Anna Rubin – BUILT IN THE AIR

A Conversation with the Austrian Artist and Kite Maker

“Flying has fascinated me for a very long time. By building kites, I turn this fascination into physical shapes. The kite is an object where craftsmanship, material, tradition, knowledge, technology, art, and freedom come together and create a vast creative space. In my studio in Göltschach, I build kites based on small sketches, using split bamboo, paper, and ink. The handcrafted process and the knowledge of the laws of flight shape the result just as much as the design. When the kite takes off and ascends, it changes my perspective on a landscape, yet its presence leaves no trace in it.”

The internationally renowned kite maker Anna Rubin studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Her work has been honoured with numerous awards. She has been teaching in a wide variety of contexts and fields since 2003: leading kite workshops in Austria and abroad, e.g., at the Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Applied Arts, Vienna; GEA Academy Schrems/Waldviertel; at various universities of applied sciences; at the Kunstform Montafon and Bildungshaus St. Arbogast, Vorarlberg; at the Kite Foundation in Seattle; Design Museum Franz Mayer, Mexico City. She recently conducted guest lectureships at the University of Innsbruck, Faculty of Architecture and ZHdK, the Zurich University of the Arts; the University of Art and Design Linz. www.annarubin.at

This event is part of the course “EXPERIMENT BETWEEN HUMAN AND AIR AND SKY – Choreography of Wind and Movement“ by Prof. Dorothea Mink (d.mink@hfk-bremen.de).

This class is a collaboration with Anna Rubin. Their teaching areas are interwoven in an interdisciplinary manner throughout the design process. At the very heart of it all is the desire to fly. Flying a kite inspires the creation of unique, individual kite designs, as well as the type of clothing worn by the kite flyers. The project explores human scale and its relationship to the flying object. The artistic exploration is based on dialogue with human movement, the hands-on manipulation of different materials and the interplay of winds in the air.