W*ORT project
on WORDS
Wilf Thust and Jo Davis
We did 3 workshops, with W*ORT,
One on 16 – 19 Aug 2016 on colours and letters,
One on 17 – 21 July 2017 on life-size marionettes and performances and on 4 – 7 September 2018 this one on words and our bodies…
We were invited to do these workshops by Gabi Hampson who created
and works at W*ORT In Lustenau, West Austria
She writes:
The W*ORT is a special and inclusive place in Lustenau where adults give children their time and try to meet them at eye level. Language is at the center of interaction. Creative potential is awakened, ideas are gained and, often, good products are produced from this interaction.
We offer a space in which children can write, tell stories, fail, find solutions, develop ideas and take action, away from the culture of error.
Lines to warm up
These lines are “stolen” from the artists Paul Klee and Saul Steinberg, as inspiration!
The artist PAUL KLEE said, 100 years ago: “Take a line for a walk”
YOUNG PEOPLE who joined us, cut from a roll of Tyvek paper, squares of about 40 x 40 cm. We asked them to draw their names with a big or medium-sized felt tip in either round or straight lines.
In that way everybody introduced each other. As a “thank you” they were invited to fill the rest of their papers with a jungle of overlapping lines and to cut out a living or invented object they discovered between the lines.
We showed them pictures of signs.
There were people from Syria and Turkey who couldn’t easily come up with a story but everybody could fill a page with THEIR OWN signs in black and white – relating to their “story” of happiness.
We gave everybody a box to collect their cut outs. These should be used for a big picture of themselves and their story. Quite a few drawings were collected as they seemingly came from “nowhere”.
On the third day we had to move to a bigger room in a school and gave out roles of Tyvek we had.
Everybody got help from others to draw a line around their body with a pen, and then to create a big black outline with a brush.
We suggested hanging these up in the empty greenhouse structure outside our original workspace.
However exciting their figure got, we wanted them to be constructed from a middle man.
However exciting their figure got, we wanted them to be constructed from a middle man.
Inspirations by Paul Klee, again, and Saul Steinberg
The whole classroom was filled again with long sheets of Tyvek.
