Over the past year I’ve been developing a workshop concept that involves a whole range of ideas. The workshop known as “Mutopia” started somewhat accidentally last year at MoKS summer symposium AVAMAA when I decided to collaborate with Tero Nauha, a researcher and performance artist from Finland. We both had our own workshop plans but combined them to form something new. The outcome was more than we expected and therein was one of the core ideas, to create something that is collaborative, all inclusive and provides conditions for open exchanges. What follows is a general frame for the efforts of the participants to be coordinated. As I describe on the new Vimeo page:

Mutopia is a process oriented workshop environment that explores collaboration, collective creativity and open forms of authorship. This is done through social and environmental research, exercises, games and the use of mixed artistic media such as sound, collage, text, performance etc…

The videos here are composted aspects of the process but should not necessarily be considered the only “results”. The outcome is more the subjective experiences of the individuals who participate and contribute.

The collaborative aspect is essential. I’m trying not to steer a particular direction for the group and avoid the format and product mentality. The videos came out because of the possibility to layer the different processes into some composite form but other outcomes are there. Some of the texts hold well on their own as well as the readings of the texts. This is the importance of understanding the strength of subjectivity, that each participant sees their own contribution in the whole, where collective authorship is the prime motivation once people open up and get inspired. the narratives come directly out of the process and in fact are multiple.

I’m interested in being much more of a guide for the processes and mediator of the ideas than an artist who shapes the world around me to “fit” certain ideas. With each step of the process we break to desire to determine goals allowing indeterminacy to take its course.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Mutopia locations:

Mutopia 1 – AVAMAA MoKS Summer art symposium – 8.2008
Mutopia 2 – X-OP symposium, Macao Portual – 4.2009
Mutopia 3 – AVAMAA MoKS Summer art symposium – 8.2009
Mutopia 4 – Polymer Culture Factory, Tallinn – 12.2009
Mutopia 5 – Jelgava University, Latvia – 12.2009
Mutopia 6 – X-OP symposium, Tomar Portugal – 5.2010