January 24, 2025, 10 am – 2 pm
Many thanks to the artist Ben Cottrell for his lecture FRAGMENTS OF A DREAM SEQUENCE and discussing the works of our participants within the Studio Program at BAI | Berlin Artist Residency, Art School, Arts Incubator, and Live Online Courses & Classes.
“The title “Fragments of a Dream Sequence” evokes the shattered pieces of a constructed fantasy or reality, or the loaded glimpses of an already disorientated stream of images, information and phenomena. It also alludes to cinematic tropes and narrative devices: psychological spaces where one might speak of projections, cuts, interludes, temporal leaps, flashbacks, visions, fantasies, and premonitions. In this context, an ambivalent relationship evolves between collapsing fictions, ruptured linearity and simultaneous realities, loosely organized by a poetic logic.
For his third lecture at BAI, artist Ben Cottrell focuses on his ongoing ‘Canvas Series’ to explore themes of multiplicity, excess, fragmentation, seriality, repetition and difference, and the notion of cutting across time. The ‘Canvas Series’ can be viewed as a connective network, an image world, and an apparent archival cosmos, where the compression of multiple eras and historical styles takes place on a single surface plane—the canvas.
Cottrell will reflect on how artists can explore multiple voices and forms simultaneously in their practice. What is the relationship between the part and the whole? How can we create and unlock new dynamic connections between fragments rather than seeking a lost continuity?” (Text by courtesy of Ben Cottrell)
More information about Ben Cotrell on the Flutgraben e. V. Website.