here on the wonderful Artquest’s site and a short film about the day is below…
of the Stroud textile conference that I chaired back in May from Nigel’s blog
there was tweeting of the talk yesterday between myself, Nina Edge, Kate Fox, David Jubb and Nicola Davies, which you can find here
Part 2
For my first day in Moscow I went exploring with some of the designers, the curator of the project and our guide Ignat. Walking from the hotel to Red square it was clear that we were surrounded by new buildings and building taking place, this was definitely a place moving fast, changing, growing, expanding. All of this was great in terms of starting to think about the brief for my visit, of fast and slow and of ultimately this changing landscape
St Basils also appeared to be in a state of flux as a temporary racing track was being removed from a race the previous day…
Through our exploration of the magnificent Metro I began to think about the ‘hidden’. What was behind everything? I wasn’t particularly thinking about this around notions of anything covert but perhaps more pragmatically. I like the door above, that it is almost camouflaged in the surrounding metalwork and that you might notice it or maybe not.
more to follow soon…
Part 1
My trip to Moscow last week was extremely quick: and fast and slow and quick were surely at the front of my mind. I had been invited to go and run a two day workshop about fast and slow making and thinking at Strelka by the independent curator and former director of Platform 21, Joanna van der Zanden.
After long, slow queues coming through passport control, where it was almost as if time had slowed right down and the slow bureaucracy of the big machine had taken over, I was met by my driver. Here everything sped up: clearly annoyed that I was delayed and trying to catch up with time we proceeded to almost run to the car, only to join the grid lock of traffic that surrounded the airport. Quite honestly what I experienced next, I have never ever experienced before: the easiest way to explain the hour and a half journey into Moscow that night might be by using the word ‘joyride’. We did not need to stay ‘on’ the road, the dust track at the side was just fine for some very fast driving and when we did stick to the road, we didn’t need to stay on the correct side, even when another car was driving straight at us. Still I eventually made it to the hotel in one piece and then on to Strelka for a warm balmy evening and my first meeting with Joanna and some of the other designers who were working on the project. I felt like I was in a strange place but it felt pretty exciting and I looked forward to the next few days!
I had a fantastic fast trip to Moscow where I led a project on slow making and thinking. I will update very soon about this and about my trip to Penland, North carolina in the weeks before the Moscow trip.
In the meantime here are some images of Moscow and a link to Amy Tavern’s blog who has written about the Penland class in detail. Thanks Amy!
Хелен Карнак – художница, керамист, куратор и преподаватель из Лондона. В 2009 году курировала выставку ‘Taking Time: Craft and the Slow Revolution’ в Бирмингемском музее и художественной галерее. Работы Хелен Карнак выставляются в галереях по всему миру, включая лондонскую Whitechapel и Velvet da Vinci Gallery в Сан-Франциско.
I have been back from the States (Blue Ridge Mountains) for a week and am gradually taking time to reflect on what happened over my 3 week visit. In summary I had a fantastic time and very much enjoyed working in a new place and with a different group of people. Over the next week I will try to post some of the things that really made me think or caught my eye. First off…lumber and Spruce Pine…
