exchange to prague

Elective Courses

| Saskia

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.

First week of classes!

| Saskia

This first week of school was quite hectic! And guess what? Almost all the classes were in Czech! 😀 But my Czech fellow students helped to translate what was said, as wel as the teachers whom can speak English. XD

No, it was fun! Monday I had my first studio class, were we got our assignment for this semester (although I think we will do more than just this one). We get to make a comic of a short story of Edgar Allan Poe! We had to pick the story from a hat, and I got Ligeia. Pretty interesting, I hadn’t read that one yet! (actually the only Poe story I have read is The Cask of Amontillado)

I also got another assignment, to make a 30-second paper animation with a circus theme. From what I got is this an assignment for the first year students, but I’ll gladly do it too because i never did paper stop-motion anyway!

Its worth mentioning that all students, no matter first, second or third year get the same assignments simutaneously. Only the paper circus thing is aimed at the first year students by means of practise, I guess.

I’ll add some photos of the studio later, for now I have some of the school interior in general:

These are actually some of the ‘cleaner’ spaces, most of the corridors are filled with all kinds of artworks and furniture… Which will be supposedly get cleaned up during the next weeks. This week was still exam week for the Czech students.

Also, fun fact: dogs are allowed in the school! As well is smoking inside. :/

One of the most fun classes I had was clay modelling! 😀 I’ve never worked in clay after a living person before, and the teacher is really nice! Looking forward to this class next week!

Exchange Student Dinner

| Saskia

From left to right: Eleni from Cyprus (she studies Sculpture in Greece, but is doing Textiles in Prague), Miguel’s roommate from France, which studies Finance (I forgot his name, sorry!), the crazy person who writes all this, my roommate Pan-Ni (we’re allowed to say Penny) from Taiwan, Shiori from Japan who is doing Intermedia (don’t ask me what that is XD), Juan from Spain, studies Photography, and his sister, who will be leaving for Lyon soon…

On the other side of the table: Naama from Israel, Stein from Iceland, Manja from Slovenia (Fashion), Miguel from the US (Ceramics) and Eve from Dublin. She’s the only one who is doing a theoretical course! And this is not even everybody, mind you!

Manja and Miguel discussing how awesome the food will be…
My dish! 😀
Pan-Ni enjoying her soup, Stein looks jealously at my plate.. Just kidding! XD

Tours and food

| Saskia

Last Wednesday we had our first meeting at school, which was great! So many people from all over the world! <3 We got a tour through the school building, but I haven’t made any photographs (yet).

Thursday and yesterday we’ve been on a guided tour through the historical center of Prague, Thursday around Malá Straná (west bank of Vltava) and Friday through Staré Město (old town) and the Jewish quarter. All organized by the school, so great!

What’s also great is that we can eat in the canteen from the Charles University with our UMPRUM student card. It was a bit of a hassle to set up, but in the end it works! UMPRUM has it’s own tiny school canteen all down in the basement, but it’s really cramped and there’s not much to choose from. At the Charles University we can choose from a whopping 8 menu’s, all about 2 euros!

I first thought this bread-vanilla sauce thing was a savory dish, but it is indeed sweet. It’s very nice though, and you get good value for your money!

Monday will be my first school day, exciting!

First Round of Sightseeing

| Saskia

So it turned out my roommate is doing ceramics and will not be my classmate when I’m having studio classes.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯  We might have elective classes together, though!

Her name is Pan-Ni, by the way, and she looks like this:

The past two days have we spend sightseeing … What else do do in such a beautiful city? We’ve been to the Mucha museum, it was amazing though we weren’t allowed to take any photos. I think I have a favorite Czech artist now! 😀

What I didn’t know was that he was so engaged with his homeland, Moravia (which is now eastern-Czech republic, but when he was born in 1866 it was still part of the Austrian Empire) He really did his best to make the people feel proud of there slavic heritage and you could say his dream came true when Czechoslovakia became independent in 1918. He designed banknotes, post stamps and medaillons for the new country, as well as a series of 20 giant paintings known as the Slav Epic… Those weren’t part of this exhibition, but are in another museum in Prague. You bet I’m going to see those too!

Tomorrow we’ll have our first meeting at the school, I’m excited! 😀

Welcome to my new personal corner of the internet!

| Saskia

This blog is a continuation of my old blog saskiadeklerkwdka.wordpress.com, which is written in Dutch. I mostly wrote about my experiences and projects at the Willem de Kooning Academy there.

In third grade I decided it was time to make the jump to a more professional portfolio website, written in English. I didn’t continue blogging, though, as it took a lot of time to document my projects so thoroughly and I didn’t really feel compelled to do so anymore.

When leaving for Prague to study animation for four months, I wanted to try blogging again, which became saskiapraha.tumblr.com. I have since moved those blogposts onto this site. When I came back, I found I liked blogging enough to try to keep it up at my Tumblr, with varying succes. Now this site is up and running, it is time to crosspost news and updates from here, too!

So welcome to my new personal little corner of the internet!