The Artist at Work

The Artist at Work is a 1957 short story by Albert Camus, available here. The story is the basis for a course/project organized by Sophy Naess.

The project was staged at Recess during January & February 2010 and produced a 4 minute trailer which was screened at the Brucennial.

Further development of the material produced at Recess will resume at the BHQFU headquarters in August 2010.

*The raw Recess footage will be reviewed at an informal screening at the BHQFU on Wednesday, June 2nd, at 7 PM.

The course will ultimately produce a video adaptation of Albert Camus' 1957 story about the trajectory of a painter's career and its dramatic conclusion.

The structure of the course can be described as critique sessions as narrative roll play. Participants are asked to fulfill more or less specific assignments each week, and these works & performances combine with group discussions to tell the story of The Artist at Work.

One week's sequence might for example call for the following images, objects, texts, or personae, all to be found in the story:

a radiant star

a tea set

a scale model of a room with enormous glass walls and high ceilings

successful paintings

unfinished paintings

a critically acclaimed landscape painting (including the critical acclaim). CAN BE ORIGINAL OR APPROPRIATED.

A group meal

CHARACTERS*

*The painter is the central character and all participants in the class will have the opportunity to play this role and simultaneously "DJ" whatever happens to be on [his] easel. The painter's wife is also a key figure.

Occassional scenes call for specific kinds of paintings such as "a landscape," "a painting of clouds," "a social commentary." How these criteria are met is discussed with a diverse audience of subjects including society ladies, students, a best friend whose love is unconditional, a skeptic, other painters, a gallerist, political lobbyists, naysayers, etc.

Classroom scenes will be bridged with voice-overs, close-ups, intertitles, monologs & dialogs, etc to produce the final treatment.

For more information please email sophia.naess@gmail.com.