Tristan Dougan

Working predominantly in Performative and Sculptural mediums Tristan Dougan’s key concerns are to elevate thinking on what shapes todays social environments. With a BA in Art and Visual Culture at University of the West of England, he has also studied at William de Kooning academy in Rotterdam, NL. In June 2013 he performed in an adaptation of Norman Potters In:quest of Icarus, directed by James Langdon at Spike Island and earlier in the year he performed with the collective A-Peg in a reproduction of Alfred Jarry’s absurdist play 'King of Ubu'. Some of his recent exhibitions consist the 'Spike Open' at Spike Island, Bristol, 'Calibration Collaboration', Motor Cade/ Flash Parade, Bristol, 'The show', spike island UWE studios, Bristol and 'Epiphyten', remise Lagerstrasse, Zurich, Switzerland. He now lives predominantly in Switzerland, with a his most recent exhibition in Sudpol, Luzern, Switzerland.

[tristandougan]

Showcase Exhibition at The University of South Wales (February 2020)

How does the process of creating a sensory art installation and the experience of the final artefact facilitate a holistic environment for change?

Wave sculpture (2020) glue, newspaper, paint wood, wire

Mold & casts (2020) lead, plaster, sand

This work was made as part of my research project into the use of art installations to assist individuals working with trauma, utilizing the senses and creating meaningful narrative. The title of the work was “How does the process of creating a sensory art installation and the experience of the final artefact facilitate a holistic environment for change?”

[tristandougan]

Estate of the Arts open studio (April 2019)

Art work by Jay Harper

[tristandougan]

Islington Mill Art Academy Exhibition (July 2017)

Looking at interaction and participation with art objects. Inviting individuals to touch and play with artifacts on display.

[tristandougan]

Here you can see the projects and groups who pitched at kraftsuppe #3

[tristandougan]

https://www.facebook.com/events/1695710880676021/

Die Wochenden - kids theater workshop

As part of Die Wochenden project we set up a workshop that brought the two groups of children together, the German children and the refugee children. Here you can see a few images of the workshop at the ‘Hole of Fame’ in Dresden and click on the link to read more about the project.

[tristandougan]

2.11.15 - 7.11.15

Working at RosenWerk on a projected named “eleKtronic window” project got named in the “Sachsische Zeitung”.

https://multifactory.hackpad.com/D-jSZReBOvYQR

http://www.rosenwerk.co/events/electronicwindow/

[tristandougan]

New art work on website...

[tristandougan]

New Kraftsuppe website. Join us tomorrow https://www.facebook.com/events/1494979440819953 

[tristandougan]

117 Grundschule Ludwig Reichenbach Reichenbachstraße 12, 01069 Dresden 3 rd and 4 th Grade Elementary School Theater Project for Kids

Every Tuesday from 14:15 to 15:15 starting by the end of August, I am planning to run an integrative theater project for kids. It is an unpaid offer but there won't be any additional costs for you.

The project due one full school year and will be staged in the school itself but also in the theater of the HfBK called Labortheater.

The idea is to create a mixed theater group with kids of German nationality and kids with Other nationalities. Knowing or understanding German language is not a necessity. It is for importance to see how kids move onto each other with particular words in a specific period of time. This word can be German, other origin or even a Neologism. This means that the kids will be given another word every time we meet to experiment and play with it.

We meet every Tuesday but the date changes. This implies that the word can be linked back to a particular date. I want to see if the confrontation with a word and its deconstruction will lead to the result that the kids find another way to communicate. This should be seen by how the kids encounter each other physically in space and time.

My thesis is that we don't need a common language to understand each other and I want to see if the theater group becomes a community by the end of the year.

This process needs to be photographed as a documentation of the project. This documentation at the same time will be the script for the final performance. The idea is to project a date and a photograph of an situation which happened on those Tuesday. The kids then will imitate another situation which was special that day. This will also demonstrate the result of the study of how the unknown becomes unnecessary for understanding each other. We will work with the artist On Kawara to talk about dates. A word designer who won't be present during the run for staying neutral, will give us a set of words to work with. I need your help to realize this project!

I understand that being a teacher equals being a role model for kids at this age. This is why I need a whole team of people with different backgrounds, nationalities, language levels, classes, genders, professions, and so on, to give the variety of kids a chance for identification. I need people for: – Leading the project with me: inventing games, thinking about language facilitate the kids – Photograph every Tuesday – doing lighting design, costume design, set design – musical accomplishments – people who have more suggestions – On Kawara Fans – people who want to contribute in other ways, think differently and are critical – and so on – … Please email me: [email protected], [email protected]

I will be more than happy to meet you

[tristandougan]

For  two weeks I have been working at the Rise Efau Summer Akadmie, in Dresden Germany. There I was supporting the scholarship holders who came from across Europe. The course I was supporting was Installation and Textiles lead by Daniela Hoferer.

The first week consisted of workshops with the artist and an introduction into the use of textiles in art from the past to the present. 

The second week was more flexible. Here the students worked on there work with the focus on an exhibition at the end of the week. 

My self and Sloan were responsible for curating the final exhibition from all the courses, painting and drawing, video, and installation and textile that the students where involved in. The aim was to illustrate the creative process over the two weeks, through final work, documentation of process and a variety of references to  the course and the city of Dresden. 

Images of my work made during Academy:-

Puissance motrice - motivating power, 2015, air mattress, polystyrene pellets, Dresden, Germany.

[tristandougan]

Some images that I am working on for a blanket project, that I captured at the 'Kraftsuppe' event.

'Fall Short' (blanket project)

Semiotics as a means of hiding, constructing truths of the body ( "natural" state of things)

Words can be seen, read, spoken, written...

Through this proses they are altered, manipulated by the one using them (and so what is being explained can be come construed). This can be seen through many a different proses. It is my belief based on my own resource and others, that words are used in a way that only grasps at the truth. To help one deduce what it is that they explain or better represent, but for me words constantly fall short of a proper explanation.

I want to construct an installation that again through words and symbols exposes this ability of words; and like before I expect to fall short of an explanation.

My intention is to investigate into the people behind these words and symbols. Through documenting people's faces and then manipulating them into text, the words they absorb and believe. To eventually be made into a throw or blanket... ...comfort blanket. Or as protection from the elements out side creating a sort of 'mask'.

Once in the blanket form I have the desire to have it worn by others or my self for an evening, which would constitute of the finished work.

People enveloped in blanket of words and faces.

[tristandougan]

Kraftsuppe

'Kraftsuppe' is micro funding initiative I have been working on in Dresden. The aim of the event is to bring local creatives together to discuss ideas and make new connections, whilst sharing soup, with the possibility to take home some funding for their projects/ ideas at the end of the event...

[tristandougan]

This is a short video I made of the Long Term Volunteers with 'Trees for Life' at Dundreggan. 

[tristandougan]

To get an idea about some new work I made in Dresden...

[tristandougan]

- 25th September 2014

Starting a blog with the organisation Trees for Life in Scotland, last year.

[tristandougan]

Tennis Feb 2014. Detail of new work...

[tristandougan]

The wood underneath will win Feb 2014. Details of new work...

"By its light it was barely possible to see the banister, and the sight was like that of a very long piece of diseased skin...

...And there were many cracks, though most of them did not reach all the way down to the wood underneath. They were no longer sharp, the cracks, but all rounded out and smoothed, consumed by some soft, gentle process of decay. In places the wood and the floor polish, had been used. It would be impossible to calculate how much polish on how many rags the wood on the stair banister had seen, but there was certainly enough Ronuk and Mansion splashed there to give the place its now indelible reek of putrid turpentine. What had been going on there and was going on now and would go on through all the years ahead was a species of war carried on in the silence of long ages, a struggle in which only the keen, uncanny eyes and ears of lunatic seers could detect the deceiving, easy breathing of the strugglers."

extract from The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born 

by Ayi Kwei Armah.