STUDIOS
MEDIUM IS A MESSAGE
Canadian media expert Marshall MbLuhan stated that the medium not merely transfers and preserves the information, but actively creates it. Therefore, if the medium is a message, by transferring images situated on the borderline of photography and new media into art gallery space, social media website or foto-graphic publication we not only modify its materiality but also its context, and as a consequence, we influence its content as well.
In the Studio we combine photography with other forms of visual art situated on the borderline of a widely understood materialization and presentation of a work of art.
The Studio specialises in forming and transferring knowledge in the realm of subjects included in the curriculum of Photography and Multimedia Institute such as: Exhibition Techniques, Publishing Photography, The basis of Graphic Design.
It’s a place where we treat photography as a field where fine arts, design, technology and esthetics permeate one another. It’s a place for artistic experiments as regards imaging forms related to materiality.
Our basic activity is a creative and exploratory reflection on exhibition’s planning and production as well as getting acquainted with versatile exhibition techniques and methods of art’s materialisation. It’s a place where we create artistic objects, installations, performances and virtual space, whose common core are the context of place, time, spatial relations between the work of art and the surrounding in which it started to function.
The main objective of the Studio is to introduce students to the subject matters of image communication which can change matter into medium. Photography is treated as a base to present different creative approaches and ways of presenting reality.
We focus on activities centered around the organisation, art curating, production and design of art exhibitions, both in the area of art galleries, public space and virtual reality. Through the word ‘exhibition’ we understand various forms of public presentation of a work of art: ranging from a traditional exposition and an accompanying catalogue to independent publication, objects, website, social media activity and augmented reality. Art in this case is understood as every manifestation of artistic activity that happens in social and cultural space.
We take photographic images as a starting point for experiment and work on individual, formal, structural and semantic solutions. We want observations and research on photography as a visual communication to serve to aptly recognise and use its versatile conventions to create context.
What stands in the centre of our interest are the processes and phenomena which accompany the creation of photography as well as the interpretation serving the creation of original narration in various publications and exhibition forms. That is why we focus on every process of creation and transmission of the images situated on the verge of photography and the new media. The curriculum is focused around creative possibilities of various forms of presentation and its functioning in space.
These processes give us space for constant theoretical reflections, ignite a wider scope of analysis and ways of thinking, experiment with photography medium and study its potential. The creative practice is accompanied by theoretical reflection covering conceptual thinking over the projects and conscious creation of works.
Students prepare artistic photography publications - portfolios, photobooks, zines and autorial publishing in the forms of a book; they develop the ability for creating independent public statements.