Technique
Depending on the nature of their disciplinary boundaries and traditions, different departments will grant more or less prominence to the technical imperative. Although the practical dimension is very much a part of the Ar.Co’s identity, technique and technologies are not in the centre of school’s pedagogical attitude. At its best, Ar.Co’s training renders explicit the operative, subjective character (and the orphanhood dimension) of technique’s place in contemporary artistic education. Thus, on the one hand, departments resort to technique and to technologies as one would do with any other avaliable service, acquiring this or that equipment, inviting this or that specialist, craftsperson or outstanding practitioner – at a given moment and in accordance with the programs being developed. On the other hand, it is true that techniques and technologies are also demonstrated, commented on, applied and practiced, sometimes in a way that is not even directly connected to current training problems (their exoticism may take the student’s attention to a higher level). Techniques related to the use of wood or stone have a strong presence in the school during the 1980’s, as do the techniques of traditional goldsmithing or the “old” processes in Photography (that, just like Graphic Design, Illustration/Comics or the Cinema/Movement Image necessarily resort, also, to the new digital technologies). There are also the numerous techniques, more or less traditional, used in Ceramics, and even techniques without a training “area” that might justify their presence in school (tapestry, weaving, stained glass). If the areas where arts and crafts mingle are those that more openly promote and explore the potential of some relatively rare traditional technical skills and knowledge, the “archaelogical” dimension found in one or several disciplines’s technical traditions interests all departments. When the new technologies start to determine the survival and development of certain areas of practice (which happens most clearly when IT and the digital recording and processing of image and sound are at stake), the training procedures integrate their new condition naturally and with clear refusal of a nouveau riche psychology, so as to clarify the distance between technical componenta and creative thinking.
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"International Stone Sculpture Symposium - Évora 81". 1981.
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"Polaroid" workshop with Jorge Guerra. Photography department, Ar.Co, 1997.
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Workshop - construction of portable kiln for Raku firing, directed by Martim Santa Rita. Ceramics department, Ar.Co, 2011.
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Workshop on the ceramics technique "Verguinhas". Ar.Co, Almada, 2007.
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Workshop - construction techniques in adobe/rammed earth directed by Elsa Figueiredo. Ceramics department, Ar.Co, 2007.
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Ambrotypes/wet collodium process workshop with Luís Pavão. Photography department, Ar.Co, 2010.
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Workshop in "soenga" firing technique directed by Elsa Figueiredo. Ceramics department, Ar.Co, 2007.
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Workshop "Mold", directed by Venâncio Neves, Sculpture department, Ar.Co, 2006.
