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Speaking with: Feminist methods for scoring excess
Get PDFThis research through practice project identifies and enacts a new feminist method which I call ‘ speaking with’, being a feminist method for art practice, writing and research which enables silenced voices, gaps in legacies, embodied knowledge, new subjectivities and excess to be heard through its practice. In contextualising the method ‘speaking with’ I identify methods of conversation as practice where ‘speaking with’ is enacted examining methods of ‘critical proximity’ (Igwe, 2020), ‘expanded legacy’ (Hebson, 2014), ‘close reading’ (Butler, A., 2019), ‘fandom’ (Grant and Random Love, 2019) and differentiate ‘speaking with’ from ‘speaking nearby’ (Minh-ha, 2109). The project widens its lens to come into conversation with the practices of Carolee Schneemann, Beatrice Gibson, Nadia Hebson, Yvonne Rainer, Florence Peake, Charlotte Prodger and Anne Boyer. As well as the project conversing with artistic legacies and specific artworks of these artists, the research identifies where ‘speaking with’ happens within these interlocutors’ own practices including conversing with - artists’ legacies (Nadia Hebson looking at Winifred Knights), materials of practice ( Florence Peake’s work with moving bodies, clay and sharpie markers), fannish love (Alice Butler’s love letter to Cookie Mueller). This project identifies feminist methods of refusal as important in opening out spaces of ‘speaking with’. Artistic and written methods of refusal examined include refusal of: patriarchal linear history (Olufemi, 2021); patriarchal subject-hood (Lonzi, 1970); neo-liberal conditions of labour (Boyer, 2015) and the ‘demand to entertain’ (Rainer, 2015). In this project I identify what is produced from spaces of refusal as excess. Following on from Irigaray’s ‘excess’ (Irigaray, 1985) and Kristeva’s ‘chora’ (Kristeva, 1974) excess is understood for this project as the articulation of my personal subjectivity as mother, carer, friend and artist. For this research project excess is produced through conversations and live moments of engagement with artwork, art texts and event scores which are often unmeasurable or exceed the moments or materials from which they were created. In this project excess is produced live through enacting ‘speaking with’ as a method of thinking and making. The research identifies forms and tones of art writing that facilitate conversational spaces that hold the excess of speaking across archival gaps, in the margins, of friendship, of love, the familial and radical subjectivities enacting through speaking with. These forms include the event score (Kotz, 2001), the letter (Butler, A., 2019), the diary (Lonzi, 1978) the manifesto (Lonzi, 1970) autofiction (Kraus, 2000) autotheory (Nelson, 2015) and poetry (Notely, 2001). The motivation for this project is driven by a desire to find a method and form that enables me to speak with myself outside of patriarchal social, educational and knowledge structures as a speaking with excess. Through this research the project articulates an important feminist method for art researchers, writers and makers looking to engage in radical conversational tones. The project identifies moments where I and others enact ‘speaking with’ coming into conversation with the gapsin legacies, my encounter with others works, my own subjectivity and materials in the studio through my practice of art writing, performative text, moving image and expanding painting practices
AiLoupe at the Future Fabric Expo 2024
No full textPioneers since 2011, the annual Future Fabrics Expo aims to showcase the material solutions that place the preservation and regeneration of nature, climate and biodiversity at centre stage. AiLoupe allows designers and material developers to discover and assess textile materials for material identification, knowledge and selection. Identifying materials takes you to each Material Data Card, showing sensory subjective data, translating the tactile, physical elements of touching the materials digitally. AiLoupe uses the Sensory Materials Library which is an AI research project for materials selection in the product design process by improving conventional materials libraries with sensory and human experience properties of materials. We have demonstrated how AiLoupe can present sustainable alternatives as ‘like for likes’ to traditional less sustainable materials that Designers are more familiar with
Charts for a resurrection
No full textCharts for a Resurrection is an exploration that navigates the Palestinian landscape through the lens of potential liberation. As an artist, architect and researcher based between Ramallah and London, Srouji intertwines historical artefacts with visionary archaeological sites and pays homage to the resilient Palestinian women who unearthed them. Spanning two distinct spaces, the exhibition invites visitors on a contemplative journey. In the chapel, an intimate apse adorned with ethereal replicas of archeological vessels evokes rituals of burial once practiced in Gaza. Here, amidst the unfolding tragedy in Palestine, the chapel serves as a sanctuary for mourning and meditation, fostering healing and envisioning the afterlives of the departed. The larger space celebrates fragments from the terrain, envisioning future monuments through stone-carved windows and innovative installations. A mirrored grid installation prompts reflection on past, present, and future Palestinian landscapes, inviting viewers to imagine archaeological sites centuries from now. Each element in this exhibition, from the replicated artefacts to the speculative monuments, encourages viewers to engage with the layered history and potential futures of Palestine. This new body of work is a testament to the power of imagination and the resilience of a people striving for liberation
There are patterns there
No full textMcVetis’ practice centres on drawing and process, particularly through the meticulous medium of hand embroidery. His work delves into ideas of repetition, exploring how subtle variations within repetitive actions express both sameness and difference. These investigations span broad themes, from geology and cosmology to the language of time, permanence, and impermanence. In this new body of work, McVetis expands the intimate, handcrafted scale of his miniature forms into the monumental. He embraces the sculptural, architectural, and functional possibilities of textiles, transforming them into tools for shaping space. There are Patterns There draws inspiration from Carl Sagan’s book Cosmos, echoing themes of patterns and process and resonating with the profound search for life and meaning within the vastness of the universe. This connection infuses McVetis’ work with a sense of exploration that reaches beyond physical form, inviting viewers to consider the elemental forces and systems shaping existence. By using Shoben tape in repetitive patterns of black and white, McVetis not only reflects the beauty of natural order and variation but also aligns with a cosmic narrative, where each stitch and structural element mirrors the intricate processes found in both the macrocosm and the microcosm. Through this lens, textiles become a medium to bridge the intimate with the infinite, transforming repetitive handwork into a meditation on permanence, impermanence, and the unseen connections woven throughout life. This series was created for the 10th Anniversary exhibition of Future Heritage, curated by Corinne Julius
Responsible AI: In art and design higher education
Get PDFThis report presents the findings of a study conducted in Spring 2024, which aimed to identify the challenges and opportunities posed by AI in art and design higher education, especially at the RCA. It examined the uses, expectations, and needs for the responsible use of AI at the RCA through a survey, structured interviews, and workshops with staff and students
Queering the body of architectural education
Get PDFArchitecture, one of the oldest and most conservative of disciplinary traditions, is frequently resistant to creative critique, activism, and subversion of its hegemonies – the very opposite of queer theory, thinking and action. From the outside, Architecture and Queerness are very unlikely bedfellows, binary opposites even. If architecture is to be just, if architecture is to be for humanity, then architecture needs Queer-ing. To dismantle the systemic binaries inherent within the architecture discipline and profession, we must begin with education, and we must look to the future(s). QuEAN[2] was founded to catalyse change within universities and schools, leveraging queerness as a lens to scrutinise and dismantle entrenched and uneven hierarchies within the education of the built environment. Despite undeniable trends towards a more queer society (regardless of acceptance) and ongoing developments in queer studies, relatively little attention has been paid to queerness within spatial design practices since the 1990s. Recent publications (Jobst & Stead 2023, Furman & Mardell 2022), indicate a revived interest in queer spaces. This trajectory alongside growing percentages of LGBTQ+ youth (Stonewall rainbow Report, 2022[1]) unequivocally tells us that the education of our spatial design students (future practitioners) must sharpen critically, rigorously, and quickly to become more inclusive. Pedagogy within architecture and interior design is well established and often developing, however as yet comparatively underexplored through a queer lens. Queer-ing is a questioning of categorisation, of normativity, of standardisation. This goes far beyond queer as identity, and leaps into queer as action; into unlearning, disruption, challenge and change - how does one que(e)ry not just the institution, and the curriculum, but the processes and regulations of prescription which are stitched together with red tape? This paper is a provocation, asking how might the body of architectural education be queer-ed and to what end? Where might the responsibility, labour of change, and opportunity lie? What might be the role of the university, the governing bodies (ARB, RIBA), of the School of Architecture, of the educator, of the student(?) in its development and implementation
Nature's affordances: Challenges and opportunities
No full textResearch into links between health and nature recognises that nature is a great source of primary prevention and health promotion for the general population and particular groups (Hampshire et al., 2021; Ward Thompson et al., 2014). Spending time in nature supports mental and physical health, is associated with a sense of gratitude and self-worth, and can help people recover from stress and mental illness. This kind of experience with nature also helps build a sense of place and community and foster feelings of belonging. This has been particularly apparent during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic (Poortinga et al., 2021). COVID-19 triggered a surge in social innovation to address issues ranging from food poverty to social isolation, combined with a dramatic turn to nature as a source of solace, stress relief and relaxation. In urban environments, local green space became particularly significant in this regard (Ugolini et al., 2020), with access to green space understood as a major source of resilience during the pandemic (Geng et al., 2020). Simultaneously, greater discussion of climate change gave rise to growing understandings of the need to redefine human interactions with natural ecosystems
Hello we were talking about Hudson
No full textEdited by Steve Lafreniere / Introduction by Bob Nickas / Interviews with Dennis Cooper, G.B. Jones, Charles Ray, Kay Rosen, et al. / Texts by Hilton Als, Gary Indiana, Nancy Shaver, et al. / Interview with Hudson by Dike Blair Hello We Were Talking About Hudson is the first book to focus on Hudson (1950–2014), the legendary “artists’ dealer” behind the storied gallery Feature Inc. Active in Chicago from 1984–88, and in New York City from 1988–2014, Feature operated ahead of its time, notably presenting the early work of such significant artists as Tom Friedman, Jeff Koons, Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince, Charles Ray, and Kay Rosen, and groundbreaking queer exhibitions by Tom of Finland and G.B. Jones. In the course of showing a remarkable group of artists over 30 years, Hudson maintained a disciplined approach, driven by his singular taste and eye. By sidestepping the art world’s expectations, he challenged the operating principles of other commercial galleries, privileging uncertainty, idealism, plurality, and generosity above the business of art Comprising 35 interviews with Hudson’s artists, collectors, colleagues, and friends, this book is an intimate portrait of a complex man and the vehicle through which he focused his convictions. Also included are written remembrances and over 40 images, many shared for the first time. Published on the tenth anniversary of Hudson’s death, Hello We Were Talking About Hudson is a celebration of a true believer and a record of the outsized impact he had on those around him and culture at large
On detail, in detail: Reaching a state of nothing
Get PDFWhen discussing detail in the context of photographic images – a medium much concerned with verisimilitude and exactness, historically speaking – the mutability of this particular linguistic item comes to the fore. Used to describe an image that exclusively depicts one component understood to be part of a larger whole within its limited frame, the term functions as an image-category descriptor, commonly used interchangeably with ‘close-up’. But the term is also applied to images (or aspects thereof) far removed from that category, wherein ‘detail’ might refer to the capacity of a given imaging technology to resolve apprehensible visual information, a plane of optical focus, a subject, an aspect of fore/background, or any element of the composition included intentionally or incidentally within the frame. Each of these aspects of images are open to subjective scrutiny in terms of their capacity to inform, signify or otherwise inflect the viewer’s experience of both the image itself and what is implied to exist behind and beyond the frame. The relative arbitrariness of detail as it is commonly (and liberally) applied in this context, then, points to the unpredictable, multifaceted, rhizomatic and metonymic nature of the term. Detail, in standard noun form, refers to an individual fact or item; in the absence of a complete information field to provide context and nuance, it can present an incomplete or distorted account of what it purports to represent. The phrase ‘in detail’, conversely, means including or considering all the information about something or every part of something. As such, the meaning of the phrase is analogous to elaborating, specifying and carefulness. The idiom “The devil is in the details”, for example, expresses the importance of detail: whatever should be done, one should do it thoroughly; there are specific elements of the situation that have to potential to cause later difficulties if not carefully considered and addressed at the outset. Another idiom –that does not contain the word specifically, but clearly refers to the concept of details– is “Not seeing the wood for the trees”. The idiom serves as a warning against over-concentration on details, lest one damage their understanding of the larger endeavour of which those details are a part. Details captured in photography are essentially different from both these vernacular linguistic references and other image-producing technologies in terms of the viewer’s relationship with the object. These details are beyond physical comprehension regarding memory, time and space. The photographic punctum elaborated by Roland Barthes denotes a photograph-viewer encountering a wounding, personally touching detail that establishes the unexpected perception of a direct relationship between themselves and the object or person depicted in the photograph; a relationship that is entirely subjective, deeply affecting in the sense of a Lacanian trauma, and drawing its particular affective import from –in large part– the indexical nature of the photographic image. This practice-based research paper proposes that characterisation of the photographic detail and its associated perceptual and affective potentials as nothing (or nothingness) offers both an expansion of the enduring concepts of indexicality and punctum and a productive frame through which to critically assess the role of detail and perception in contemporary photographic, cinematic and virtual reality media. Just as Barthes attempted to bring the metonymic detail into the linguistic tool-set of discourse around photographic images, this research attempts further to integrate the detail into the realm of the Real as elaborated within Lacanian analysis of the Unconscious. Also, by drawing upon Psychoanalytic theories of infant development, I propose the detail as a means of how humans primarily comprehend the world during infancy, then investigate further stages of infantile development in the context of visual and sensual experience. The line of enquiry draws upon my personal experience of the Isakower Phenomenon - a sensory revival of the infantile experience of feeding at the mother’s breast. I have focused on this particular phenomenon as a starting point of my journey towards nothing as it is a state where one’s perceptions are undifferentiated and instinctive; prior to the acquisition of language and symbolic world that entails. In a broad sense, our infantile memory, the unconscious mind could be regarded as nothing in the world of language. The application of theories of infant development contributes a unique perspective, proposing that detail plays a central role in investigating our perception given that what we perceive during infancy is grasped almost entirely through details. By drawing parallels to the Isakower Phenomenon, I suggest that our unconscious mind, akin to the detail, could be regarded as a state before language, representing 'nothing' in the world of language. My research ultimately aims to provide a critical reappraisal of the detail as it pertains to the photographic act and an unpacking of the perceptual mechanisms at play in a viewer’s encounter with it. Another important part of this research is exploring the discourses of digital photography. Several phases of digital innovation in media have fundamentally changed the essence of photography and the way we live. The indexicality that characterized earlier photographic technologies has shifted toward a generative mode of image-making in the digital era, which changes not only our perception of the photographic image but also our ways of interacting with those images. With the emergence of ever-higher-resolution imaging technologies and powerful computational processing of images being easily accessible and widely utilised, our visual and cognitive faculties are constantly adapting and adjusting to the abundance of visual details captured or created with these technologies, wherein both what we see and want to see are beyond our physical reality. What is it that we desire to see and remember? Furthermore, is it possible that our actual experiences in life can be archived as a whole, when lived reality consists of fine details present in orders of magnitude larger than our visual and cognitive faculties can process? In my photography practice, the concept of detail is explored both within the content of the images I produce and the installation of these works to include situational (or spatio-temporal) aspects. In keeping with my central concept of nothing, many of my works depict a period in-between scheduled exhibitions of a typical gallery space, the absence of any readily identifiable objects of display conflicting with the exhibition space's singular purpose as a place of display. The surfaces of these unadorned gallery walls are painstakingly photographed using a variety of techniques ranging from spatially-sequential, macro-scale captures to large panoramas, focus stacking and extensive post-processing to ensure fidelity of details and perfectly-matched colour and luminance of the prints relative to their real referent (the physical gallery wall). The demanding exactitude of this process necessarily encodes time into the works; this aspect is then expanded throughout the equally laborious process of installing the resulting prints into the gallery space to re-capture (in finalised installation-form) photographically and exhibit. Over time, this process has been refined to the point of installing prints that are processed, sized and installed to present seamless, perspectivally-coherent representations in contiguous relationship to the walls, floor, ceiling, sightlines and features of the gallery space at 1:1 scale from a given viewpoint. Contrary to the complex process that brought them into existence, these installations present a seemingly empty space in their final form. Despite presenting an abundance of detail, the gallery appears to displaying nothing at all. As such, the conceptual relations (and perhaps, mutual dependence) of detail and nothingness are manifested in physical form, coalescing to point to a hard-won practice of nothing
The polygenetic designer
Get PDFIn Metamodernism: The Future of Theory, Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm (2021) structures a new timeframe to understand better the 20th century; the pre-modern, the modern, and the post-modern, which gives way to the metamodern. Metamodernism is a way of viewing the world that emphasises a kind of integrated pluralism. Given the latest development in design during the late 19th century and 20th century, this framework may assist to understand the evolution of its practice. Following this framework, the evolution of design practice may be structured in four fundamental periods; pre-modern embodied by the craftsman, modern embodied by the industrial designer (Papanek's “Like It Is”), post-modern embodied by the innovator (Papanek's “How It Could Be”; Papanek, 1972) and an emerging metamodern paradigm embodied by what I will describe in this chapter as the Polygenetic designer (Figure 5.1). In what follows, I will review the evolution of design practice from a historical perspective to understand the current intersection between design and biology. This position will lead a case for the Polygenetic designer and a potential operational framework