Urban Exoticism 2

2023 Workshop in Berlin
with Michael Grieve

The workshop
24-27 February 2023

There will be a maximum of 12 students and will be held in english.
From 10am to 6pm each day.
Final night will be the presentation from 7pm to 10pm.
Participation in or the implementation of a final presentation is possible after individual consultation with the lecturer.

The venue
Workshop will take place at > tbd

The fee
• 350 euros including VAT
• 250 euros including VAT for OKS students (Direktstudium und Bildredaktion)
(not including accommodation)

to  apply
please use office(at)ostkreuzschule.de

more info about Michael Grieve here

 

 

 

Urban Exoticism 2

Urban Exoticism 2 is the second photography workshop conducted by Michael Grieve, based on the theme ‚urban exoticsm‘, a term coined by the Greek art historian, Alia Tsagkari, as an alternative concept to experience and understand creatively the urban environment. This 4-day experience endeavours to help participating photographers find new ways of understanding the urban environment and spatial relations towards the realisation of subjective documentary projects that attempt to go beyond prevailing mechanized modes of thought.
The first workshop in 2021 brought 12 photographers to Athens with a heightened awareness of strange juxtapositions, layering and hidden places that build up the uncanny fabric of the city. Urban Exoticism 2 is an exploration of Berlin. Participants will re-map and find visual strategies to interpret their new experience of the city. From a dérive perspective, that is a mode of experimental behaviour linked to the conditions of urban society: a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances. It is an unplanned journey through a landscape, usually urban, in which participants drop their everyday relations and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there. The emphasis of these series of Urban Exoticism workshops is an experiential one, to engage in the process of making photographic work with a conceptual edge.
The workshop requires speed and quick thinking. It is about doing and working hard. Expect to be exhausted and satisfied by the end!
‚Urban Exoticism is an expression that circumscribes a perception of the metropolitan space that values fragments, unexpected juxtapositions and elements obscured by everyday experience. Revealing the mystery beneath the apparently banal surfaces of the modern city, it provokes the emergence of extraordinary realities drawn from the realms of the exotic, the erotic and the unconscious.‘
Alia Tsagkari, Athens, 2021

Daily routine

Pre Workshop.
Participants will be given a small assignment via email. To be completed and brought to Day 1.

Day 1.
Participants introduce themselves and the assignment. A lecture on Urban Exoticism from Michael Grieve. Group discussion on project ideas.

Day 2.
Participants propose project ideas to be discussed as a group. In the late afternoon participants will begin to explore the city and begin to shoot. Most photography will be nocturnal.

Day 3.
Participants begin to show their work in progress. At this point problems and possibilities of projects will be discussed as a group.

Day 4.
Group meeting in the morning followed by individual tutorial with Michael Grieve. Shooting day. Selection, editing and sequencing photographic projects to be presented in the evening to a public audience. Each participant will make an individual presentation and discuss their projects and experience. It is not expected to complete a project, indeed the workshop is designed to explore and experiment. The presentation will be a discussion on the work in process.

(Participation in or the implementation of a final presentation is possible after individual consultation with the lecturer.) 


photo © Michael Grieve