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Video Closed Captions

Elizabeth Cooper: It's right by the Dinky train station

and so I just ran into

a couple of

people who said they've been walking by
every day wondering what it is is because it's

something that they pass by every day and
that was one of the intentions of the

location — to be pretty central so that people
would be seeing it and wondering what's going on here.

It's cool to have a space that hasn't been

tainted in some way. It has whatever
connotation you give it. So, for me, it has a

connotation of magic

and possibility and potentiality.
Fritz Haeg: This project is called the

"Princeton Student Colony." My name is Fritz Haeg
and I'm leading an Atelier class here at Princeton.

Ray Auduong: The Princeton Atelier is a program that
invites a visiting artist and offers a class to

Princeton undergraduates during each semester.

Fritz Haeg: We would be focusing

specifically on a lot of really
fundamental human activities that are

really kind of dismissed or not taken
seriously by institutions of higher

learning, like cooking and gardening
and composting and napping and socializing

and movement and dancing and exercise and

conversation and gathering — you know, all
these sorts of

activities maybe that are even so
fundamentally human and so

obvious and quotidian

that

we just

don't take them very seriously.
Ugo Udogwu: I'm interested in art. I'm a visual art major,

and it's like this kind of
encompasses a lot of different things.

It encompasses art in a new way.
It's not just like you're somewhere

just making a piece of work.

It's almost as if the whole class,
the whole event, is an artwork.

Fritz Haeg: Dan Wood and I, my collaborator
in the architecture program, we

designed the platform, we decided upon the
tent and we created a basic infrastructure for

the students to move into,

a platform upon which things can happen,

a tent within which we can be
all winter.

So, we wanted to supply the most basic
kind of framework for us to

move into the space and start to meet here.

Daniel Wood: I believe in this project. I think it can
be a great experience and it's definitely kind of a thing

you don't really see at Princeton everyday or
really any schools. Charlotte Leib: We've had a

lot of great guest speakers so far

and they've been able to contribute a
lot of their expertise. So we're actually doing

something physical. So I think it's an
unbelievably valuable experience for

the future in terms of working in a group

and just

figuring out how to make things happen. is
We have so many big ideas it's just what is so great

about Princeton students. We're all from different
majors. D.J. Judd: It also has a lot to do

with low-impact living, performance studies,

social networking. It just seemed
to touch on a lot of things that I was

interested in. The
Atelier program is usually focused on cross-

disciplinary

subjects and it seemed like a lot of the
subjects that this class was intent on

tackling

was sort of right up my alley.
Elizabeth Cooper: It's not just our thing, it's actually

everybody's potential. It's everybody's space. And so,
I think one way to do that is to have

practical things that we need to have
made or created, and inviting people

to help do that with us. So, if we
have a project making cushions or a

bookshelf, to invite people to help with that.
Or invite people to lead their own activity

if they have something. It's really a stage and
an opportunity for everybody to use.

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