Let's Tangle! A Tu-Tu-Tufting Marathon and Miniature Mixed Media Workshop
by artist Toni Zhao (赵彤宇)
in collaboration with Prickly Paper (刺纸)
"Let's Tangle!" is a material-based workshop open to all DKU community, and is part of the joint project "Weave Our Festival". We will be exploring the concept of "trust" and "handy-crafty-intuition" through play, collaboration and material experimentations. The workshop will be open all day long, feel free to drop by and tangle together!
Dates: Feburary 21-22
Opening Hours: 2.21 4pm till late AB3101
2.22 4pm till late AB3107
Location: AB2075 (The Glass Room in front of the AB Ballroom)
About the workshop:
The workshop has two parts going on at the same time, we highly encourage everyone to explore both workshops and cook up something interesting with these crafts, and find new methods to connect with oneself and to create together. With no expectations of specific outcomes, we want to trust the process of play, to let things flow and happen organically like a crafty jam session, focusing on our intuition at the moment.
Part One: Tu-Tu-Tufting Marathon
We will be learning two types of rug making methods: punch-needle embriodery and hand-held machine tufting, applying these skills to create in a non-traditional way. The two-day Tu-Tu-Tufting Marathon invites everyone to explore their relationship with "trust" through machinery, hand craft, labor and material. Stepping into the tension between control and intuition, to tangle with yarn and each other. The co-created marathon piece will be showing at the joint "Guest Room" project space, and open to be collaborated on continiously after the workshop.
Part Two: Miniature Mixed Media Workshop
For this workshop we will use DIY materials and craft methods like shrink plastic, resin, sewing, paperpulp to make miniature works. We will be exploring possibilities within different limits, experimenting between materials, and sharing our ah-ha moments with each other.
The outcome from both workshops can be used for the students' art festival at the end of this project in March.
Prickly Paper “Drifting Backpack”
2021 March, together with the Flight Club, the editor team of Prickly Paper rented a new space in Xiaozhou Village, where the Flight Club as the reading room with a collection of books of the poet Ke Chen donated by her family, as well as art books that we added later. At the end of last year, at the invitation of our friend Sipei Lu, who works at the NAMSC of GAFA, we had a dialogue with the Malaysian group Buku Jalanan in the self- publishing section of “BULLET TEXT”of “Threading through the Eye of the Needle,” which she initiated in collaboration with the Display Distribute in the Trans-Southeast Asia Triennial project “Two responses to social practice.” Thus, based on our own reading room collection, as well as publications donated and exchanged by friends from diverse spaces in China, we initiated the “Drifting Backpack”project.
漂流书包到昆山杜克大学了，将在刺纸客厅展示至25日，并招募下一位借阅者/管理员～
The "Drifting Backpack" has arrived at DKU, and will be on exhibition until the 25th. We will also be recruiting the next borrower or keeper of the backpack.
Learn more - click on link below:
Artists
Yifei CHEN, born in Zhangpu, Fujian, graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts and has currently no fixed abode. He is one of the initiators of the artist group “Jasagala”, and one of the editors-in-chief of “Prickly Paper”.
Feihong OU, the owner of Huangben Guangda Gallery, is one of the editors-in-chief of “Prickly Paper”, based in Guangzhou.
Tongyu ZHAO (Toni), born in Hubei, graduated with a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2016. Toni is an artist believing in intuition and personal experience. She is fascinated by the traces of use left by materials/objects, individual experience, daily labor and life behaviour. Through different ways of drawing, sewing and piecing, she incorporates handmade crafts and everyday objects, intending to stir up insignificant life moments and ponder about its weirdness. Toni currently lives and works in Shanghai and low-key running a small handmade workshop "Toni's Factory".
“Weave Our Festival”
Modernization has brought varies problems: the division of labor is creating barriers, mass mechanical production is driving us away from nature, political opinions are polarized, and the pandemic makes trust between people even more fragile.
To unravel today's tangles, we need to relearn our bodies and the tools: with primitive printing and weaving methods, we try to liberate ourselves from the shackles brought by technology; through body workshop, we practice listening to each other; in cooperation, we build trust in different materials and people, learning to produce and live more ethically.
In the framework of the Kultursymposium Weimar 2023“A Matter of Trust”, the Department of Culture and Education of the German Consulate in Shanghai and DKUNST Art on Campus, Division of Arts and Humanities Duke Kunshan University have launched “Weave Our Festival” together. The guest art collective “Prickly Paper” and their partners plan to meet and interact with participants from Duke Kunshan University and Shanghai through two short residencies. The artists will organize several different types of lectures and workshops and set up a temporary living room at Duke Kunshan University, exploring “trust” and “connection” with the participants during the residency collaborating under the theme of “trust”. The workshop will culminate in a mini festival with the students at the end of the residency.
In addition, the outcome of the workshop may be put into a “drifting book bag”, an artistic mobile book corner that will be carried by people and displayed at Duke Kunshan University and Department of Cultural and Educational of German Consulate General in Shanghai in April.
“Weave Our Festival” is a joint art project of Goethe-Institut and DKUNST Art on Campus at Duke KunshanUniversity in collaboration with the art collective Ci Zhi, curated by Dr. Oliver Hartmann and Prof. Zairong Xiang, in the frame of the Kultursymposium Weimar 2023 “A Matter of Trust”.
Click on link below to learn more:
https://www.goethe.de/prj/ksw/en/index.html
随机活动：一起练功
Random activity: Energy Waving Collective
内容来自内家拳
（形意、太极、八卦）
松身站桩和推手
Content comes from Neijia boxing
(Xingyi, Taichi, Eight diagrams)
Loose body standing exercise
形式活泼，效果开心，
性别友好，互相倾听，
花式相处，激发身心！
Of lively form and happy effect,
Gender friendly and listen to each other,
A fancy way to hang out and stimulate the mind and body!
Pushing hands, or tui shou, the ancient, internal Chinese martial arts training, is based on Taoist Kung Fu. It can release the tension in shoulders, bodies, and push hands, so it is good for the health. But it also offers a way to sharpen one’s sensitivity and coordination, and communicates through the corporeal body contact. This public practice creates nodes with each other and with the new friends. For these artists, they want this untraditional education to bring about a togetherness and happiness with more equality. They welcome any newcomer and beginner to practice and relax the soul and body. Nobody cares about where you come from. The most important thing is to focus on the current status of the body and mind. With limited physical touch, the two practitioners will feel like becoming the "one" by sensing the direction of a partner's intention. Through pushing and nudging, the two practionners will understand each other better. It is also a mental training between oneself and the external world. (description by Sipei)
previous posters
you are welcome to join when you see people doing these things
Click on link below to learn more:
更多活动内容后续发布，敬请期待
Please keep an eye out for further announcements about activities that are to be issued in the following days!