11″x11″; paper collage, charcoal; 2019. Courtesy of Clive Knights.
COLLAGE WORKSHOP AT KOLAJ FEST NEW ORLEANS 2023
The Exquisite Chamber: Inhabiting New Worlds through the Augmented Collage Spatial Study
with Clive Knights
LEARN MORE | REGISTER FOR KOLAJ FEST NEW ORLEANS
Kolaj Fest New Orleans is a multi-day festival and symposium about contemporary collage and its role in art, culture, and society, 7-11 June 2023. Visit the website to learn more, see an overview of the program, and register to attend.
Clive Knights introduces participants to the “Augmented Collage Spatial Study,” a mode of creative practice that conjures new, imaginary, spatial worlds from found image fragments rich in material surface, light and shadow, perspectival depth, and human character. The workshop will use a roundtable process that rotates collages through seven collaborative stages whereby new extemporary additions are added to each work as they pass through the imagination and collage input of each participant. Therefore, each collage becomes the work of at least seven collaborators and aims to bring forth into visibility imaginary spaces, invented chambers, inconceivable by a single collagist.
The process begins by each participant laying down an initial ‘backdrop’ surface (imagine the back wall of a room), then all of these first gestures rotate clockwise around the table. The next stage of input proposes the floor surface of the chamber. Then throughout further rotations an overhead condition is added, then walls to the left and to the right. Each time openings, apertures, thresholds, doorways, windows can be included to modulate enclosing surfaces. Then after a further rotation, a human figure (or figures) is collaged inside the emergent chamber. After one last rotation the final input is to synthesize the collage with the application of black and/or white dense charcoal sticks (enhancing chiaroscuro effects, and spatial structure). Alongside this stage artists are invited to compose a 2-3 paragraph narrative that characterizes the occupant of the chamber they have received, a task that makes each collage-maker responsible for interpreting the identity of the inhabitant(s), dwelling within, and informed by, their imaginary chamber.
About Kolaj Fest New Orleans
Kolaj Fest New Orleans is a multi-day festival and symposium about contemporary collage and its role in art, culture, and society, 7-11 June 2023. Visit the website to learn more, see an overview of the program, and register to attend. Kolaj Fest New Orleans would not be possible without the support of the members of Kolaj Institute’s Golden Glue and Silver Scissors Societies, Kolaj Magazine and Kasini House. WEBSITE