UWAS 2021-2022

When I started as university teacher in the UWAS program at Aalto University (2021), the workshop was included into the transdisciplinary studies portfolio of the Art Design and Architecture school. It was proposed as a MA course, and taught along with Tommi Ollikainen, artist and yoga instructor who had been part of the Co-laboratory group.

In this setting the workshop offered a space for students of varied disciplines to explore the role of the body in creating knowledge, in professional practice, and in shaping personal experience. The course used experiential embodied learning exercises to examine how bodies are regarded and shape students’ disciplinary practices. Supported in theoretical readings, students discussed process-based artistic research in connection with concepts introduced by new materialist and feminist perspectives. The training promoted awareness on how students relate to their bodies, ecosystems and knowledge, and illuminated the ways they approach the world in the artworks, science or technology they produce. The EKW stressed as well bodily awareness as means to open new perspectives for building a more humane and sustainable world.

As final assignment for the course, students created individual experiments connected to the workshop methods and submitted a written reflection linked with their artistic, scientific and academic projects. The positive response of students led to a second edition six months later for UWAS, this time with guest artists Janina Rajakangas, Kira O’Reilly and dancer Carolina Paulino teaching specific modules.