Summer School in Durban, South Africa

What are the goals of the Summer School?

Although the summer school is focussed on the professional aspects and content issues of pictorial invention in and with the public sphere as digital formats have become ubiquitous, the course is dedicated to facilitate and promote international, artistic exchanges between students and teachers above all. As participants engage in actual, artistic work, discuss their efforts and also mix and mingle as they organise events and get to know each other during communal meals and excursions, they make experiences they also share. The value of these experiences for the artistic and social development of participating students and faculty is almost beyond measure. Add to that the intercultural and interdisciplinary context and the fact that the Summer School is held in Bremen at the HfK as well as at the DUT in Durban and it becomes even harder to believe how enriching the projects is.
The Summer School “Painting, Drawing and the Digital in Public Space” in Durban continues the cooperation among both universities, the Durban University of Technology and the Academy of the Arts Bremen, that had already started in September 2020 online. During the summer semester of 2022, nine students and four members of the faculty at DUT spend time at the HfK in Bremen. 
Workshops were dedicated to joint explorations in the potentials of pictorial invention in painting and drawing in the age of digital media. The Summer School in Durban will focus on how painting and drawing can position themselves in the public sphere in conflict and/or collaboration with digital media. Students and faculty can take a nuanced perspective and question extant approaches to this complex topic. This leads to engaging with Augmented Reality and Projection Mapping as tools that go far beyond the realms of painting and drawing in animation and the exploratory inquiry into hybrid formats.
The change of location and being exposed to specific, regional, cultural and historical situations are expanding the spectrum of the practical work of participants as artists in significant ways. The Summer School points to the question on the medial and conceptual impacts of digital elements, technology and transformations on the arts—and what kind of artistic strategies can be developed by engaging with these complex tensions and relationships. The goal here is to open up the complex field of interaction between painting, drawing and the digital in transdisciplinary cooperation in new ways relating to aesthetics and content, while applying diverse technological-medial traditions and methods.

When did the project start? How many classes did participate so far?

After applying in the fall of 2019, we have received the first funding from the Deutsche Akademische Austauschdienst (DAAD) for a summer school in Germany and a program in South Africa for 2020. Then receiving visitors for Durban or travelling there became unthinkable due to the Corona pandemic. The DAAD offered to rededicate the funding and change the in-person Summer School into a virtual one. We took them up on this offer and conducted the online-Summer School “Painting, Drawing and the Digital in Public Space” on MS Teams in September 2020. 20 students from the courses Liberal Arts, Integrated Design and Digital Media at the HfK and 20 students from the courses Fine Art, Fashion, Design and Jewellery Design at the DUT participated. 
We also received funding for 2021 but then had to decide on returning the financing as it became clear that the pandemic would still pose insurmountable hurdles to the project: After two years of teaching online, resources and capacities had been exhausted and we could not imagine to conduct yet another virtual summer school.
We where successful with our renewed application with the DAAD for funding the Summer School program in 2022 and therefore students and faculty could visit Bremen in May and we were able to travel to Durban in August.
How is the program structured, how does it work?
The program is a well considered mix of introductions to the participating universities and the systems of higher learning, as well as to the towns and the countries. We also continue practical work that had been started in Bremen. The project will kick off with introductory work shops. The program is now focussed on engaging the public sphere. Key for that work will be locally sourced materials with distinct qualities for our regions, such as textiles, pearls and sand. Maintaining a sketch book with continuous updates serves as the basis for the artistic work. Animation expands those notes into movement. AR and Projection Mapping will be applied for the realisation of concepts in the public sphere. Professor Annette Geiger, Dr. Kathrin Gollwitzer-Oh and Professor Themba Shibase are giving their support for the Summer School on a theoretical and academic level.

Can you tell us about participating institutions and people?

The original idea for a cooperation with the Durban University of Technology was hatched during a conversation among Marion Bösen, Patricia Lambertus and Professor Heike Kati Barath in 2019. This core group quickly grew as Dr. Kathrin Gollwitzer-Oh, Ulrike Isenberg and Lorenz Potthast joined their effort. 
Professor Heike Kati Barath is leading the project in cooperation with Dr. Kathrin Gollwitzer-Oh. At the HfK Marion Bösen, Patricia Lambertus, Annette Geiger and Michael Weis are engaged in planing and running the Summer School 2022. Our partners at the DUT are faculty members Professor Chris de Beer, Professor Nic Human ,Professor Kiara Gounder, Professor Lee Scott and Professor Themba Shibase. Kerstin Böger is supporting us in handling the finances.
Participating students at the DUT in the Summer School 2022 are: Bianca Govender, Manqoba Bhengu, Lindiwe Mbambalala, Silindubuhle Mbele, Zandile Mbhele, Londeka Mseleku, John Sempe, Jess Bothma, Julia Whitby.
They are joined by these students at the HfK: Bissan Badran, Ren Evora, Anastasiia Guzenkova, Kira Häring, Eghbal Joudi, Shoji Matsumoto, Haruka Mogi, Martha Skorupa and Camila Mejia Murillo.
As the DAAD only supports faculty at international summer schools, following our declared goal to educate and involve students regardless of their individual, socio economic backgrounds, we had to raise the means to enable students to participate on our own. 
The HfK, especially the Office of the Dean; Stuko FK; Verein Partnerschaft Bremen-Durban e.V.; Freundeskreis der HfK; as well as private sponsors who either bought AR post cards designed by students or silk screen prints by Kati Barath to support the travel.