Seventeenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

Our case study describes a four-week intensive course held at China Academy of Art and devised to meet the Academy’s brief ‘Playshop’ (2021). Our aim was to create an environment for collaborative sense making with particular emphasis on movement as our first language. The objective was to place movement as a way of knowing the present side by side with voiced reflections on pre-teen encounters with nature and current artistic output, thus nudging a shift in perspective from externally applied forms and techniques to internally experienced realities. The space of risk was to guide visual art students into their moving body/bodies. Instead of focusing on a particular outcome, students were introduced to the process of sense making unfolding. We combined methodologies developed in Social Sculpture Practice, somatic movement practices; contemporary dance and physical theater. The schedule for this four-week intensive course initially allowed for three lectures, 14 practice sessions, and two intensive student-led sessions during which each student was required to present. Both, movement sessions and lecture sessions, adapted to students’ responses as well as the challenges posed by distance teaching. There was a great willingness to be flexible on all sides. The framework allowed for an on course teaching methodology to emerge around voicing. Groups of students devised five different movement pieces at the close of the course. These were presented together with research notes, drawings and voice recordings. There is potential to expand this course to deepen the explorative process.