88 research outputs found
On ecstatic writing: an unfolding definition in 7 citational steps
No full textPart of Experimental, Exophonic, Ecstatic. More at projectpassage.net/eee
Co-organised as part of an FWO Tournesol project with VUB (Hannah Van Hove), Ghent (Tessel Veneboer), Sorbonne La Nouvelle (Amanda Murphy, Chris Mole), and UHasselt (Maria Gil Ulldemolins)
CITATION AS GESTURE
No full textHannah Van Hove (VUB), Mathias Meert (VUB), Maria Gil Ulldemolins (UHasselt)
"Gestures: Language - Genre – Citation"
In many ways, gestures can be thought of as ‘travelling concepts’ (M. Bal): they can be found at the
crossroads of different disciplines, traditions and media and have influenced art, literature and
performance since classical times. This tryptich presentation will explore the conceptual diversity of
gestures, from the macro level of language over different gestural genres to the micro level of
citationality.
American novelist Carole Maso once referred to language as “being gesture”. This statement appears
evident in a post-Saussurian age which refutes the idea that absolute referentiality might be possible
in language. Yet one environment where this idea quite easily recedes into the background is that of
the archive. If language is indeed gesture, can one not presume that there exists an ultimate meaning
which has been gestured towards? In this first part of the presentation, Hannah Van Hove (Vrije
Universiteit Brussel/Open Universiteit) will present a critical-creative reflection which explores the
idea of language as gesture in the context of the archive.
In the history of literature and performance, gestures played a central role in the (re)presentation of
body language and corporeality, in 'gestural' genres and practices such as pantomime, tableau vivant
and dance, as well as in theoretical treatises on body language and communication. The second part
of this presentation, delivered by Mathias Meert (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) focuses on several genres
and genre constellations that rely on gesturality and experiment with the codification of textual,
theatrical and bodily gestures.
The inclusion of citations in a text implies gesturality: plucking someone else’s work, folding it into
one’s own, picking it apart - citations require rather specific and precise movements of textual
bodies. These movements are work, and demonstrate an ability to affect both the content and the
surface of a text. Therefore, citations are not only gestural, but performative. This part of the
triptych, delivered by Maria Gil Ulldemolins (Universiteit Hasselt), will be a creative-critical
exploration of such citational affects and affordances
Lovers in an Upstairs Room: A layered portrait of a soft interior(ity)
No full textThe 2020-21 pandemic threw many of us into a forced exploration of our domestic interiors. For some, the limited contact with the exterior world provoked a need for a refuge and escape: the recurrence of the interior eventually gave way to our interiorities. Looking for ways to simultaneously materialise and circumvent a spatial, intimate, and spiritual sense of self, this visual essay borrows the sumptuous patterns and textures of the interior in Kitagawa Utamaro’s 1788 erotic print, Lovers in an Upstairs Room (Figure 01). These, cut-out as inspired by the block-printing process, have been layered with my own absolutely mundane, domestic setting.
At the same time, two fragmentary voices, one ekphrastic and one auto-theoretical, mirror the print and the graphic layering, creating a third text by overlapping. These voices host a multiplicity of others: from the mystical classic The Interior Castle, 1577, by the sickly, cloistered, Spanish nun Teresa of Ávila, which describes an ecstatic topography of the soul; to Canadian poet Lisa Robertson’s 2003 ‘Soft Architecture: A Manifesto,’ which calls for softness as a form of resistance; and for description as a mystical practice: ‘Practice description. Description is mystical.’01
Can the crash of voices, cultures, and imagery add up to one particular description? Can this description of one’s interiority at a very specific time build connections between tangible and immaterial, ordinary and extraordinary? Can there be a secular, soft topography of the self, of one’s interior castle, able to resist the advances of a hostile reality?There were several iterations with this piece, and I am seriously indebted to many for their feedback: Kris Pint, Nadia Sels, Patrícia Domingues, and Marta Gil Ulldemolins all made time to look at it and offer all sorts of assistance. The IDEA editors were exceptionally kind and attentive, and I am especially grateful to Julieanna Preston for all the time she poured into making this work better. I also want to put forward Tania Hershman’s endlessly inventive book and what if we were all allowed to disappear as an influence. If it did not exist, I do not think I would have created the text-couples in this essa
She Always Forgot That the Earth Is Damp: Louise Bourgeois’ Subjectivity, City and Language
No full textFrench artist Louise Bourgeois (1911- 2010) moved to New York, where she would reside the rest of her life, immediately after her marriage, in 1938. As a newcomer, a new wife, and a new mother, Bourgeois spent the first few years of her American life trying to balance domesticity and artistic practice. She resorted to producing prints, which afforded her certain flexibility compared to other medium. In 1947, Bourgeois created a small, printed booklet of illustrated parables, He disappeared into complete silence. This project, originally conceived as a way of inserting herself into the creative fabric of the city, proved to be a pivotal point for the artist. In it, Bourgeois presents a cast of anthropomorphised buildings, revealing a relationship between architecture and pathos. Bourgeois’ architectural characters have been well-studied. This essay, though, wants to emphasise the way architectural and personal affect are explored in Bourgeois’ texts for the booklet, and the way the artist juxtaposes visual and textual language
Quodlibet with Meninas
No full textIn Diagrammatic Writing (2013), Johanna Drucker discusses the power dynamics between texts interacting on a page. So-called autotheoretical texts often engage in similar types of performative and relational lay-outs, and yet, not much has been written about this formal phenomenon. Bearing this in mind, I propose an experiment that performs relations by thinking with, and through, Las Meninas, a self-portrait that is not strictly about the self. All that surrounds Velázquez in the painting (the work-in-progress we do not see, the ensemble of courtly characters, the framed reproductions of masters’ works, the much-discussed mirror reflection) informs and contextualises the portrait, but also explodes it into much more. This paper thus attempts to ask whether autotheory can, by being aware of performative and diagrammatic writing, together with the use of images as citations, decentralise the auto- and become a more choral scene, a cluster, a textual quodlibet or medley. Can a form of writing make space for a multitude, or even, a multitude into a space? Can the autotheoretical self be only one more of many characters, present, with agency, but off-centred
Interior/ity camouflage: superficial adaptations of bodies and architectures
No full textIn Édouard Vuillard’s painting Interior, Mother
and Sister of the Artist (1893), the connection
between interior architecture and one’s embodied
interiority is brought, quite literally, to the surface.
The wall is covered with a dense, dizzy wallpaper.
Pressed against it, the painter’s sister, Marie, in a
long, checkered dress. Uneasy, she melts into the
wall: pattern to pattern, body to architecture.
In this fin de siècle scene, Marie camouflages
herself in the room. Provoked by this image and
the emergence of the interior (Charles Rice 2007),
this paper aims to triangulate the body with
architecture (interiors), and subjectivity (interiority).
While the need for bodily camouflage may be selfexplanatory in warfare or wilderness, in an interior it
turns unexpected. The term, possibly from the Italian
capo muffare for ‘muffling the head’ (Oxford English
Dictionary), offers protection and interiority: the head
being an identifying feature (a surface) and a stand-in
for the self (a container). Borrowing from Aby Warburg’s
Pathosformel, which plots iterative representations of
embodied (e)motion, this paper-atlas will think with
bodies that confuse themselves with architectural
surfaces. It will incorporate contemporaries to Vuillard’s
imagery (Sigmund Freud, Adolf Loos, Charlotte Perkins)
and expand to bodily representations and interiors from
newer periods and media (Heidi Bucher, Yayoi Kusama).
By curating and clustering depictions of camouflaged
bodies, this paper prods at the protective, reflective
nature of architectural interiors and the decorative
function of surfaces. Can they ever evidence a sort
of intimate maladaptation, or even an actual threat?
If an interior is one’s lair, when does it, paraphrasing
Louise Bourgeois, shift from a refuge into a trap
Marie goes by Mimi: on that which we do see (part I) / on that which we do not see (part II)
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