Bookshop.
In the past decade Skaftfell has hosted a large number of exhibitions by international, national and local artists. The main emphasis being on contemporary art. Skaftfell has an important role in the area as a center of information and education on art and art related subjects. Every year Skaftfell organizes and/or hosts various seminars with art students in collaboration with the Icelandic Art Academy and other schools and institutions on all school levels.
Skaftfell is founded in memory of the artist Dieter Roth who lived and worked in Seyðisfjörður for periods of time during the last decade of his life. In Skaftfell you can find many of his book works and prints on display.
skaftfell.is
Seyðisfjörður
Seyðisfjörur fjord carved by the ice age glacier is distinguished by its close proximity to wild nature, some might even consider it on the verge of the uninhabitable. Seyðisfjörður has been an important trading center from the nineteenth century up to modern times. Mostly for its well made natural harbor and it’s closeness to the continent of Europe. The colorful, Norwegian-style wooden houses from around 1900 render this village unique in Iceland, and walking trails around town, out along the coast, or by the Fjarðará River allow for many pleasurable and relaxing experiences.
The town has an inviting atmosphere and has nurtured individuality and creativity in its cradle of mountains for as long as anyone can remember. The artist Dieter Roth discovered this in the 1980′s when he restored an old peer house to become one of his many studios. The artist was an inspiration to the founders of Skaftfell but Roth passed away the same year Skaftfell was formally founded.
Due to the international spirit throughout the years the inhabitants tend to be open minded to all kind of new ideas and foreign people, so in many ways there is an international spirit in the town. Seyðisfjörður has about 700 inhabitants.
Travel suggestions:
Travel expenses to Egilsstaðir are not included in the price, except the transfer from Egilsstaðir Airport to Seyðisfjörður.
From Europe Icelandair as well as Iceland Express have frequent flights from various destinations to Keflavik, Iceland. www.icelandair.com www.icelandexpress.com
From Keflavik it takes about 50 minutes drive to the capital of Reykjavik, where the domestic airport is. Buses are scheduled for every flight from Keflavik to Reykjavík or a private transfer can be arranged for the group.
From the domestic airport there are flights to Egilsstaðir Airport with Air Iceland www.airiceland.is
Egilsstaðir is 25 minutes drive from Seyðisfjörður, over the mountain road Fjardarheidi.
Another possibility is to come with the Ferry Norröna www.smyril-line.com that sails directly to Seyðisfjörður from Esbjerg in Denmark. There are Intercity trains going directly to Esbjerg from Hamburg, Copenhagen and Frederikshavn. http://www.visitesbjerg.dk
Possible grants
Kuno
Nordplus higher education express mobility
Leonardo da Vinci Mobility program
Links:
www.skaftfell.is
www.dieter-roth-academy.de
www.dieter-roth-museum.de
www.visitseydisfjordur.com
www.east.is
www.airiceland.is
www.icelandair.com
www.icelandexpress.com