LT Ranch Summer Sessions 2016

LT Ranch Summer Session 2016

LT Ranch Summer Session 2016

2009 AnnA pArfirenKo Yi-chuAn Lui Yu-ting wAng

2011 Ami chAngdA dAYeA georginA hYunsuK Lewis sofiA spYros sYLviA

KAnKi wu pArK wALKer pArK bArton AnAstAsiou AnAstAsiou Yebing YuAn

w/ Ken

wiLder

w/ rob nice

2012 chris humphreY enzo guidA Kenun hYe Lee John wo min KAng mAmo JueLin he mArcus boYLe mAx thomson mo JA nedA KAhooKer pAtricK Yi-wei chen pAresh pArmAr recY shAo sAm Lo ming shum w/ emmA hunter stAsYs sKLiAustis

2013 AbduLbAri JAcqueLine JiALing mengJie mireLLA sAng KYong wAn-Yun xin YA YAng

Kutbi hu Li Liu dourAmpei Jeong tsAi wAn gAo bAi

w/ JAnice shALes Jiri hAnzLiK stAsYs sKLiAustis

2014 bingYu bo fAng LiJiAo Lin nAn shAndri sue xuofung Yun nA Yvonne

w/ JeffreY Jiri Ken stAsYs

hu Lu YuAn wen wu YAo vAn rooYen Ahmed zhou Liu onAh

AdJei hAnzLiK wiLder sKLiAustis

2015 decLAn emiLiAno fAezeh heLen Liu Lu nAthAn richArd tiAnYue wei Yvonne

rALph zAvALA fAthi brewer YAng peng bAcK chAmness ford wAng wu onAh

w/ ALison LLoYd AnnemArie piscAer JeffreY AdJei Jiri hAnzLiK stAsYs sKLiAustis tinA trAn

2016 dAnieL decLAn eLif fAezeh gemmA owAin richArd sArAh YingYing YuAn

w/ JeffreY Ken LucY stAsYs

stiLweLL rALph ergisi fAthi mAriA LA roccA cAruAnA-dAvies ford stoLLerY frAnnie YuAn zoeY zhAo

AdJei wiLder Jones sKLiAustis

Silver Birch, Stones & Soup.

The Ranch, a site, a space and a home.

It soon becomes apparent on arrival the lye of the land, the divets, the troughs and the thickets of verdant wilderness.

The nuances of the land light up the way, they give us markers and memories.

We’re shown the barns, oh the barns. The sleeper, the ghost and the sauna without smoke. We’re shown where to live, relieve, cook and clean. We’re shown where to ebb and low and everything in between.

We live by the rules of the Chief, of the stones, of the birch and of the land.

We chop, we whittle, we dig, we chop, we burn, we eat, we forage, we talk, we walk and run. We swim, we cook and we live on the ranch.

We have an anonymous Lithuanian craftsman, a lumberjack bard, a trio of shed builders, a see-sawer, a swimmer, a purposeful wanderer, the rock washer, a hand washer, a weaver, an alchemical botanist, a chair spinner, a milkman and lest we forget the clay maker.

They work on the land, they take from the land and at the end, they leave monuments to the land.

The land giveth and we taketh.

As thanks, as homage, as shingled chapels, as smoke signals, milk waterfalls, as totems, burials and ceremonies galore.

The land learnt what we could do for it and in return the land taught us independence, freedom and free will.

We laughed, we walked, we swam, we cycled, we cooked and we burnt potatoes.

We had the luxury of slowness and silence and white soviet bricks.

Purple boots and a bunker full of rusty bits.

As the clay maker would put it, we moved stones, chopped silver birch and removed materials from their home, we participated in the act of re-ordering the Ranch. We gave new functions and lives to the identities of the site. We celebrated, sympathised and made ceremony of, memory and place with love, friendship and freedom.

All sustained by soup and sour cream.

The Ranch, a site, a space and a home.

The Lumberjack Bard Dainius Medkirtys This small catalogue celebrates the moments had on the Ranch. The ephemeral, the permanent and the multi-sensorial.

perceptions of smell Yingying Yuan

Memory is a sort of perception that is related to emotion. To evoke certain percpetion from people there is a need to create sensory experiences, which means through people’s ive sensory systems: visual system, auditory system, taste-smell system, the basic orienting system and the haptic system (Bloomer and Moore, p 33). Therefore, the evoked sensations are not only visual but also involve touch, taste, smell and sound. In addition, these kinds of sensations are unique for the speciic area.

Smell is the mode that integrates our experience of the world with that of ourselves. Even visual perceptions are fused and integrated into the haptic continuum of the self; my body remembers who I am and where I am located in the world. My body is truly the navel of the world, not in the sense of the viewing point of the central perspective, but as the very locus of reference, memory, imagination and integration.

the sensory map, yellow dots = places of interest

snails nook Sarah Stollery

Being at the Ranch was inspiring because it allowed for some head space and it gave us a chance to really work with the environment. The willow branches are an amazing material that allow for beautiful bends. I knew right away that I wanted to work with this. The location is just through the forest. Just like the nook itself, the location feels like its own space, away from the Ranch and yet when you are there you can still clearly hear/see what is going on around the Ranch.

I wanted to create a relective space that didn’t close its users of to the surroundings. Even as I was making it, the act of walking around the curve to get to the center became meditative.

space and distance Diferent Dimensions of a Public Chair Yuan Zhao

The intention of the chair is to help people to maintain personal space in public environments, its emphasis is on creating a private space delimited in a common space. In this work, two chairs rotate in two axes, the rotation of the chair constantly changing dimensions of space. When people sit on it, the two chairs tilt slightly at diferent angles, not allowing each person to inhabit the other’s space.

washing hands Gemma Maria La Rocca

The gesture of washing hands in daily life is a systematic action that becomes subconscious and fundamental for personal hygiene. The gesture of selfmassage by washing hands is a preparation action.

the Barn 2b - cinema

our purposeful wanderer -

Jefrey

the invigilator - invigilating Kristina Kotov

Moment of Incision Owain Caruana-Davies

This work retrieved a redundant object from the landscape to discover potential for a new life on the lake surface. The controlled documentation of the oil tank sinking below the waterline captured its inal moments before its body disappeared from sight. Retrieved from its watery depths, the metal hull was marked to indicate the line of water at moments during its sinking, acting as a parameter to cut into the tank and reveal its previously hidden spaces.

The lines intersected, creating angular incisions that were suspended at their sinking angles and heights to capture the objects most exciting moments beyond functionality.

milk Line #1 Ken Wilder

Milk Line #1 is the irst of a series of a planned series of cuts into the landscape: a negative that on further inspection turns out to be material, and, indeed, luid. Constructed like a timber feeding trough, the line holds some 50 litres of milk. In a relexive gesture, at the end of the day the milk is returned to the land from which it is produced, and the trough reverts to a water channel.

The Shingled Chapel

A totem like structure sits under the silver birch.

Criss-crossed and notched.

Marked and splintered.

A totem, the chair, acts in plurality.

The totem, a beacon and memory of, the details of the barns.

The chair, a perch and resting point.

A chair for the framing of, both sunset and barn.

Rough cut and weathered, shingles, all lined up, one after another, one after another.

A chapel, sanctuary and rest.

Once inside, a new perspective, is framed around the bent Silver Birch.

The chapel, a place of rest and relaxation.

The chapel, a place to think and marvel, at the settings and sounds surrounding.

daniel stilwell The Lumberjack Bard Dainius Medkirtys

with thanks to Jefey Adjei, Lucy Jones & Ken Wilder in the Silver Birch bending ceremony.

The Shingled Chapel was a site-speciic response to life on the LT Ranch.

‘Stoginė’ a.k.a Roof House*

Faezeh Fathi - Richard Ford - Kristina Kotov - Declan Ralph - anonymous Lithuanian craftsman The project came from a need for a structure to house timbers that are currently being stored in multiple semi-dry spots around the Ranch, to store newly cut timbers when required and to migrate the tool storage / workshop area away from the sleeping barn, and into its own deined space (the central bay).

Our aim was to produce a structure that remained true to the rural and craft vernacular of the Ranch whilst including our own adaptions as a result of the environmental context and intended use.

In the beginning much discussion was had. Physical output was slow as we tried to imagine details and construction methods that would be true to the vernacular yet work within our time and skill constraints.

As our time at the Ranch neared a close, a diicult decision faced us. It was unlikely that we could inish the full length of the structure. The decision was taken to complete the central bay to the detail of a protoype, and hope it would act as a construction manual and template for the extensions either side to house -with a roof- materials collected since the irst Ranch inhabitation in 2005, as well as being able to perform the intended function of tool storage / workshop in the interim.

The site as it stands, features the timber frame emerging from a grid of stone foundations that at a glance, appears almost as an archaeological site.

This ruin-in-reverse is illed with clues and evidence of how we intend the structure to grow... perhaps in true spirit of the Ranch.

This structure was to rise from from fire: 33 small flames above stone markers found in the landscape, moved, adopted into new places. Small moments discovered whilst working, will still be borne over the next months of light, stone powder (collected from each drill hole), the topograghy raised by these stones to meet columns brought along from the old barn 2b site, reused, offering extra time and purpose to its material duration.

* partially funded by UCA Research & Enterprise, 2016

DĹŤminÄ— Pirtis (Smoke Sauna) Lucy Jones The physical practice engaged with at the ranch feels ancient old. We step away from the screens, use our bodies, and we become perfect. Diicult, but perfect.

The sauna, or pirtis, on the ranch is unused, a traditional Lithuanian smoke sauna, faded, dusty, with a plastic roof covering a tiny landscape of old and mossy shingles. It is sited apart from the other buildings through a grouping of conifer trees. Its loneliness can strike like a blow. This exposing sensation was unexpected having considered saunas as spaces of rosy communality. The aim was to spend as much time around the sauna building, drawing and recording.

I found I could not, and not just because I was busy teaching elsewhere. One day, I hope I shall. This time, I made some ilm work and a small physical piece.

I had been thinking about saunas as sites of primordial ritual, made for special experiences. I wanted to understand the tactile palette of the space, the heat and smoke, granite stones and burning birch, smoke, embers and beating birch leaves, and then, of course, at some point, lesh and sweat. However, this lonely sauna became not about the communal experience of in the sauna, but the physical experience of making the sauna, the work in giving ierce heat to the body and the mark of that work in the site.

The practiced method for making a smoke sauna is making a hot ire in the sauna stove, crawling in to stoke at low level, and trapping the hot smoke in the low sauna room. The heat from the ire permeates the loor of large granite rocks and the hot smoke heats the heavy wooden logs of the building. At a certain point, when the heat is enough, the smoke is released through a trap in the roof. The sauna is now ready to use. Responding to this method, I wanted to create a scrap of smoke from the sauna.

The loor of the sauna itself had been removed and the stones lay under trees nearby. I used one of these stones, irstly carefully washing the stone, ilming, then appropriating a detail from the site team building their workshop, drilling rebar into the stone to conduct heat into the heart of the old loor. Onto the stone perched a small metal frame holding a blackened wisp of gauze to hold the smoke.

The smoke was produced using birch bark which gives of a very strong, white smoke, without lame. I spent time inding some good branches, using a chisel to chip away at the bark, chopping the bark into fragments. The bark would not burn by itself so I built a tiny hot ire, working towards purely glowing embers, This, held in the gauze, became the continuous heat the bark required to burn and make smoke, which it did, loating of into the site, long enough to experience and record.

Organ Burial Ceremony Elif Ergisi

The human body is a table. It is an organised system of systems, and our immediate experience of it is something which we take for granted. We become aware of it when it is injured and if something goes wrong. Rarely, we ind ourselves thinking about its components and how to visualise it. Experts know its order, and what to move around whilst in surgery. This notion of ‘order’ exists in the landscape too. Some of the stones at the ranch had probably never been moved since the glacial times and for so many reasons they are useful. As we moved stones, and removed materials from the landscape we gave them new orders, new functions and new lives, even changing their identities. This was a surgery of the land.

I asked each participant to draw for me (11 in total). I asked them all; to name the organs in their abdominal area, how they connect, what their shapes are, and how big they thought they are. In response to their interpretations, I made each piece of organ using clay collected from the ranch. Using primitive methods to ire them, I built a kiln and rotated collected ash and shrubbery throughout the process.

The essential part was returning the pieces back to their owners, then they helped me return everything back to the landscape. The Organ Burial Ceremony. We buried all the organs in the hole by the new barn. Now only its memory remains in its place, in our heads and our hearts. The ceremony is a homage to Lithuanian paganism, and the folklore that lies in the deep atmosphere of this site. Milda the Lithuanian pagan goddess of love, friendship and freedom was probably there with us.

Thank you to everyone who took part this year, the commitment to persevere with the development of ideas and taking care of each others well-being and watchful support of projects.

We beneited this year from a 50m deep drilled well. Our precious and worry-some water shortages, midnight deliveries of water behind a Soviet tractor, though a performance never be to be forgotten, was usurped, of sorts, with much gratitude to our neighbours Chris Butler, trustee of the VšI LT Ranch, and Stasys Skliaustis, our overseer and gatekeeper.

This water came straight from the earth’s icebox, ready cold and refreshing to drink during the summer events.

The ‘Stoginė’ project was generously funded by the UCA Research & Enterprise.

Thank you. This project began earlier, then merged with the Summer Session.

Thank you to all those at UCA Canterbury School of Architecture, especially Allan Atlee, Head of School for supporting these residencies and activisms. Also to all those who had a look over this catalogue, especially Daniel Stilwell for that ever keen second pair of eyes. Many thank yous.

Kristina Kotov, Sarah Stollery, Declan Ralph, Richard Ford, Daniel Stilwell, Elif Ergisi, Lucy Jones, Yingying Frannie Yuan, Yuan Zoey Zhao, Owain Caruana-Davies, Ken Wilder, Faezeh Fathi, Gemma La Rocca, Jefrey Adjei

Special thank you to Jefrey Adjei, who ofered again to help with the sessions, given extra leave from his practice work at Shepard Robson Architects, London, and having worked on the Ghost of Barn 2B in 2014, and Summer Session 15 is an honorary citizen of Stučiai; Ken Wilder, artist and Course Leader at UAL Chelsea, for taking part, his 3rd year, whose energy and familiarity transferred the fragility of the Ranch to participants, putting aside, with generous expletives, his personal struggles with various bugs and mosquitoes, and of course Lucy Jones, from Canterbury School of Architecture, who had little idea what to expect, but took to the goings on like a ish to water and inally, thank you to our anonymous Lithuanian craftsman. kristina kotov, artistic director VšI LT Ranch Space Stučiai, Lithuania © LT Ranch Summer Session 2016 Cameras as usual were shared and in some cases authorship diicult, though images and ilms were nonetheless generously donated to the LT Ranch 2016 archive, all copyrights to the participants of LT Ranch Summer Session of 2016.

LT Ranch

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