A workshop with Roberto Bottazzi ad Finn Williams on the relationship between the spatial organisation of the RCA and the upcoming consistent cuts in its budget.
To find out about our suggestions, ranging from RCA: Royal Condominium of Art to RCA: Royal Consultancy Agency, download the booklet:
- online version
- booklet for print (on A4 double sided)
Cups by Prapat Jiwarangsan
Animation by Callum Cooper
Image: performance In Thailand people are generous by Prapat Jiwarangsan. After investing the £470 material allowance from his department (C&G), and three months of work in order to produce 1000 hand-thrown cups, the artist was offering tea and a cup to all visitors as a comment on the fact that oversea students have to pay £24,000 a year in order to study at the RCA.
Although Department 21’s residency in the college has come to an end, during this year’s Show 2, as an interdepartmental group of students, we will create an installation in the internal courtyard of the Royal College of Art. This will not be a mere representation of our previous activities, but a reactivation of Department 21’s working methodology and spirit. Consequently, within the installation, on each day of the Show, we will address a different critical theme within art and design practice through a series of conversations and workshops with graduating students, alumni and external guests.
ALL WELCOME TO ALL EVENTS
To display the complete schedule of events:
After hard work also the D21 installation in the internal courtyard is finally ready to host all our events in the next days. It’s become such a good space, and the weather should be gorgeous. All is fine.
The furniture for Department 21 has been built by students from across the Royal College of Art – amateur furniture designers found in departments ranging from animation to design history. Constructed out of the old Painting studio walls, the wood for these pieces has seen, amongst others, 1998 Turner Prize Winner Chris Ofili and 2005 Nominee Gillian Carnegie working in the spaces it once defined.
The first session of stool- and benchbuilding, ‘Take A Seat In Department21’ was held during the launch party of Department 21 on January 12, 2010. With standard leg, support and seat pieces having been cut to size, guests were invited to experiment with designs and adapt the material however they pleased. The result was a set of unique and unconventional pieces with which Department 21 is still furnished.
Department 21’s amateur furniture collection has since grown. The old Painting studio walls have continued to be adapted into various seating and table designs, with an additional supply of second-hand wood from the ever-generative RCA skip.
Thanks to the brilliant work of carpenter Steve Campbell and the other guys from Drumlin Construction, the D21 final show installation is well on its way and should be finalised by Sunday 20 June. We’re all overly happy and excited!
Today the D21 book was printed at Calverts. It is going to be an A6 format pocket book of 132 pages, printed using leftover vegetable oil-based inks and paper from other people’s printing jobs – 100% reused stuff! It’s A6 size in order to minimise paper waste and save money. Every bit of paper, cover included, was used for content. The cover has a beautiful gradient from silver to purple.
We put together a dummy to give an idea of what it’s going to look like. Soon more details will follow.
Last weekend – and the weekend before, too – the Performing Arts Lab in the Stevens Building was transformed into a perfectly outfitted, amateur carpentry workshop, in which we completed the collection of stools and tables started while D21 was up and running. The pieces of furniture, made of all sorts of reused/recycled/reclaimed timber – still, amongst this, material salvaged from the old Painting studios – screwed together as tight as we could, will be for sale during Show Two.
On Sunday 23 May we will hold a stall at the Market of Ideas in the context of Parade. Come and visit us if you have time and the weather is nice.
Friday 21 May – Launch event – 5pm to 7pm
Bring things to share in our Pot-Luck of snacks, while Eileen Simpson & Ben White of the Open Music Archive play music from the commons.
Saturday 22 May – A day of consecutive Barcamps – 10am to 6pm
Sunday 23 May – Market of Ideas – 2pm to 6pm
Here a few impressions of that hot intense day. We didn’t have a fix stall, but a parasitical one. Over the day we attached it to other people’s stalls, made coffee, offered juice, and generally had a great time talking to different folks about our and their projects.
Getting there. Resulting from the installation workshop in March, this should be the final design of the Dept.21 deck, which will be built on the terrace facing the internal courtyard of the RCA. The surface will be made out of sawn timber boards, and on top of it various pieces of furniture will be arranged – some salvaged from D21, some freshly built. There we’ll engage with the show visitors, sell the D21 book (which is on its way) and organise a series of events and talks. So stay tuned for more updates soon.
An edited transcript of the roundtable discussion Initiatives in institutions; The power of interdisciplinarity will be included in the next issue (#14) of ARC Magazine, which will be for sale from the 1st June.
Since the launch of Department 21 and our first roundtable discussion, ‘Initiatives in Institutions: The Power of Interdisciplinarity’, we would like to invite you to a second discussion returning to these issues.
Having left the Stevens Building studio space after a six week-long experiment, Department 21 would like to ask ‘What is the state of interdisciplinarity at the RCA, and beyond it?’
What is the legacy of Department 21? What sort of educational environment best supports and cultivates disciplinary and interdisciplinary practice? What constitutes a discipline? What does ‘interdisciplinary’ actually mean? What value do these concepts have in post-graduate studies? What does ‘professional development’ mean today and how can educational institutions respond to this?
Please join the students of Department 21, Rector Paul Thompson, Pro-Rector Alan Cummings, Learning and Teaching Coordinator Chris Mitchell and Head of Sculpture Richard Wentworth for an engaging afternoon discussion.
Monday 19th April from 2.30-4pm in Lecture Theatre 2, Darwin Building.
1st of April, 5.30-7.15 pm, Whitechapel Gallery
PARTICIPANTS: Marsha Bradfield (Critical Practice Group, Chelsea); Nicholas Lobo Brennan; Carmen Billows (Department 21); Rita Kálmán (ACAX); Catalina Lozano (gasworks); Jonathan Miles (RCA); Trenton Oldfield (TIANG); Eszter Steierhoffer (ANA); Ildikó Takács (director, HCC); Jack Tan (Chair); Pieternel Vermoortel (FormContent);
apologies: Polly Brannan (public works); Will Holder; Sophie Hope; Magda Raczynska (Polish Cultural Institute)
AGENDA:
I. Introduction by Jack Tan and Eszter Steierhoffer
II. Discussion (transcript of the discussion available soon)
Beyond building its own core network and tracing the contemporary art scene in London, ANA endeavors to fulfill the role of a specialised mediator operating in different micro-contexts, and providing space for discussion and reflection. Preceding the first public event of ANA – the launch of the IMPEX book “We Are Not Ducks on a Pond, but Ships at Sea”. – we held an informal salon discussion at the Goshka Macuga roundtable at the Whitechapel Gallery.
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