Results of the animation workshop given by MoKS Nordic/Baltic resident Elin Grimstad made is cooperation with 5th grade students from the Mooste school. Its a warm winter so the story is quite true.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiFutKeTNJE[/youtube]
[caption id="attachment_901" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Madli pilt Mooste koolist"]
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During these very grey November days, hoping and waiting for the snow and sunlight, the matchbox camera workshop was held at MoKS. The good reason for this was having someone practiced in the mentioned craftwork – Daniel Allen – here as part of a two-month residency at the end of 2011.
So as planned, on Saturday the 26th, a small group of people gathered to learn the secrets of this strange craft. See the gallery below!
The process itself is not actually very complicated - just fairly. Here are main supplies you need:
- an empty matchbox – to cut different size of holes in different parts;
- a little piece of foil (stronger than cooking foil) and a pin to make a hole;
- a black pen to colour the inner parts of the box to avoid any light being reflected anywhere;
- some card to build the shutter;
- a film, of course, and also one old empty film cassette;
- black tape to make your camera fully lightproof;
- and a bit of sponge and half a clothes peg – for spooling the film from one cassette to another smoothly and successfully.
I would say the most difficult part, requiring most assistance needing, is getting the size of the pinhole (aperture) right – to be able to match it later with the approximate shutter speed in certain light conditions.
One of the most beautiful things about taking the photos with such a camera is the game between predictability and unpredictability. One takes pictures of the chosen subjects usually very consciously and also recognises most of these things later on the photos. And there are some extras as well that appear as certain effects (which can emerge from the “mistakes” made while building the camera). Actually there’s hardly any outcome that wouldn’t have these extras – in most cases, I would say, enriching the results.
It should be said that once the film is full of pictures, the camera has to be destroyed to get out the negatives. The good part of this is, however, that if you became good friends with the relations between aperture, light evaluation and shutter speed, you can re-use the same pinhole – as you remember, it’s the hardest part – to build the next camera.
And some more good news is that if you are interested, then please keep an eye on MoKS' activities in winter-spring 2012 – we are planning to have more of these workshops!
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MoKS was home to the Public Office for Architecture during the whole month of August as part of the X_OP residency program. The nomadic architecture project was accompanied by Kid Space Kabinet, a continuation of Fantasy World Workshop by artist Cristina David.
The Public Office for Architetcure explores the link between private and public interest in the practice of architecture. A temporary architecture office was established at MoKS, open to the public and free of charge. The public was invited to consult any architectural needs or questions they may have. In return every project that was taken on by the Public Office added one component to the program of requirements that was decidedly of public interest, initiating a dialog between private needs and public needs in the dynamics of architectural services. Four distinctly different projects were taken on by the office while in Mooste which will be followed up over the coming months.
The Public Office for Architecture is conceived as a nomadic project that will span over several years. The inaugural project hosted by MoKS was followed by Public Office for Architecture at Galeria HIT in Bratislava, with several projects planned for 2012. The accumulated work will serve as a collection of case studies to argue for a revision in the client-architect relationship within the practice of architecture as a service industry.
Public Office for Architecture is generously supported by MoKS, Galeria HIT, CECArtsLink and the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts. Many thanks to Evelyn and Siiri from MoKS and to our fabulous assistant and translator Iris Allese.
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[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="420" caption="the serious side of Dan and Trish Scott"]
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MoKS September residents from the UK, Trish and Dan Scott set up the PAIR WORK blog for their collaborative experiments. Please have a look to see just how productive they were.
GROUND is a collaborative project supported by the EU life-long learning programme, Grundtvig. It is a collaboration between MoKS, Art School MAA of Helsinki Finland and the Art University of Poznan Poland.
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This 5-day intensive workshop focused on Strategies of Culture, Collaborative Methods and Site-Specific art practices. We focused on the theme of 'Narratives' that includes three areas; the personal, the larger social and site or object narratives. The idea of narrative was explored beyond the basic notion of stories, where we looked at what constitutes the foundation or conditions that allow narratives to develop. The week activities consisted of practical fieldwork and exercises, artist presentations and discussion rounds in an open setting of international artists and students. We want to thank the 20 participants for their time and energy for a very productive week. We are looking forward to the next meeting in Helsinki.
We were fortunate to have a (short) visit by Stuart Hodges and Yelena Popova from the UK. Yelena screened her recent film "UNNAMED" about the forbidden city in Russia where she is from. You can view the film here:
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/19847305[/vimeo]
They also documented some events. This is a lecture/performance by Stuart:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzVJaCyKihI[/youtube]
And here is a video document of the final performance of Bruno Humberto's workshop at AVAMAA 2011:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2z-NjUoSSk[/youtube]