WERFT

Werftraum (n., Eng., shipyard): a metaphorical depot for the collection, storage and distribution of ideas; a haven for imaginative 'containers' in transit. Werftraum collects intellectual concepts and dynamic actions, stores them in hybrid spaces defined by words, and distributes them through physical manifestations (the internet, transit station, T.a.T. Performance Art Workshops).

Control and organisation originates in the Werftsystem, a construction of ideas derived from the cumulative production of the artist, Dagmar I. Glausnitzer-Smith. These include both hypothetical and real events and objects collected developed continuously since 2003. Drawings and works some since 1988, photographs and representation of these phenomena are stored within the names of imagined places and situations, some of which are informed through the archive of collective memory. They have arrived in a busy port, where they are catalogued, stacked, inversed and stored, ready for re-distribution.

Thus, Werftsystem presents a dynamic model of ideational and physical objects defined by words, images and conceptual intentions, alongside and interacting with a programmatic model of international art events and workshops. The warehouse of word, image and intention supplies the collaborative world with ideas, structures and methodology:

Objects

    poles, metal pieces, hats, animals, driftwood, numbered wood, bags, metal poles, words, signs, furniture, brooms, ice cubes, ...

Imaginative and invented locations

    rooms, sites, locations, positions, depot, basecamp, Besenkammer, warehouse, ...

Artwork

    drawings, photography, film, text, paintings, collage

Programme


  •  transitstation, exhibition as event
A 24-hour week-end event which creates a single multivalent artwork manifested in a variety of exhibits and performances from all areas of fine art and the performing arts including lectures, fashion shows, classical and contemporary music, interdisciplinary practice. The conceptual basis of the event is to explore the associative possibilities inherent in the simultaneous experience of artist and visitor, independent of the aims and intention of the actions being performed.
Peter Schüller: "Wenn sich die Kunst mit Formen der Aktion, der Aufführung, des Ereignisses und des Eingriffs in alltägliche Prozesse verbindet, wird es notwendig, dem Publikum Möglichkeiten und Regeln der Teilnahme und der Teilhabe aufzuzeigen und situationsangemessene Verhaltenmöglichkeiten in Form von Hinweisen, Anleitungen und Vorbildern anzubieten."
(The Educational Complex, p.46) This is realized in part in an inter-active and informative surrounding.
  •  T.a.T. performance art workshops develop pure action in art emphasizing the hidden sources of intuition, provoking non-directive and non-reactive impulses of the body leading to movement. Practical exercises of relaxation, breathing methods lead to a liberated form of self-experience.
  •  Werktag, City-site specific 12-hour performance workshops exploring 'foreign' city scapes, language, people and sounds