During 'Perpetuum Mobile' at APT
Curated and organised by Nicola Rae
    (with assistance on the day from Mickey Dell, Chia-En Jao and Paul Malone)

The Making Connections education project was a day-long event held on Saturday 24th May at APT, during the exhibition Perpetuum Mobile. This event involved discussions with artists about their professional practices, and also open screenings of students' films.

Alma Tischler

Two other artists gave presentations in the gallery about their art practices. Alma Tischler Wood showed collaborative work made by the artist group which she co-founded in 1996, 'foreign investment'. This group uses 'performance and happenings to explore issues surrounding the flow of capital and cultural exchange'.

Five artists opened their studios during the morning and discussed their art practices based at APT - these included Nicola Rae, Liz Harrison, Chris Marshall, Deepa Chudasama, and Laurence Noga.

Chia-En Jao

Chia-En Jao presented ten projects, some of which were for future works. He describes approaching 'contemporary art practice as a set of experiments that deal with the ideas of identity, borders, shared experience and the power relationship between different aesthetic and political regimes.'

Student from BA Time-Based Media at Wimbledon College of Art During the afternoon, five students showed us their films and discussed their ideas and working processes. The students were from Wimbledon College of Art's BA: Fine Art Time-Based Media course, Camberwell College of Art's BA Fine Art Painting course, and also a student from the Laban Dance Centre.

Student from BA Painting at Camberwell College of Art This was followed by a studio visit to discuss Veronique Chance's work which combines photography and video installation with aspects of performance.

In Veronique Chance's studio The day ended with a visual presentation by Paul Malone on 'The Role of Electricity in the Morphology of the Universe'. His presentation followed 'contemporary speculations into the role that electric flows play in forming the objects that we see in modern astronomy.'

Paul Malone Many of the students' films were selected by A2Arts members for live-streaming on the web-based Ottica TV, created by Paul Malone. They can be viewed at www.ottica-tv.com.

Students feedback about what was most useful about this event.

• 'Insight into studio spaces + non-gallery viewpoint from artists'.
• 'Making connections'.
• 'Interaction with students + how a video artist uses a studio'.
• 'Opportunity to see and hear about others' work + opportunity to show work and gain feedback'.
• 'Increased awareness of video/ time-based media - a field I haven't had much engagement with.'
• 'Talking to + looking at other artists' studios - talking about projects'.
• 'I believe students always benefit from the experience of showing their work to (and getting feedback from) audiences out of their educational environment. It widens their view and understanding of what they do, as well as improves their presentation skills and capacity to articulate their ideas in response to what a public that they are not used to has to say'. (by an artist lecturer specialising in photography at Goldsmiths, with a studio in Deptford)