Fabienne Watzke — People — Network — School — ECAL

Fabienne
Watzke

Projects

Fabienne Watzke – Lately I’ve been dreaming in pink and blue

PHOTOGRAPHY

Fabienne Watzke – Lately I’ve been dreaming in pink and blue

by Fabienne Watzke

As a child, people assumed I liked pink and not blue. In today's imagination, pink is feminine, but it was once a masculine color. Lately I've been dreaming in pink and blue shows how our stereotypical thought patterns and visual representations of gender push women into predefined roles and project certain expectations onto them that manifest inequality. In my work, I take these traditional gender norms and challenge and break them by appropriating something extremely masculine like the knight ‘s armor and deconstructing it with different gender symbols and codes. The knights armor symbolizes the patriarchy in which we live. It is a shell designed for a specific type of body. Through symbolic bridges I highlight how deep rooted the modern "knight" mentality is still existing today.

Workshop - Charlie Engman

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Workshop - Charlie Engman

with Milo Keller, Clément Lambelet

"Treatment, Synthesis, and Art Direction" Charlie Engman is an artist, photographer, writer, and art director based in Brooklyn, New York.He works across a range of media and disciplines from gen-AI art, photography, video, and fashion, and balances artistic, commercial, and pedagogical practices. He is the art director of the sustainable fashion brand, Collina Strada, where he is responsible for print design, branding, and runway show design. This workshop will investigate the ways in which media, aesthetics, and culture are interwoven and overlapping and are driven in large part by the accessibility of popular technology. It will also investigate the ways in which creativity is a collaborative and iterative process that bleeds across genre and category. There will be a key focus on the intersection of photography, AI tools, and videogaming / user-driven media.In this workshop, participants are expected to explore and challenge the ways they integrate and synthesize both professional and vernacular registers and new and traditional techniques. This will also serve as an introduction to developing art direction and making “ treatments ” for commissioned projects, and practical experience concepting and executing assignments that can bridge between a distinctive artistic practice and preexisting modes of making and sharing.

Self-Initiated Project - Fall 2023 - MAP2

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Self-Initiated Project - Fall 2023 - MAP2

with Elisa Medde

This module assists the students to develop a long term project - touching upon all stages from the idea to the final presentation. Students will have the opportunity to take some of the ideas and project from the previous semesters, in order to explore them further, or engage in brand new ones. The outcome of the project could take any form - from book to performance, from physical exhibition to digital presentations. A strong emphasis will be on the research/concept and the impact, experience of the outcome.

PHOTOGRAPHY

MAP Books 2023

with Bruno Ceschel

These publications are special editions produced within the framework of the Master in Photography at ECAL in 2023 for Bruno Ceschell's Photobook class. This curated selection was later showcased at Offprint during Paris Photo, providing a prestigious platform to exhibit and share the emerging talent in the field of photography.

Frontiere di Sabbia - DRONE WORKSHOP

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Frontiere di Sabbia - DRONE WORKSHOP

with Milo Keller, Clément Lambelet

"Frontiere di Sabbia" is an exhibition of the students of the Master of Photography at ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne, in collaboration with the Biennale dell’Immagine di Chiasso.The collection of projects you will see has been created with drones: aircraft originally developed for warfare that have been transformed into civilian and popular forms. In just a few years, these devices have undergone a dizzying technological evolution and achieved considerable commercial success. Used for a variety of purposes - recreational and professional, political and subversive - these “unmanned aerial vehi- cles” can be easily purchased and controlled remotely, like in a video game. The opportunities offered by civilian drones combine with multiple negative con- sequences: the confusion between reality and simu- lation, privacy violations, and the use for illegal and violent actions. From a photographic perspective, drones offer infinite viewpoints for exceptional, vertical, and total vision. Equipped with all-round sensors, they fly autonomou- sly on programmed routes and are able to monitor the territory and its inhabitants. The “Frontiere di Sabbia” exhibition, presented in the Ex Saceba building, a ce- ment factory located a few kilometers from the bor- der, recalls the past of these places where materials were produced to build houses, bridges, and highways, but also walls and barriers. By diverting from prede- termined and automated paths, a new generation of image creators questions us about our perception of our limits: human, political, and technological.

self-Initiated Project - Spring 2023 - MAP1

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self-Initiated Project - Spring 2023 - MAP1

with Bruno Ceschel

This module assists the students to develop into a finalized work a project that further expands their interests and research. The module gives the opportunity to take some of the ideas, skills and themes explores in the first semester and make into a brand new work that can take any possible form: a book, an installation, an online project, a performance.

Materialized Photography - Spring 2023

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Materialized Photography - Spring 2023

with Rachel de Joode

This course, taught by Rachel de Joode explores sculptural photography. Through a combination of material experimentation, research, and collaboration, students explore the visual and physical dimensions of photography, sculpture, and installation. The course focuses on ways of seeing and thinking differently about materials, surroundings, and oneself. The curriculum includes a mix of reading and discussion as well as focused individual critique, all taught through the lens of the instructor’s practice.

Applied Photography - Spring 2023

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Applied Photography - Spring 2023

with Cactus Digitale

The Applied Photography course will look into the concept of photorealism in all its means. Cactus Magazine has always worked on new visual languages through all sorts of techniques; classic photography, graphic design, video, CGI, VR, Sound design. The only feature that has always guided this research was to seek for a photorealistic result that could ensure a sophisticated and luxurious feeling to the final outcome. In the past 4 years Cactus Magazine has been exploring the CGI technique and always tried to emulate the classic photographic style applied in the 3D realm. This had been done by the means of lights, textures, modeling and also camera techniques. After doing a lot of CGI work we got interested in merging the IRL world in a seamless way with the CGI world. Using XR techniques or VFX. But always looking to have a perfect photorealistic result. With the emergence of Ai powered software for image generating, creating HD images of almost everything seems to be everyone’s finger tip. Nowadays people consume more CGI imagery than IRL imagery, just think of Instagram filters.

WORKSHOP - CGI WITH AREA OF WORK

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WORKSHOP - CGI WITH AREA OF WORK

with Area Of Work

This workshop is an introduction to 3D creation software that allows you to create images with photographic qualities that are not photographs.

Photobook - Fall 2022

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Photobook - Fall 2022

with Bruno Ceschel

The photobook module introduces students to the history of photobooks and artists’ books and leads them to consider different strategies and approaches to contemporary book-making. In the first term students individually conceptualised a publication that have been designed, printed and distributed.