Day 6 Collage manifesto

"The Rift Between Modernity And Freedom

The piece draws upon the statistical areas of modern life; the antithesis of nature. Despite urbanism's original intentions to provide convenience and stability, the drive for efficiency to achieve such goals have placed further constraint and strain on the modern individual. Statistical surveillance of the separate members of the population reduces a person to facts and figures drawing away from what is natural. Pushing human nature into a binary form, constricting the freedom of movement and activity provides a stark contrast to the principles of Dadaism. Visually, the organic materials are placed on the fringes of the urban and modern human focus, set against the distorted silhouette of the Langdale peaks." - Lucy Kendall

Day 6 Collage manifesto

"This piece is inspired from a particular Dada collage by Kurt Schwitters, in which lots of squares and right angles are used. I decided to use a similar theme in this work, to represent the orthogonality of the city and how everything seems to be right angles to each other there. This contrasts with the more organic and natural layout of the rural areas, where roads, streets and rivers wind through towns and villages." - Matthew O'Rourke

Day 6 Dada Art Session

We collected an array of materials from both the Lake District and Manchester to create dada inspired art. This morning we started using the materials to make the collages. A messy start to a great result!

Day 4 Lake district

We visited Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal on our first day in the lake distrcit. We learned about Kurt Schwitters and his art work related to dadaism and his escape from the war. We also got to visit the Merz Barn from which Schwitters created his work. As a result, we came up with our own pieces of art inspired by our trip and our exploration of dadaism.

Day 3 Filming in the city

Following up from our storyboards, we went out to the city to start filming. We captured footage of the movements, noise and activities we found interesting. The aim is to create a good contrasting feel with tomorrow's countryside footage. The result would show the ways in which the rural stands out as a sustainable place and bring the two different lifestyles in a clear visual way.

Day 2 Storyboarding Workshop

Today we began brainstorming ideas and themes for our movie. Following up from the talks on the first day, we've created storyboards that cover these extracted themes:
- Countryside's role in promoting sustainable living
-The contrast between city and rural life
-Architects and artists, especially dadism
-The return from the urbanised to the countryside
-The portrayal of topography and landscaping.
We will also touch upon facts and firgues about the lake district including its recent label as a UNESCO world heritage site.

Background inforamtion Rural area

Despite England's large rural area, taking over 70 percent of the map, a 2017 record only shows 17 percent of the population living in the countryside, while 83 percent are concentrated in the blue urban zones. This is manifesting through urban congestion, pollution and rural neglect. We'd like to create a vision that would bring back appreciation and awareness to the benefits of living in the countryside, highlighting its irreplaceable and sustainable quality of life.

Lake district

Looking forward to our exciting trip to the lake district. We will be capturing elements of the countryside as we travel, gathering content for our movie. By this, we will create a library of footage from which we pick our strongest vision and bring it to show at the end of our program.

Merz 19' poster

Our group will be working with collaborators from the Lake District. We are excited to have several visitors during the events week to hold creative workshops and discuss ideas about the rural!