Every maker uses some form of toolbox in order to come to an artistic product. Through our tools we interact with the medium at hand. Marc Boumeester states that at the production of the work of art lies an encounter between artist/designer and medium.

 

The medium has a desire and shapes the artwork according to this desire. Paint wants to become a painting, clay doesn't like to stand vertical, most woods do not like to be turned into a knot.

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The desire of the medium is bent by the tools we use, tools define our practice in a similar way to the medium we use, the artistic product becomes a trilinear interplay between artist/designer, medium and toolbox. Tools are not morally neutral, Peter Paul Verbeek argues that in fact technology shapes the ways we perceive and interact with the world, and indeed shapes the ways in which we can perceive and interact with the world and with our artistic medium.

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Tool.Kit is a workshop about shaping and constructing your artistic toolbox in a way to understand not just the needed tools as a way to understand production, but as a way to understand decision making during the artistic practice.

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It takes the form of a simple thought exercise: I am going on an artistic residency, but I do not know where. I do not have a production budget and can only use materials I forage from a local landscape.

 

What tools do I need to bring to produce whatever work I would like to make? How can I make this sustainable in such a way this residency could ask for several weeks of working? Could I find a way to construct my toolbox in such a way that it would suit me forever? The final exercise is to make all of it fit in a standard carry-on suitcase of 22" x 14" x 9" inches or 55 x 40 x 25 centimeters.