Workshop ExTRA lab
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
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Project Description
This workshop was a practice based, textile art and design-led experience, which develops creative visions and redefines textile practice. The central aspects of this workshop were the strong focus on non-traditional textiles methods, investigating alternative surface treatments, new forms conception, hybrid materials approach and the most important bioplastics experimentation. Behind this project is the group of 13 students of École supérieure d’art et de design TALM-Angers and three educators.
Project Region
EU Programme or fund
Description of the project
Summary
This workshop was a practice based, textile art and design-led experience, which develops creative visions and redefines textile practice. The central aspects of this workshop were the strong focus on non-traditional textiles methods, investigating alternative surface treatments, new forms conception, hybrid materials approach and the most important bioplastics experimentation. Behind this project is the group of 13 students of second and third year of École supérieure d’art et de design TALM-Angers (undergraduate degree), three educators (Brankica Zilovic-Chauvain – artist and professor –, and two invited designers from @Hors-Studio Team).
Within the surface experimentation the ambition was also to strengthen the practice of transformation, agglomeration, hybridization and finally sublimation of waste. The workshop was articulated around a strong objective to capture and emphasize creative processes in order to create a new materials, innovative artefacts related to textiles in the fields of art, design, space design or fashion design. The special focus was bioplastics samples creation with gelatin base, experimenting and testing the limits of this material, whether permanent or temporary, fibrous textile structures and patterns created from natural materials such as agar-agar mixtures, gelatin, alginates, glycerol, etc.
The aim of this 4 days experience was to constitute the prefiguration of the future course framework and methods for the following academic year 2021/22, a form of preview of what awaits the students who intend to enroll in brand new Master program : Master in textile ExTRA (Extraordinary Textile Experience and Artistic Research).
Life span: one time experience, but will become recurrent event, introduced in within following new 2021/22 academic year as a core course in Master in textile ExTRA. The workshop was initiated by École supérieure d’art et de design TALM-Angers, with financial support of West Creative Industries.
Key objectives for sustainability
Students participating in this workshop started by questioning the value of waste, in particular the vegetal plant waste mainly from agricultural activities (reed plant fibers, sequoia tree barks, hemp fibers, cellulosic content of waste, sawdust, as well as from the textile industry (leather stripes and left-overs, textiles selvedge threads, etc.). Students were also experimenting with their personal vegetal collections of dehydrated flowers, plants, dehydrated fruits, and tea and coffee grounds as well. In the context of growing and increasingly complex waste consideration, triggering the imaginary and innovative re-thinking and designing of new models of waste transition occupy a prominent place in this new Master's degree in textiles.
All waste, for this occasion, was collected from the local agriculture and fashion companies. Some of the local companies that we have recently contacted where motivated by this form of sustainable interaction/partnership by waste and left-overs regular donation, where unpicking the area of waste presents complex social and political challenge.
The workshop is about leading students a step further in their eco-responsible and artistic approach, to pay attention to the environment, ecological gestures and techniques of waste transformation into sustainable artefacts and heterogeneous associations.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
Relation to the craft, artistic focus and creative imagination remain the core driving force of this workshop, but also the dismantling and vanishing of the borderlines between the craftsmen, art and design. This workshop intends to focus on the way in which craftsmanship, creation, technology and critical practices are giving shape new narrative for a new use of textiles, as well as on how the textile field contributes to debates on new materiality and environment thinking, textile re-thinking in order to create a real impact in the socio-economic landscape.
Some of the new fields of creation today involve the relationship between art and economy – two areas which have been able to fight each other symbolically and ideologically throughout the 20th century. A new phenomenon of convergence, of bringing together those two models seems to be able to update today, where each draws from the other, organizational systems, design methods, creative tools, sometimes even the aims and goals. Two territories therefore – art and the economy – stands together, inspire each other, back to back, overlap to the point of building common platforms. The lines move, the social and symbolic roles as well, in a complex display made of displacements, openings, shifting, ruptures, operate a reconditioning. It is this convergence of the art world and the economy that is embodied the new Master in textile ExTRA, art and design students, entrepreneurs will find the thinking material and theoretical base necessary to understand this change.
Key objectives for inclusion
The aim of this workshop ExTRA and our future Master is to fully assume and enhance local skills for a better national and international positioning. Positioning against the fast-industry of the textile sector within this training carries the ambition to be the crucible from the possibility of emerging a breeding ground for new players, new talents (researchers, creators, designer, entrepreneurs, etc. farmers, teachers, socio-cultural mediators and trainers, etc.) who could profoundly transform the regional economic landscape and ensure a sustainable future.
Results in relation to category
Relation to the craft, artistic focus and creative imagination remain the core driving force of this workshop, but also the dismantling and vanishing of the borderlines between the craftsmen, art and design. This workshop intends to focus on the way in which craftsmanship, creation, technology and critical practices are giving shape new narrative for a new use of textiles, as well as on how the textile field contributes to debates on new materiality and environment thinking, textile re-thinking in order to create a real impact in the socio-economic landscape.
The relationship between craftsmen and artists, the intersection of disciplines, cross-media education, experimentation and collective intelligence symbolized the spirit of Bauhaus, the huge inspiration for our new hybrid ExTRA program. The forms, objects and artefacts created in the workshops of this German school imposed theirs relevant concept of thinking about the world differently and always continuing to nourish our contemporary culture. The aim of the new program Master in textile in TALM-Angers Higher school of art and design is precisely to trace these fundamental ideas and bring them back into the present day. Master in textile ExTRA refers for Extraordinary Textile Experience and Artistic Research!
How Citizens benefit
One of the ambitions of the project was to link art school and civil society, by connecting art and local economy. All waste, used in the workshop ExTRA, was collected from the local agriculture and fashion companies. Some of the local companies (Pays de la Loire Region) that we have recently contacted where motivated by this form of sustainable interaction/partnership by waste and left-overs regular donation, where unpicking the area of waste presents complex social and political challenge.
Innovative character
The workshop ExTRA and the future Master in textile ExTRA intends to support students in the revolution in contemporary textile activities, a source of new social and economic realities. Textiles are now expressing and offering a new alternatives. The industrial potential of new fibers is infinite: textile fibers to be combined with other fibers, even with other organic or mineral components, in order to produce yarns, surfaces, volumes, according to structures which allow the most sustainable applications. The development of new technologies and new modus operandi in the creative industries has led fashion and luxury companies to imagine new professions, particularly in textile engineering, which develops innovative materials and fabrics.
Environment changes perspectives: developing new-learning models, new relation to the materiality, new materials, new understanding of textile materials, “new materialism” approach in art and design, bio sourcing and creative waste transformation.
This example is an experimental event, a process, new practice and new pedagogical method as well.
This example improves culture, environment, education, economic model, materials repositioning and revaluation, new creative methods and practice in art and design, new scenario in manufacturing, science acknowledgment, recycling methods.
