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Master of Scenography
Two years ago, Tjallien Walma van der Molen moved with the programme from Groningen to Utrecht, when HKU took the Master of Scenography under its wing. The programme is now housed in the brand-new Pastoefabriek, which has been a real boon to the students. ‘I’ve seen that everyone wanted to come in work in the big space of the Pastoe building’.
Course Leader Henny Dörr Course Coordinator Rita Hoogland Graduates Astrid Bode Camila Caiza Duque Fransje Christiaans Ana Duarte Nina van der Mark Samon Presland Britt Van Groningen
QUESTION YOUR SURROUNDINGS
ALL FACETS
When the new location was moved into at the start of the last academic year, it wasn’t completely finished yet. ‘Along with the students, however, we did all we could to meet their requirements. This class of graduates likes to work on an individual level. They are therefore very independent, and each student has their own needs and wishes. So if a student needed a black box, we arranged it. Or if someone needed a studio, we made sure they could work in a studio elsewhere. I think it’s great we managed to arrange everything anyway. For instance, over the past two years they’ve investigated how you can develop spatial experiences and how you can best show these experiences. These graduates dare to question all sorts of matters – things like gender and identity, but also memory’.
This individual attitude is a quality that Tjallien thinks characterises this class of graduates. ‘Everyone is extremely different, and they’ve remained extremely different. They all have differing ideas about, and approaches to scenography. That’s interesting, because it means they’ve produced a really wide range of graduation work. They’ve worked with sound, performance and lots more besides. This diversity is also due to the fact that the students have come to this Master’s programme from a variety of backgrounds. The class is made up of architects, designers and visual artists, meaning that all facets of scenography have been discussed. That’s the really interesting thing about this group, who will undoubtedly go on to make their mark in the professional field’.
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Master Scenography | Astrid Bode
28 -01-1994 astrid_bode_1@hotmail.com astridbode.be Nationality: Belgium
SPECIALISATION Every space has a face. The face is hidden behind the facade of our traditional way of looking. Sometimes cracks giggle themselves free. When the facade shows cracks, the space frees itself from its functionality and other characteristics crawl out. The space can pull faces freely.
My artistic research is about the creation of multifocal experiences. These are experiences in which the focus of the spectator determines his experience of space. By looking at spaces in a different way, they can be freed from their functionality and become new and exciting.
SPECIALISATION I combine the skills to design a space in architecture with the sensibility of performative arts.
AMBITION I’ll see where the future takes me. I’m open for projects and experiences. I would like to continue my research and artistic practice.
AMBITION The exploration and experiment ation through space and its performative elements are one of my main interests, but also the multidisciplinary
MASTER SCENOGRAPHY The importance of documentation and presentation in my artistic practise.
approach that can be achieved by the connection between scenography, architecture and film. Therefore, I would like to continue this exploration but also I am interested in connecting these ideas to specific narratives; for example in art direction of films, the generation of spatial installations or theatrical environments.
MASTER SCENOGRAPHY What stands out the most is a feeling of transformation and the raising of multiple reflections and new questions. For me it was never about a concrete result but mostly about the working process and the aesthetic questions concerning space and its dimensions.
FINAL PROJECT | INSTALLATION Call me anything you like, just don’t call me late for dinner Spectators put their heads in boxes, attached to a big box. This allows them to look inside a kitchen. They are looking at it through windows. Standing in kitchen cabinets and the freezer compartment of a refrigerator they become part of a collage space. They peek in each other’s windows, and all of them peek in an empty kitchen. The kitchen is dynamic. Different atmospheres arise.
Not a mirror
MASTER THESIS The to-ing and fro-ing of looking (‘Komen en gaan van het kijken’) An essayistic argument about how scenography can be a multidisciplinary medium for giving the audience a multifocal view of the world. Using anecdotes, reflections, philosophical references and documentation, I discuss what multifocality means.
18-03-1991 gkamic69@hotmail.com camilacaiza.com Nationality: Ecuadorian
Not a mirror
PREVIOUS LUCA School of Arts Brussels - Bachelor Film.
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Master Scenography | Camila Caiza
Call me anything you like, just don’t call me late for dinner
Call me anything you like, just don’t call me late for dinner
PREVIOUS Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador Architecture. MASTER THESIS Multi-layered atmospheres This research was triggered by one question: how do the conscious and the unconscious minds generate an experiential atmosphere? Within the frame of this question two main reflections were explored: one referring to the paradoxical way in which an individual experience can become a collective one without losing its personal approach. And second, the multi-layered character of space in which physical encounter performative and filmic, and its possible interaction for the generation of atmospheres.
FINAL PROJECT Not a mirror This installation explores the study of the different consciousness layers and its spatial perception. The visual and conceptual material was collected through two main stages: one related to the study of my own unconscious side through my dreams and the other one connected to an exploration of the city (the ‘conscious’ side). This experimentation with my dream´s material and the imagery taken from the city, led to a space where the dreaming and the waking hours encounter each other.
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Master Scenography | Fransje Christiaans
14-03-1983 fransjechristiaans.com fransje christiaans /fransje Nationality: Dutch
SPECIALISATION My work is characterised by the use of documentary video material in installations that revolve around the viewer. I enjoy working with ordinary people and placing them in front of my camera as the subject. Through these people and the film material, I then proceed to investigate big social themes like identity politics.
AMBITION - To design installations and video installations on the borderline between visual art and theatre, and thus position scenography as an independent discipline; - To set up an agency with other artists or to work as a duo, taking spatial design as the foundation and working on the basis of several disciplines (video, photography, scenography and fashion);
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Master Scenography | Ana Duarte
04-02-1988 anaduar.te@hotmail.com anaduarteweb.wordpress.com Nationality: Portuguese
SPECIALISATION As a scenographer I developed a practice based research focused on sensorial memory. I want to believe that we only will be capable of perceiving spatial or scenographic work with a sense of free experimentation. The works developed make part of a path that goes through the descriptive spatial aesthetics to an abstract and symbolic spatial installation.
- To work internationally, by developing a personal visual style and being invited to work on that basis. MASTER SCENOGRAPY The experience of the viewer around whom your spatial design revolves, rather than the actor or the work itself. Learning to relinquish control when the viewer experiences your work.
Breathing Childhood
The scenography of identity
FINAL PROJECT The scenography of identity My final work presents the search for identity in the form of four small rooms hidden within a trendy and hip chipwood cube which questions contemporary issues of interests within our society. With the help of my camera I went to places full of fear, created situations that brought out the most vulnerable in friends, family and strangers whilst asking the question of whether we are or if we become someone through the eyes of the other. In my search for identity I challenge you to face yourself through narrative spaces that use the medium of video.
MASTER THESIS Scent Memory Space The final research document makes reference to the last two years of artistic research, where there were five experiments that followed different fields of study related to sensorial memory. Scenography was the vehicle to explore memory, senses, photography, semiotics, synaesthesia, materiality and performativity. FINAL PROJECT Dwelling A Dwelling is a shelter of four physical experiments that reveal the development of my artistic research based on sensorial memory. Outside, Breakfast in Algarve invites the spectator to taste a sense of Portuguese traditions. This dwelling is inhabited by Bottled Memories / What is left from her, two audiovisual installations that share images of the passage of time and physical evidences of memory in space. Breathing Childhood is tangible result of scenographic experimentation that explores the materiality of childhood memories.
Outside, Breakfast in Algarve
MASTER THESIS The scenography of identity This thesis is a research about identity in our complex and modern society: who and what makes me the person I am? My work is based upon complex issues which are often discussed in these contemporary times such as gender, immigration and fear which can often define our way of looking at the other and ourselves.
MASTER SCENOGRAPHY This master offered me the opportunity to develop a personal aesthetic language with space based on a personal concept, exploring fields that
never were touched before, exercising the evaluation processes and being capable to recognize which elements were useful facing the project’s needs. The master provided ways to explore scenographic skills in many different environments, using new technologies and exploring new setups distant from the classical and theatrical scenography.
PREVIOUS • Show Arts and Crafts by the Chapitô, in Lisboa, Portugal; • Escola Superior de Arte Dramática da Galiza, Spain - Scenography.
Bottled Memories
The scenography of identity
PREVIOUS School of the Arts Utrecht - Bachelor of Theatre and Education.
AMBITION In the future I still want to be attached to the theatrical practices but at the same time I would like to explore the light art and installation art.
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Master Scenography | Nina van der Mark
10-06-1991 vandermarknina@gmail.com ninavandermark.nl Nationality: Dutch
SPECIALISATION Visual and interactive interventions in the city.
AMBITION To emphasise the relationship between people, the space and their fellow people, through interactive installations, visual work and art in the city.
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Master Scenography | Samon Presland
11-11-1985 mail@samonpresland.com samonpresland.com Nationality: British
SPECIALISATION As a scenographer, choreographer and dancer I approach spaces from the perspective of the body. The relationship of the body to space is highly sense orientated, in my work I look at how our senses create and define our perception of the world around us within
MASTER OF SCENOGRAPHY I am mainly interested in social engagement. In the existence of a question of what is free for us to use in the space, in the way we want to use it. In what the possibilities are for performing, or rather for sharing.
our ever-changing political landscape.
MASTER SCENOGRAPHY That working with materials is extremely different to working with people, but that following my intuition is still the key ingredient for making.
Turning Blue
Cardboard Covers
AMBITION In the following five years I would like to gain practical working experience in the field of scenography. Expanding my knowledge and abilities to create spatial experiences, whilst
continuing to question how and why I choose to communicate the themes and context of my work.
PREVIOUS School of the Arts Utrecht - Bachelor of Theatre and Education.
PREVIOUS Rambert School of Ballet and Contemporary Dance.
Cardboard Covers
MASTER THESIS Between art and reality, on the conditions of artistic interventions in the city Imagine the city as a set for a play. People enter the stage, act and then disappear again. It is a constant negotiation between people and space. Between organisation and disruptions, between design and use. But what is it that attracts artists to the city? How much of our identity do we want the city to reflect?
FINAL PROJECT Cardboard Covers “I never get mad I just tip one of my shoulders and let the anger slide off”. People are never as private as when they are in public. Cardboard Covers became a picture book for grown-ups about feelings in the city. Connecting personal feelings to images and people to the city.
MASTER THESIS Traces of research into belonging I’ve chosen to base my research around the theme of belonging, by dividing this research into three branches I have investigated, spatial senses of belonging, the feeling of ‘not belonging’ and questioned where does our heritage come from and what are the traces we leave behind. My aim has been to bring these three branches together to create a visual language, which simultaneously questions both how it can be perceived and how it can be felt.
FINAL PROJECT Turning Blue During my research into belonging I discovered how the Iranian government censored International newspapers using blue tape and so I began using blue to censor images that I had created. In my final exhibition work I challenged myself to physicalize this form of censorship into a spatial experience, and as I describe my research as revolving around the theme of belonging rather than defining it I chose to represent that in how I designed the experience of the space. The spatial experience of entering a blue censored space created a situation where spectators saw the world through a censored perspective whilst they themselves were being censored from the world.
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Master Scenography | Britt Van Groningen
Master Scenography | Presentation
16-12-1988 britt.vangroningen@gmail.com brittvangroningen.com Nationality: Canadian
SPECIALISATION I am curious about how we show and speak about ourselves and our work- overwhelming acts simultaneously hiding and revealing. My investigations primarily
involve utilising my body and voice in various states of fragmentation.
WORK FROM A NUMBER OF GRADUATES DURING THEIR FIRST YEAR AT THE OPEN DAY OF HKU, NOVEMBER 2015
MASTER SCENOGRAPHY When not to compromise. When to absolutely compromise.
AMBITION “I am trying to be unfamiliar with what I’m doing” - John Cage
PREVIOUS School of Creative and Performing Arts, University of Calgary: - Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drama; - Bachelor of Arts in Music (Voice).
The Girl Who Floated Up
FINAL PROJECT The Girl Who Floated Up I started by choosing rather mundane acts (frying eggs and opening cola), that when repeated, have become overwhelming and cumbersome for me. I am just trying to make breakfast. Every day the same. Today eating breakfast is too burdensome. The performance is combined with a soundscape for the spectator to experience while sitting on a couch that at times coincides and at time differs with the action of the performance. I narrate the piece with bits of confessional text that aim to contribute to the vulnerability of me showing only my hands/arms in the performance.
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The Girl Who Floated Up