DESCRIPTION:

The primary goal of Catalyst is to raise the level of discourse about design and to provoke leaps in perception of what design can be. The workshops serve as intense, rigorous, transformative and creative sparks within the spring semester, and participants then re-engage their peer groups, able to share new ways of thinking, communicating and making.

This workshop combines JXTA’s Tactical Urbanism to engage communities in design decision-making, with the language of street art, projection, illumination and words, students will create space with pandemic waste.

Every aspect of our life has been affected by the pandemic, from how we perceive space to how we use it to distance from each other as virus hosts and connect with each other as social beings. Even as we try to create hybrid realities our physical spaces no longer meet our hybrid needs. The pandemic has also resulted in extensive material waste which is headed to landfills, such as acrylic (plexiglas) to create covid separation barriers. These cannot be readily recycled, but may be manipulated,formed and imagined for new uses through an understanding of material properties. Can we, however, increase the material’s lifespan by finding new uses? How can we tell stories about our shared experiences and the emergence of environmental challenges relating to the materials that we use?

Using discarded acrylic panels, we will create installations that shape space for new normals that provide individuals and groups ways to connect and separate. Rooted in the instructors’ individual and collective social practices, students will project onto the installations a series of narratives using graffiti, light and words, affirmation and contradiction with a bit of antagonism.

MATERIALS:

The materials we will use for the workshop are found or recycled plexiglass and plastics /gatorboard, maybe wood and other manufactured and repurposed materials. The materials may have been formerly used as paper trays, shelf doors, or any number of excess discarded office materials.

During the workshop week we will write down words, poems, lyrics that speak to the themes of extractive and non extractive histories and post pandemic futures and transform our words into street art in either stencils, stickers, mini wheat paste posters or graffiti tags with paint markers to be adhered to one or more surfaces .

We will cut into the surfaces of our material objects with the words, phrases, poems so a light source can project our ideas onto a dark gallery room wall. We will be using the cnc, laser cutter, head blades etc to achieve this. These will be stacked and arranged similar to an installation.

After the workshop, the lightboxes will be used for lamps/seating and illuminating projection boxes will be used around the campus for study spaces or places to eat a snack or have a small conversation. The word/street art folding screen will be used as space dividers around the design schools.

REUSE / SCAVENGE

Students bring following materials if it’s available on hand

1. Paint markers

2. Spray-paint

3. Exacto knifes

4. Magazines

5. Newspapers

6. Paint

7. Recycled/discarded plexiglass

8. Fabric Cloth

DOCUMENTATION:

Document your process throughout the day and all work completed by end of each day. Upload daily documentation of your process and your finished work to this Google folder. Name your files according to the following scheme, including date, your last name, and an individual file number.

Example: 2022-03-15_yourlastname_number.jpg

SCHEDULE

Day 1 - intro / thematic naratives

Day 2 - large plexi

Day 3 - small plexi

Day 4 - assembly

Day 5 - touch up & present