rotational

Rotational

Second semester, Monday 10:00-14:00 (course continues until 17:00)

Course synopsis:

The course will focus on the idea of Rotational within the context of contemporary making.

Rotational movement has forever been embedded in our existence through physics; from planetary movement, to tornados, and down to the atomic scale. We have been utilizing rotational movement principles in craft technologies millennia; wood and marble turning, drilling, centrifugal precious-metals casting, yarn-spinning, pottery throwing and so forth. Contemporary attitudes at times manipulate these traditional technologies, replacing materials, upgrading driving forces, rethinking outcomes and integrating digital tools in the process.

The rotational experience for people is also associated with alternative states of consciousness often brought on during the manual tactile action of making things related to spiritual and religious well-being. Repetitive actions taken while crafting an object create a meditative state, some people describe being in what they are making. At the same time religious beliefs drive pilgrims rotationally around the Kaaba in Mecca or around mt. Kailash in Tibet, Sufi Dervishes whirl, Jews spin Dreidels - and celebrate the “hag” (Heb: holiday/circumvent) and Tibetan Buddhist monks turn prayer wheels.

Material reuse, recycling, repurposing, often an expression of circular thinking, propose repeated redefining and recontextualizing of the things we make. The passing-down of making traditions, like our measurement of time, is in cycles with mother being replaced by daughter, being replaced by mother, yet returning to the same point – is never the same. In what way do contemporary technologies and mind-set redefine craft as it comes around again? In what way does it then reflect back on us, changing who we are and how we do things?

*The course will be held in collaboration with the China Academy of Art.