Two weeks ago we got another two assignments and then the blogposts stopped, which is I guess the best illustration of the lack of time that I have now! And it doesn’t help if we go on all kinds of trips visiting other cities XD
About the new assignments: one was really short-term and in fact I finished it just last week, it’s the video up there. We had only two weeks to create a short animation of max. 30 seconds somehow connected to Ústí and Labem, a Czech town near the German border which has changed sides frequently through history. I made a kind of abstraction of that history. Fun about this is that it’s gonna be projected in three different rooms in a gallery in Ústí, which is why there are these rectangles overlays in the animation. The viewer will only see one of the three parts at any time. 😀
Last week was the final week to make a choice when it comes to the elective courses. In the end I settled on Figure Drawing, Czech Language, Genius Loci of Prague, Very Anxious Meetings, Clay Modeling and Czech Modern and Contemporary Art and Architecture. This is more than I have to, but there is just too much fun things to choose from! Also if it turns out to be too much I can drop one or two, I still need only 30 ECS and with this I will be having 34.
But let me tell you what these courses are all about! Well, Figure Drawing, Czech Language and Clay Modeling are self-explanatory, but what is this Genius Loci of Prague? It’s basically a weekly tour through Prague with the teacher talking about modern architecture, think first half of 20th century. It’s fun, I get to know architectural styles and periods I didn’t know about and maybe I’ll be able to tell from which period buildings are from their looks in the end! 😀 And the teacher is really enthusiastic about architecture, especially Functionalism and Rondocubism, which is something typically Czech, it seems. Czech Modern and Contemporary Art and Architecture is similar, but we will visit museums, galleries and monuments instead. So I go twice a week visiting places in the city!
Last Friday we visited the Vítkov Monument:
This building is kinda strange because it had so many different functions during it’s history… It was build as a memorial for Czechoslovakia in the thirties, then the Nazis used it for storage, during Communism it was the place to display the body of the first Communist president of Czechoslovakia, Klement Gottwald. After 1989 it was left unused for years and now it is a museum. And a memorial. And there is a ceremonial hall which is sometimes still in use.
The view from the roof is amazing, though! We visited the TV tower the day before with Genius Loci of Prague. 🙂
On the very last moment I decided to take the Anxious Meetings course as well. :/ It’s a quite varied course with discussions, guest speakers and sometimes even excursions. Last semester the course concluded with an exhibition. It’s called Anxious Meetings because no topic is too weird or personal to not speak about during the discussions. I kind of missed some theory in the other courses, and the exhibition looked promising, so I decided to follow this one too. So far it’s been fun.
