Handover of the "Orientation Phase" slipcases to the archive

Each year, the newly enrolled students of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the HfBK Dresden get to know one another during a joint multi-day drawing exercise.

In two long rows, the students sit facing each other and have only a short amount of time to capture one another through drawing before one of the rows shifts one seat down. The impressive outcome of this exercise is several hundred drawings, each demonstrating how uniquely every individual perceives and portrays their counterpart.

These fascinating drawings are handed over to the archive of the University of Fine Arts Dresden, provided the students give their consent. As a result, the university now preserves drawings from eight cohorts in its archive. To make the numerous drawings suitable for archiving, folders and slipcases are designed in collaboration with Christiane Oertel—and more recently with her successor Luise Fiedler—at the Hand Bookbinding Workshop. These are labeled in cooperation with the Typography Workshop (Cornelia Melzer) and the Screen Printing Workshop (Irina Claußnitzer).

The students also get to know the archive and its functions and receive advice from Mr. Barnick regarding the functionality of the slipcases. This slipcase project thus integrates the students’ artistic practice with questions of preserving artistic works, in cooperation with various workshops and the archive, one of the central institutions of the HfBK Dresden.

After a break due to the pandemic, drawings from two cohorts can once again be handed over to the archive in individually designed slipcases. Many thanks to Annalena Selbach and Katharina Wilhelm from the 2019/20 cohort, and to Robin Goldbach, Lara Noethel, and Ronja Richter from the 2020/21 cohort for their dedicated contributions.