WERKSTATT DER NACHHALTIGEN KUNST
Workshop at Humboldt Forum Berlin, in collaboration with Humboldt Labor / Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Stadtmuseum Berlin.
Details
Werkstatt der nachhaltigen Kunst was an intensive three-day workshop held at WELTSTUDIO, within the BERLIN GLOBAL exhibition at the Humboldt Forum.
The workshop began with a simple question: what happens when we stop seeing a discarded material as waste and start seeing it as a creative material?
The workshop explored sustainability, consumption and pollution through materials that would normally be thrown away. Participants investigated their physical and visual qualities and transformed them into new artistic forms.
During the process, participants created costumes, masks and objects using techniques of reuse and material transformation. The workshop ended with a small public presentation of the works created, showing different interpretations of the beauty that can be found in discarded materials.
Marjorie Chau contributed her experience in textile art, costume construction, material transformation and creative processes related to sustainability, guiding participants from their first experiments with the materials to the creation of their own individual pieces.
| Year | 2024 |
|---|---|
| Format | Art workshop / participatory art practice / art education |
| Media | Reused materials, textiles, costumes, masks, objects, design, manual construction and recycling / upcycling practices |
| Duration | 3 days |
| Dates | 23–25 October 2024 |
| Time | 09:00–16:00 |
| Location | WELTSTUDIO – BERLIN GLOBAL, Humboldt Forum, Berlin |
| Participants | Children aged 9–12 |
| Maximum number of participants | 10 |
| Artists / Facilitators | Marjorie Chau, Vitor Garcia de Almeida |
| Collaborating Institutions | Humboldt Labor – Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; Stadtmuseum Berlin / BERLIN GLOBAL; Humboldt Forum |
| Languages | German, English, Spanish and Portuguese |
Chronology
2024 — Humboldt Forum, Berlin
Three-day intensive workshop at WELTSTUDIO, within BERLIN GLOBAL.
During the workshop, participants explored discarded materials and created costumes, masks and objects through processes of reuse and transformation.
The workshop concluded with a Werkschau, a presentation of the works created during the three days.
-
Objects, textiles and other materials that lose their original function are often quickly classified as waste. But before they are finally discarded, they still contain physical qualities, colours, textures, structures and possibilities for transformation.
Werkstatt der nachhaltigen Kunst proposes a different way of looking at them.
Instead of beginning the creative process with new materials, participants work with what already exists. Creation becomes a practice of observation, reuse and transformation.
Recycling is approached not only as an ecological action, but also as an artistic tool. Cutting, joining, reorganising, wearing and reinterpreting materials can reveal new possibilities in things that initially seem useless.
Through the creation of costumes, masks and objects, the workshop also connects sustainability with the body and imagination. Participants do not simply make objects: they can wear them, inhabit them and transform them through their own presence.
This approach connects directly with Marjorie Chau’s practice, where textiles, costume and material transformation become ways of creating new perceptions of our environment.
The aim was not to teach a particular aesthetic, but to open a creative process in which each participant could develop their own response to the material.