All I Wanna Do Is… – Workshop Le Quai
All I Wanna Do Is…
Workshop and exhibition Le Quai Ecole Supérieure d’Art, February 22-26, 2010
Serious rock ’n roll serendipity
Text Harmen Liemburg, written for LeQuai 35 journal
Improvisation and trying to make the most of the means available at a certain moment and place are important aspects of everything I do. Although I usually have a rough plan for workshops, everything depends on the capacities of the screenprinting workshop, plus the willingness of the participants to put in some time and energy.
Last monday, when we started making papercuts, I really had no clue if something would come out of it, but you just have to start. Somewhere…
The fact that we had solvent inks, a drying tunnel and some interesting materials at hand, would mean nothing if Christian and Claire weren’t willing to work superhard and be everywhere at the same time. This enabled me to act as a ‘print conductor’, directing the sheets to different teams in a continueing high-speed process of selection and evaluation.
At the end of wednesday, the first printing day, I think the whole group was sort of energized by what had been achieved already in one day. Around eight in the evening, I was surprised by the additional stuff that – in just a few hours – was made by hand to be printed as a finishing layer the next day…
This week I learned that instead of focusing on the execution of everyone’s personal ‘thing’ in workshop situations, it’s more rewarding to be part of a group effort while putting everything in the mix. A good word to describe what we’ve created is ‘serendipity’, the ability to look for, but in our case also to purposefully create ‘happy accidents’. It’s a good strategy to learn to work as a team, and to generate energy and enthousiasm together.
In my own practise, I’ve learned to trust in the ‘fact’ that if the ingredients are good, and you put in enough time and energy, whatever comes out should be good as well.
Nevertheless I must admit I was impressed by the quality of the editions that were compiled on friday: a contagious collection of colours, textures and patterns that are great to look at, but can also be used a source of ideas for future projects. This will make the folks at the Rietveld academie jealeous!
Thank you everybody, it was a real good experience. And again, very special thanks to Christian and Claire and their kick-ass-psycho-space-billy-screenprinting-dungeon. You rock!
Organized by Fred Dupuis and Yannick Weynacht.
Supported by Christian Isberg, head of LeQuai’s screenprinting shop.
Participating students: Aurélie Villeneuve, Marc-Amaury Legrand, François Bauer, Mathias Zieba, Laurie Franck, Claire Ginestoux, Shqipe Gashi, Pascal Auer.
