Art Camp Lärz 2024
„Youth culture and democracy - engine of civil society“ by Soziale Bildung e. V. (Rostock)
Art workshop leaders: Nadja Kracunovic & Isidora Markovic
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Our art workshops aim to transform the traditional concept of a flag, turning it from a symbol of division into one of
1. Collective Painting: Participants will paint a shared fabric, combining individual expressions into a unified piece.
2. Protest/Slogan Creation: Crafting slogans that advocate for equality, reflecting the power of collective voices.
3. Interactive Engagement: The flag will be an evolving, interactive element within the space or a theatrical performance.
4. Group and Individual Contributions: Working together or in smaller groups, participants will create sections of the flag that come together as one.
5. Threads and Embroidery: Using these materials to mend and connect fabric pieces, symbolizes the unification of different ideas and places.
6. Deconstructing the Flag: Reimagining the flag as a symbol of unity, participants will explore new ways to represent togetherness.
7. Learning different art techniques and methods
Art Camp Lärz 2025
What is class about? by Soziale Bildung e. V. (Rostock)
Art workshop leaders: Nadja Kracunovic & Isidora Markovic
How do we develop methodologies that not only address this question but also use it as a starting point to challenge discriminatory patterns? This was our question as facilitators and mentors to the participants of the Art workshop.
We chose collage as our primary medium. Collage offers space for creative expression, imaginative interpretation, and skill-building that inherently questions who gets to be considered an artist and what kind of training is considered necessary to become one.
We worked with old magazines, recognizing how visual culture (especially advertisements) shapes ideals of beauty, success, and desirability. By cutting and reassembling these idealised representations, participants became agents in creating perspectives that challenge the dominant cultural narratives.
Playing with the double meaning of “class,” we invited participants to reflect on what they learned about different forms of capital (cultural, social, symbolic, economic) and to co-create new textbooks for a “classroom of resistance.” These books imagined a world where classism is no longer possible. Small groups took this proposal in their own direction, collaborating on original and critical projects.
Individually, participants created zines. This is a guerrilla publishing format traditionally used to circulate ideas excluded from the mainstream. Through collage, they explored their relationships to social media and the pressures of self-performance within digital spaces.
When the process became tiring, we paused for a restorative walk, creating a space to listen, reflect, and reconnect. This moment, shared under the August sun holds a memory of collective care and attention.
The plurality of voices found expression in group work on a large shared format, where every five minutes a new person contributed, leaving their mark and shifting the visual rhythm.
Over the course of the workshop, this year’s topic was explored both in what was created, but also how it was made, though methods of collective creation, critical interpretations, dreaming alternatives and bringing them to life by making them materialize in objects.
For our second main project we created monuments. Monuments are physical anchors that transform collective memories, shared values, and grief into tangible form within a public space.Through their scale, material choices, and design they shape how a community reflects on its past and envisions its future. Monuments also act as active gathering places whose meaning continuously evolves through human interaction, rituals, and ongoing dialogue. The project began with a group discussion on monuments and their role in preserving society's memory. We then talked about the values each of them wished to be remembered and cherished. One of the questions introduced was: what shared value should we never forget to practice? Groups were created by communal interests, and they set off to create monuments to love, art, friendship and respect for every living being. Participants joined efforts in sketching, engineering and decorating these human-size constructions.
Alongside those two main projects, the art workshop created logos for this year’s camp as well as two posters that served as an invitation to the final presentation.
On the day of the presentation, monuments were placed in front of the theatre as a sculpture park, and the audience was invited to see them up close. Personal objects of memory were introduced by participants and carried into the theatre space where they were placed in the altar to memory.
By engaging with both personal and collective memory, youth explored this year’s theme through artistic expression.
Art Camp Lärz 2026
This year in the Art workshop, we made monuments and objects of memory. Our primary technique was paper mache, although other techniques such as construction with cardboard and spray painting were part of participants’ processes.
For the first part of our time together, we introduced an idea of recreating objects of memory, which was an individual project. Objects of memory are physical artifacts, keepsakes, or documents that serve as tangible links to the past, encoding personal, communal, or historical meanings that are re-experienced through sensory interaction with the item. These objects transform ordinary materials into conveyors of identity, aspiration, and memory by anchoring abstract recollections in concrete form, allowing individuals to negotiate emotions and maintain connections to lost times or places. These objects from the past, memorabilia that carries personal stories and moments that each of the participants found important were first sketched, and then each of the participants decided how they wanted to make them. We as facilitators held a small presentation of this idea and introduced some visual examples of art and artists who use paper mache as means of expression. Some participants used paper mache clay, some more traditional technique of layering the paper strips on the constructions made of cardboard, wire or balloons.
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