Hand over Time. Learning by Doing - Learning from Prehistory. A Workshop by Akis Goumas

The project focuses on engaging with prehistoric techniques and materials through hands-on practice, artistic research, and direct knowledge exchange. The dialogue between museum and university opens new perspectives on education, design, and mediation.

An accompanying workshop, organised in collaboration with the “Wilhelm von Humboldt” Comprehensive School (KGS) in Halle, brings university students and school pupils together and allows them to experience “learning by doing” first-hand. It is led by Akis Goumas, an internationally active jewellery artist and researcher into ancient Aegean goldsmithing techniques, who teaches his work on historical tools and metalworking in a practical manner.

Should artworks be conceived entirely in the mind before they are even created?

A fixed mental template is increasingly becoming the norm—perhaps also due to the use of AI. While we learn to formulate our desires precisely, we simultaneously lose the ability to experiment, to play, and to engage in dialogue with materials in the physical world. In "The Craftsman," sociologist Richard Sennett describes craftsmanship as a cycle of making and thinking: making fosters thinking—and vice versa.

HAND OVER TIME in the JEWELRY HALL of the BURG explores this interrelationship and builds a transdisciplinary network around knowledge through practice. To kick things off, a workshop will be dedicated to the Nebra Sky Disc. The workshop will be led by the Greek jewelry artist and researcher Akis Goumas. Coppersmith Herbert Bauer will offer insights into the techniques used to work the Sky Disc.


Schedule
- Wednesday, May 6, 6:00–7:30 p.m. Akis Goumas. Artist Talk in the lecture hall of the State Museum of Prehistory.
- Friday, May 8, from 6:30 p.m. Dinner together in the jewelry workshop at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design (BURG).

Registration is requested: oyama@burg-halle.de

The workshop is aimed at transdisciplinary students at BURG, researchers from the State Museum, and elementary school students from the Wilhelm von Humboldt Elementary School in Halle.

As the number of participants is limited, we ask interested students of art and design to apply for the workshop and briefly state their reasons for wanting to participate; by email to Prof. Dr. Yuka Oyama: oyama@burg-halle.de

About Akis Goumas:
A contemporary jewelry maker and researcher of ancient crafting technologies. After receiving a Diploma in Economics (1978), he was trained as a jeweler and silversmith. From 1982 to 1986 he studied gemology and seal engraving in Greece and Germany. Between 1990 and 2006 he was the head designer in the jewelry company ONAR. Since 2000, he has been teaching creative jewelry at the Chalkis School of Art, and since 2017 at the ANAMMA Jewelry School in Athens, and the ALCHIMIA Contemporary Jewelry School in Florence. Since 2006, he is member of an interdisciplinary group of researchers, who study ancient gold-working and seal-engraving techniques. In 2021 he was a Visiting Artist at the Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies. Ιn 2023-24, he was the holder of a Homo Faber fellowship, established by Jaeger LeCoultre and Michelangelo Foundation for Creativity and Craftsmanship. In 2024-25 he participated in the organization of the exhibition Art in Gold. Jewelry in Hellenistic Times at the Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece.