bianca hester is working on a collaborative project with undergrad students at VCA (victorian college of arts). you can see some of the progress of her erstwile students in a bloggy form here: http://studioeverybody.blog-city.com

much like the legendary allan kaprow, hester is keen to shake up her students a bit, to get them out of the normal routine of university art school process – which usually involves a single student authoring a single discrete and highly tangible object/outcome (and being "assessed" individually, and by an authority rather than peers).

instead, hester is "forcing" them to embark on a collaborative process, and to struggle with the project as a process in itself. i cant say i have any idea what the outcome might be, but the budding artists seem to have engaged in some sort of game based around "exchange" – they have divided their foci into "four intensities "falling under the headings "object, process, tool, material" – the use of which is kinda unclear…(one student's intensities were "TROLLY JOINING STRING SCISSORS")…

the blog comes across, to me, more as the collective minutes after an intense meeting, and i think thats why its a bit hard to follow what's going on. but it is clear that it is a site for exchange by the participants more than by interested outsiders like myself. furthermore (and this is most interesting to me) it is an experiment challenging the limits of hester's own practice as an artist. i'm itching to see and hear more…

2 thoughts on “

  1. Jodie Post author

    Bianca Hester is a CRAZY teacher. she’s great….we need to work a little more on the outside understandability of our blog. Your observations are very correct there. Most of the class have not used a blog before so its an experiment in not only working together but doing so in many formats.

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  2. Lucas Post author

    nah, i reckon its a great blog. chaotic and organic and totally for the use of the participants. probably one of you could make a whole project about going back over that blog, once your deadline is finished, and analysing what purpose it served and how the project might have been different without it!

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