COACH - PROFESSORSHIP AT THE ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS, VIENNA
Design Studio IKA Academy of fine Arts, Vienna
Masters Summer Semester 2017
Design Studio IKA Academy of fine Arts, Vienna
Masters Summer Semester 2017
Michelle Howard
TREAD SOFTLY
Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
W. B. Yeats, 1899
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Tread Softly
comes from the poem “Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven” by William Butler Yeats, which expresses an extravagant passion in laying the heavens’ embroidered cloths at the feet of the beloved. In August 2016, climatologists presented the recommendation that a new geological epoch – the Anthropocene – be declared. Humanity’s impact is now so profound we must shiver at the terrifying vulnerability of the heavens in our hands.
Set against a background of world migration, our studio looks closely at the Architecture and/of migration seen through the lens of the peripatetic exhibition. In a world where complex problems are treated with simplistic answers, we focus on treading softly, looking closely, discovering the potential in what is already there. We created three devices, all conceived to exhibit objects and ideas, receptive to their environments, serendipitous and stronger though interaction.
A First Device / Tread Semper Softly at the Semper Depot in Vienna
A Second Device / Tread Softly – the Impossible Order, at the Monument to the Berlin Wall, Berlin
A Third Device / Tread Softly – the Embroidered Cloth at BOX Freiraum, Berlin
Students: Felber Ella, Fung Ka Yee Clara, Gautrin Victor
Hudec Adam, Kurz Aya, Lim Kye Lee Clarissa, Samir Duha
