My diary (detail)

I just wanted to draw attention to a number of interesting events over the next few months. Please let me know below of other seminars, conferences or talks!

29.10.11  |  Rhythm and Event symposium  |  KCL, London

01.11.11  |  John Mullarkey – Art-Practice-Thought: The Case of Cinema  |  Goldsmiths, London

21.11.11  |  Bruno Latour – Waiting for Gaia  |  Institut Français, London

21.11.11  |  Paul Simpson – Ecologies of Performance  |  School of Geography, Oxford

28.11.11  |  Caren Kaplan – The Visual Culture of Stealth  |  School of Geography, Oxford

29.11.11  |  Lars Spuybroek  - The Sympathy of Things  |  AA, London

06.12.11  |  Ian James – Art – Technics  |  Goldsmiths, London

ongoing  |  Topology project  |  Tate Modern, London

forthcoming  |  François Laruelle – Non-Standard Philosophy  |  TBC

forthcoming  |  The New in Social Research seminar series  |  TBC

On the lawn at the RGS-IBG 2010 Conference, London

The RGS-IBG annual conference was in London this year, at the beginning of September. A three-day event, with sessions starting at 09:00 and running through right into the evening, combined with a daily commute, meant I was exhausted by the time it came to a close. I attended a variety of different sessions, met up with a number of familiar faces and was lucky enough to make some new acquaintances. I also tried to make the most of being in London, and was able to visit the Science Museum, an interesting but half-finished exhibition at the V&A and an event over at Tate Britain.

I

Where to start though? Looking back at my scribble of notes, what I propose to do here is make some very brief comments on what caught my attention during the conference, and include all the calls for papers of those sessions (as they the online programme is only due to reamin online until the end of September). Having recently re-read Latour’s (2005) Reassembling the social, I thought it might be interesting to go along to a session on actor-networks. However, as the discussant Peter Jackson noted, there was a noticeable theoretical eclecticism! Unfortunately, it didn’t feel like this was very productive. The next session I attended was the launch of Peter Adey’s new book, Aerial Life: Spaces, Mobilities, Affects. Adey opened and closed the session, first introducing aspects of the book and then responding to those who had read his book. These included Ben Anderson and Tim Cresswell, among others, who were full of praise for the book. Anderson was interested in the relational configurations in the book, the on-going composition of relations, and had some questions on method. Firstly, he noted that the book is organised around events rather than specific types of connections, resulting in surprising juxtapositions. How then, he asked, to learn to attend to resonances between events that are drawn out?  Secondly, how is Adey theorising the process of change and the irruption of the new from within this relational account? Cresswell had fewer questions but remarked that the mundane is much harder to account for, and to write. He also noted that the book was an example of geography that is happy to be theoretical. I took a break after lunch, and then sat at the back of the room for a session on anarchist geographies. It was all rather tame though. The closest I came to being surprised was when I nearly fell off my chair; it had only three legs. I did a little writing in my notebook, then listened closely as Hilary Ramsden talked about her research on clown activism. I liked her comments on temporary wrong-footings, and the play on misunderstanding and mistake. Indeed, her paper was quite simply disarming.

II

The session on theorising the sea was interesting, in particular the paper that considered the surfed wave as a relational place, both unstable and provisional. There was an uncomfortable silence after another paper in the same session though, and I was trying to work out if it was because it didn’t offer much in the way of questions, or if it was because the presenters were Israeli. Perhaps both. I couldn’t find anything in the programme that was very appealing for the next session, and so I wandered over to the V&A. There they had an exhibition, called Architects Build Small Spaces, which had finished earlier on in the week. I asked about it and found that parts of the exhibition were still on-site and could be visited. These structures were explorations of notions of refuge and retreat and although I wasn’t convinced that small spaces “can push the boundaries and possibilities of creative practice”, I did rather like the ‘Ark’ project, a beautiful bookcase-tower-archive. I spent the first part of the afternoon at a session that I had expected would be about affect and emotion but turned out to be more about well-being. David Conradson’s consideration of therapeutic practices for affective modulation was fascinating, and I found some of the terms he used very thought-provoking: relational ecologies, orchestration of feeling and affective field. His paper was on the techniques for summoning stillness and how places of retreat operate. I found there to be an interesting overlap between this paper, the exhibition I had just been to, and my participation at the Luminous Green (LG) gathering. Louisa Cadman’s presentation on the art of living well attended to the idea of staying with the present, of staying with the problem. Hers was more a story than an argument and there was a noticeable unease with the audience as to how to engage with it. As for myself, I found myself listening to experiences that were unsettlingly similar to those from LG. Instead of a mint-leaf, she spoke of a raisin. But the same tenets of non-judgement, of awareness, of presencing even, were all there. I was surprised then, to find that some of what I had liked so much about LG was perhaps not as specific to that event as I had first thought. The last session was all about surfaces. Rachel Colls spoke of bodily, and in particular placental, surfaces, which was remarkable. Drawing on Luce Irigaray, the placenta was a device for re-thinking the ways we live together, of new forms of relating. Alan Latham’s paper on jogging as a way of thinking with, and about, surfaces was an exercise in thoughtful self-experimentation, and Hilary, mentioned earlier, told a story of walking in Detroit. There was lots going on, following a finger-walking introduction (which had to be seen to be believed!): Hilary reading, a friend walking her fingers over a projector, and a slideshow of pictures and quotes that seemed to have little to do with what was being read. The person doing the walking of fingers, Libby Straughan, was up next with a talk on taxidermy. There was a visceral video of her practising taxidermy which was hard to watch but nonetheless fascinating. I was more concerned by the seemingly conflictual citations of psychoanalysts and those who are rather less interested in that sort if thing. A certain ontological dissonance perhaps? The last paper maintained the high level of the session, with a lyrical tale of the Aberfan mining disaster, a scrutiny of the surface.

III

The sonic methods session had some technical difficulties but this did not prevent the papers from going ahead. Many of the participants had also attended the ‘Experimenting with Geography’ workshop earlier on in the year but here I was able to hear more about their work. Jonathan Prior’s soundwalks were very interesting, especially the ways in which he encouraged a holding of attention through détournement. His soundwalks are available to download from his blog. The next two sessions attended, both before and after lunch, were on geography and the future. Nick Bingham presented a story of a food inspection of a Chinese restaurant, highlighting the ways the future can be folded into the present. Ben Anderson and Pete Adey had a paper on governing emergencies, and discussed the interval of peril. An emergency, they argued, is only over when the potential to surprise had been exhausted. Sam Kinsley talked about futurity in the making, and explored the notion of communities of practice. He contended that ubicomp (ubiquitous computing) remains anticipatory, always looking to a proximate future. Gail Davies gave a very interesting talk about experimental temporalities (and temporalities of the experiment). I agreed with her argument that experimental practices enact more than one future . Derek McCormack chose to surprise, engaging with the futures of inflation (financial rather than balloon). I  had a giggle when he talked about practising thrift (!) but I was intrigued by his thoughts on the pre-disciplining of the imagination. Leila Dawney invoked a particular set of philosophers (Stengers, Simondon, Nancy, Spinoza) to discuss on-going presencing or becoming. She was especially interested in the imaginative capacities of the body, arguing that imaginative constructions of the future highlight some of the relations in the present. The final paper came from Jamie Lorimer, who spoke of enginnering new ecologies and cosmopolitics, of learning to live with others. Interestingly he also touched upon diagrams, which could anticipate and summon forth futures. I decided to leave on a high, those sessions proving very stimulating, and made my way over to Tate Britain for the ‘The Real Thing‘:

Urbanomic present an evening event at Tate Britain with contemporary sound, video and sculptural work, and other interventions exploring the emerging philosophical paradigm of Speculative Realism and its impact on contemporary art practice.

Although fairly ambivalent about Specualtive Realism, I did follow the recent discussions on its merits on the Crit-Geog mailing list. Moreover, I was interested in how artists might explicitly explore this sort of philosophy and in particular, the question of engaging with realities that exist before, after and outside of human experience. There was a lot to see and to listen to and unfortunately I didn’t manage much in the end. But I did stumble across Mike Nelson’s (2000) The Coral Reef, which had nothing to do with the event, but has really stayed with me since. I’ve included a video below, before the list of CFPs, but I would recommend you visit the installation rather than watch this!

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Can we have political Actor-Networks?

Charlotte Chambers & Katherine Smith

Over the past twenty years, theoretical contributions employing the term actor-network theory (or ANT for short) have enjoyed huge popularity within the social sciences, and particularly human geography, to the extent that some of the original contributors to this body of work have expressed concern at its translation into a specific, almost concrete, academic space (e.g. Law, 1999). Attempts to reclaim the term as something less fixed and more problematic have been made (e.g. Latour, 2005; Law & Hassard, 1999). It is contended, however, that because actor-network theorists tend to have their sights firmly fixed on micro-level analysis, none of the various interpretations (or translations) of ANT have, so far, dealt adequately with the agency of political context in mediating interactions of actors and networks.

This session incorporates a range of papers which employ or engage with elements of ANT, each of which illustrates or questions the centrality of political context and address the question of whether it is possible for ‘actor-network theories’ to engage with politics beyond the micro level. Drawing on topics as diverse as environmental justice, health inequalities, financial services corruption and Tuscan wine production, this session will provide a provocative discussion about one of the most widely applied theoretical lenses in contemporary human geography. The first paper, by the session organizers, will outline some of the key difficulties and debates on this topic.  The second will respond to this directly by arguing ANT is already a viable approach for critical, politically engaged analysis. The final two papers will each present examples of politically critical, empirical geographical work in which ANT is employed, providing further insights into the possibilities and difficulties in using ANT in politically sensitive research. The broader aim of the session is to promote a better understanding of how ANT might be usefully developed and applied within the social sciences to better understand situations that are as complex and politically sensitive as the post-crisis global economy and environment upon which this conference is focused.

RGS-IBG/Wiley-Blackwell Book Series panel. Aerial Life: Spaces, Mobilities, Affects: author meets interlocuters panel

Kevin Ward

Anarchist geographies: Place, identity and participatory approaches

Adam Barker, Jenny Pickerill & Gavin Brown

Anarchist theory has had much to say about the importance of place, especially in critiques of how territory is claimed by power – whether the state or corporate interests – but also in proposing different ways of relating to land. Such theory needs to be engaged with by geographers not only in enhancing our understanding of place and identity, but in supporting social justice activism which seeks to challenge these power relations. Ecologically-based concepts such as bioregionalism and examinations of place-based autonomy have brought diverse groups together in discussions of how land is related to and used to sustain non-hierarchical more participatory social forms.  However, anarchist theory has not included much commentary on how place relates to political, social, and cultural identities.  This session seeks to engage with the various ways – contested, overlapping, and often incomplete – that place informs identities, both for anarchist individuals and communities, and for groups that anarchists may find themselves working with (or against).  As anarchists in practice seek to work within localized networks of activists in the anti-globalization movement, or in partnership with Indigenous peoples and communities, anarchists must consider the full range of implications for the development of senses of self and ‘other’, production of cultural and social meaning, and formation of political identities tied to place. Such an approach also asks geographers to develop a more participatory approach in understanding how place is understood and the construction of place and identities through the processes of activism.

This session seeks to consider (but should not be limited by) the following questions:

- How are variations within anarchistic identities tied to locality and place-specific struggles?

-What are the implications for international solidarity, geographically-dispersed affinity, and other networking concepts that must account for place-based identities?

- Do ties to localized identities strengthen or weaken opposition to globalizing power?

- Can experiences on, in, and with, specific places be used to help form particular anarchistic identities?

- What challenges are posed by identities such as those of some Indigenous communities which are place-based but also claim particular and inaccessible relations to places?

- What do the ethics that inform participatory approaches add to understandings of anarchist geographies?

Theorising the Sea

Jon Anderson & Kimberley Peters

The oceans and seas cover approximately two-thirds of the Earth’s surface, not to mention the watery worlds which lie below, forming the largest percentage of our planet. Rachel Carson wrote of the sea, “it lies all about us” (1950, 216), yet it has strangely failed (until recently) to gain much attention in social and cultural geography. The sea is a space often invisible, forgotten (Lambert et al, 2006), marginalised, ‘out there’ (Steinberg, 1999) mystical and strange (Westerdahl, 2005). Yet paradoxically, it has been, and remains, fundamental to the making of the world as we know it (Lavery, 2005, Rediker, 2007). As a “scholarly turn towards the ocean” currently develops (Connery, 2006), this session seeks to consider how we might theorise the sea – this strange, liquid, undulating space which is often credited as being entirely different from the land (see Jackson, 2005, Langewiesche, 2004, Steinberg, 1999). In particular, this session will endeavour to theorise oceanic, maritime and sea spaces not only in terms of interconnections and networks, but also as spaces of power, society, imagination, emotion, materiality, mobility and enchantment. This session invites papers concerned with (but not limited to) the following themes:

- The tensions, contradictions, relationships between the land and sea

- The sea as a ‘place’

- Materiality and sea

- The sea as space of emotion

- Ocean and seas spaces as magical, mystical and enchanted

- Society and the sea

- The fluid, undulating, mobile nature of the sea

Geographies of (dis)ability, (ill) health, emotion and affect

Louise Holt, Jennifer Lea & Hannah MacPherson

This session aims to explicitly connect work on the geographies of (dis)ability, ill health and wellbeing with research on emotion and /or affect. Over recent years, the interest that human geographers have shown in the emotional and (broadly conceived) affective realms has increased substantially, making an impact in most areas of the discipline. From the emotional responses that shape and arise from embodied relationships with particular spatial settings, to the ‘logics’ of affect that shape configurations of economic, social and cultural life, the emotional and affective realms are increasingly being called upon as legitimate ways of knowing the world.

It was critical geographies of disability and chronic illness (e.g. Dyck 1999, Moss 1999, Chouinard 1999) that proved one of the most willing to ‘admit emotions into [the] production of geographical knowledges’ (Davidson et al 2005, 4). Despite that starting point there has been limited sustained dialogue. As such, this session calls for papers that explicitly take this dialogue forward by investigating aspects of the multidimensional and varied relationships that exist between (dis)ability, health and wellbeing and emotion/affect.

What are surfaces?

Isla Forsyth, James Robinson, Hayden Lorimer & Peter Merriman

Geographers have held a long-standing concern with describing and understanding the Earth’s surface and the social and environmental interactions which it enables or constrains, some employing creative methods to produce myriad explanations of surface pattern, processes and peopling (Harrison et al. 2004). However, critical reflections on different understandings of ‘the surface’ have been relatively neglected in contemporary geographical study, with emphasis being placed on geographical concepts such as ‘place’ or ‘landscape’.

Commonly, and metaphysically, we come to know the world, and figure our place in it, as surface-dwellers, moving over ground, across bodies of water or occasionally taking to the air to see patterns of life and habitats from on-high (Cosgrove 2001; Ingold 2008). Meanwhile, much of the commonplace, metaphoric language of the surface is deeply pejorative: beauty is said to be skin-deep or someone is warned they are skating on thin-ice. If surfaces are objects of attraction, they are also subject to our suspicion and distrust.

This session asks what a serious consideration of the superficial might allow, hinging on the question ‘What are surfaces?’ We welcome proposals for papers which have a theoretical and/or empirical focus which critically address different social, cultural, historical and physical engagements with surfaces: human and nonhuman; topographical, topological and technological; imagined, visualized and inhabited; material and metaphoric; reproduced, modelled and designed.

Sonic methods in human geography

Michael Gallagher & Jonathan Prior

This session brings together researchers who are actively using sound to explore geographical issues, providing a platform for methodological development to complement the growing interest in the geographies of sound and music (e.g. Anderson et al, 2005; Cameron and Rogalsky, 2006; Wood et al, 2007). Papers will cover topics such as:

- Sonic research methods: soundwalking; deep listening; multi-sensory ethnography; acoustic mapping; sound design and architecture; acoustic ecology; field recording; sound art and experimentalism.

- The interface between academic research and creative practice in the sonic arts.

- Cartographies of sound and other forms of representing sound.

- Experimentation with different forms of sonic dissemination: blogs, podcasts, performances, radio broadcasts, etc.

Geography and the Future

Ben Anderson & Peter Adey

How are futures governed, enacted, invoked and known? And how might geographers respond – analytically, methodologically, and politically – to the making of geographies through the future? Addressing these questions requires that we explicitly conceptualise the relation between space-time and futurity. However, with some exceptions, including work on figuring futures (Kitchen & Kneale 2002; Pinder 2005), experiencing futures (Kraftl 2007) and practices such as planning, Social and Cultural Geography has rarely explicitly engaged with the category of the future (compare with the amount of work on the past, memory and haunting). This is not to say that the future is absent from geographical work. On the contrary, recent research on climate change, trans-species epidemics, terror, obesity, financial crises and other risks, threats and hazards has shown how acting in advance of the future is an integral, if taken-for-granted, part of specific substantive geographies (e.g. Adey 2009; Anderson 2010a, b; Amoore 2009; de Goede & Randalls 2009; Evans 2009; French & Kneale 2009; Hannah 2009). Carbon is traded, birds are culled, bodies are measured and banks are saved on the basis of what has not and may never happen; the future. We also find hints of the complicated interrelations between past, present and future across a wide range of work within Social and Cultural Geography. A simple list of just some ‘future geographies’ gives us a sense of the sheer variety of ways in which futures may be related to and made present. Futures are: traded in futures markets, promised in contracts, created by birth, commodified by finance capital, secured against, invested in by savers animated by a Calvinist work ethic, divined by fortune tellers, promised in the context of new technologies, coaxed into being by theorists of diverse economies, projected by certain utopians, deterred by nation states, regularised through clock time, prophesised by evangelicals, and destroyed in war, to name only some relations to the future (see Adam & Groves 2007; Anderson 2010a).

The sessions consist of a series of papers that think the relation between geographies/geography and the future by describing how futures are theorised, known, governed and enacted in relation to the following themes:

1. Theorising the future and spatiality/temporality (the future as not-yet, a mystery, virtual, difference, outside, becoming, event).
2. Figuring the future (‘the future’ understood as catastrophe, crisis, disaster and or in terms of progress, providence, or promise)
3. Enacting futures. (How are futures embodied, experienced, told, narrated, imagined, performed, wished, planned, (day)dreamed, symbolized, and sensed? And how are future made present through specific affects, materialities, and epistemic objects).
4. Governing the future (different anticipatory logics such as risk, insurance, preemption, precaution, preparedness or anticipatory techniques such as scenarios, exercises or risk modelling).

Howard Hodgkin - Time and Place, Modern Art Oxford (23 June - 05 September 2010)

I went to have a look at Howard Hogkin’s exhibition last week-end and came away unsure of how to respond to (or judge?) the work. I liked some of the paintings, in particular Yellow Sky (2009-2010), and I thought some of the colours used were amazing. Yet I clung to the exhibition guide for help, not only when identifying the pieces but also for telling me a bit about the artist and his techniques.

A sentence grabs my attention:

“The resulting body of work is emphatically about the here and now; a dialogue between the artist and the world of sensations, through the medium of paint.”¹

I am reminded of Luminous Green and presencing, living the here-and-now. I look for the memories and emotions that – I look down again – are evoked “through a distinctive use of colour and brushstroke”. I look at one painting and think about what I’ve just read regarding it. I move to the next painting and find I have been reading the text for the wrong painting. Somehow, it still works for me. I move on, slightly perturbed.

I smile when I read that the newest work was completed after the catalogue went to press, and wonder if this was done on purpose. A move against being catalogued, against being understood, against being written about. The exhibition guide is no longer my guide, offering excuses: “it is different from anything else in the room and in the show, and points to the possibility of another phase in Hodgkin’s work”. I look again. It is rather different.

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Double act: Sans façon

Day 4. Thursday morning got underway with an overview of the work being done by Sans façon:

…an investigation between French architect Charles Blanc and British artist Tristan Surtees, [which] has developed into an ongoing collaboration through an art practice.

We undertake diverse projects, both temporary and permanent, predominantly exploring the complex relationship between people and place. We like to see the role of the artist and art as a catalyst in a process of raising questions and inviting one to look and think differently about a place, hoping to create an opportunity rather than an inanimate object.

They do not have a particular medium and instead have attempted all sorts of varied projects. Emphasising that they try to avoid collaboration where it involves incorporating technicians into a project, they work hard to ensure that everybody is on-board from the start of a project. What drives them are the hidden aspects of place; they understand place as having a range of different layers (or operating on a variety of registers?). An interest in micro-geographies (or micro-histories?¹) and telling small stories went hand-in-hand with an appreciation of the richness of working-together, with each other, with locals, with academics, with all kinds of people. Both Tristan and Charles explained how they looked for comissions that encouraged the development of an idea, rather than knowing in advance what a project might be and/or look like.

What really got them thinking differently, they told us, was a get-together (or “inter-disciplinary creative development programme”) called ‘Rough Mix‘:

…an opportunity for theatre makers to collaborate with other practitioners, try out new ideas and introduce them to an audience. We bring together a small group of practitioners from different disciplines and give them time to start developing new projects in a supportive and collaborative atmosphere. The practitioners work together with a group of performers over a two week period before making a work in progress showing at the end. We believe that this project offers a unique opportunity for both established and emerging artists.

To me, having spent time at the SenseLab, it sounded like a particular platform for experimentation. From this meeting, or series of encounters, Charles and Tristan became involved in set design for a piece of theatre, which went on to do rather well. I wondered just how important it was to have a person operate or act as a node for holding the group together and also knowing how to direct it, albeit gently.

Their practical session, following a coffee break, asked us to design an alternative audio-guide to the city. Drawing on one of their previous projects, Sans façon explained that they wanted us to make people move by following footfall rather than a set of descriptions, to compose an experience rather individual sounds. The group split into two (those who knew the city well, and those who didn’t) and then went off in pairs to listen to the city and help compose, back in our groups, some sort of sonic experience where we would walk a score.

I took the afternoon off to explore the city (and read the newspaper), which made for a welcome break from a rather intense week. However, I rather regretted not going along on a tour of anechoic and reverberation chambers, which some of the others had managed… At around 16:00, we reconvened for a series of short presentations by anyone who felt like they had something to show and share. The time allocated for pesentations was an opportunity to do something different, to show a rough-cut of something, to be explicitly experimental, to present unfinished or on-going work. The projects were not as much of a focus of the week as I had imagined prior to arriving at the workshop, and instead served as a soft-focus for the practical sessions. The work presented was really great, especially considering how little time we had had during the week but raised the question (again) of how to respond to work which is creative. This is certainly a struggle for social scientists. Victoria suggested that we might respond by saying all that we had thought of while engaging with a particular piece, rather than critique it. This would not preclude questions but they would be of a different kind (e.g. how would you like to present this piece? how did you score it? how much direction was there with the project?).

The evening featured experimental music performances by Michael’s band, Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo,

making music that explores detail and difference through repetition and layering

and Matt Rogalsky, whose pieces focused on exploration of abject, invisible/inaudible, or ignored streams of information, over at Inspace and part of the Dialogues  Festival. It was quite a strange experience and I found myself unsure of how to respond, or what to think of the evening. I like to think that I am generous, and I certainly did not leave (as a fair few in the audience did); but nor did I find myself really moved (some were whooping at the end of the night). Perhaps I just had my mind on the election. Excuses, excuses!

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'Press only': pre-opening of Innen Stadt Außen, Berlin

Yesterday I got the opportunity to attend the press opening for Olafur’s latest exhibition: Innen Stadt Außen.

Innen Stadt Außen (Inner City Out) is the first solo exhibition by the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson (b.1967) in a Berlin institution. The show’s central theme stems from Eliasson’s close relationship with this city, in which he has lived and worked for many years. His site-specific investigations within the Martin-Gropius-Bau are amplified and commented on through various ephemeral projects in public space, thus linking the museum to other places within the city.¹

I picked up a press kit – full of papers and details concerning copyright – and a pair of headphones for on-the-go translation into English and managed to be seated in the second row. The work was introduced by Daniel Birnbaum, famous for his writing about art, who talked about the process of curating the exhibition: how do you do an exhibition in Berlin for Berlin? Arguing that it is the meeting – the encounter – that is the art, he explained that it was important to not only exhibit in the museum and pointed to a variety of works that can be found in the city (including pavilions, driftwood, and an amazing bike). Olafur Eliasson’s work was not really about science itself, but rather about things you already know, reminding you of what you know and can do; natural phenomena were simply points of departure for artistic experimentation.

Olafur then spoke of his attachment to Berlin and how he had lived and worked in the city since the early 1990s. Describing it as an unpredictable city, he noted how it had been rather remote and removed from the market which had allowed for experiments without the need for exhibitions.  Luckily, though, and he said it with a grin, more exhibitions had come along since. Rather than tell the gathered press how to experience or interpret his work, he was interested in teasing some of the ideas and questions that he had been attending during the process of putting the exhibition together. Calling it a very personal experience, he talked about the relationship between museums and public space, claiming that we need to recreate a public space that is animated by the values we ascribe to it, such as values, styles, and a reflection of society. Moreover, acknowledging the close relationship between art and politics, he contended that artists are co-creators who can, and should, have serious relationships with wider society on important issues.

Allowing, or enabling, space to be unpredictable allows for meetings to happen. This is a dialogue with space. Creating space by engaging with it. And it comes with a responsibility: to co-create space rather than to conceive of space as fixed, static, awaiting consumption. Working with the museum to admit unclear spaces is not easy but it is important. Olafur also complicated the temporality of the exhibition, arguing that the exhibition had already started as soon as he had started talking about it, and that the memories of the exhibition would also be part of it all. When you walk through, there is an interplay of the inside and outside, bringing the outside into the museum and the inside out in all manner of contortions. He talked about the spread of rooms, where his work spreads over several at a time, not quite fitting into one particular room. But here again, he didn’t want to talk too much; it’s for you to discover yourselves, he said, it’s up to you. He mentioned the two different entrances/exits and abruptly, decided he was going to leave it at that.

Questions followed, once the director of the museum and one of the sponsors’ representatives had spoken. Do you try to teach perception? Do you have a political-societal aim? No, not to teach, but to challenge perception. Perception is a process and can be changed and debated. As you see, you become active; it is a case of actively perceiving rather than passively consuming.  Therefore, it is political, as consumption is a driving force of the world. Art can make possible, as well as investigate, a co-creation of the world; it is both political and critical. Is a volcano a piece of art? This topical question had apparently already been considered by Olafur; noting that near the particular volcano which recently erupted in Iceland, the Earth’s crust vibrates and was a nebulous and interesting space, he playfully suggested people should visit to improve the country’s economy. Where is all the driftwood? There are some logs in the city, he answered, but you don’t need to search for them. Instead, the hope was that you might stumble upon them, happen on a log in an unexpected part of town. The driftwood does not seek to solve problems or issues of space, what we allow space to do and how we share it, but is a way of engaging with space which does so without recourse to fetishism. Quite frankly, Olafur said, it does not even have to be art. The label of ‘art’ adds nothing to the role of the driftwood, furthermore it is not about the market!

The exhibition which we were then able to explore was fascinating. I am not sure I feel like I can write about it: I lack an understanding of art history and am not aware of the constellations of artists it might draw upon or reference. What I can say, however, is that the work is both immediate and extensive. It is not an exhibition that you need to be patient with: it is surprising and captivating. Yet I found that the intensity of the experience did not dissipate. I found myself almost forced to move. To move differently. To watch my shadow, realising it was no longer my shadow. Catching a glimpse of a room full of models, of all sizes and structures, bathed in a yellow-light. An empty room somehow became different;  imbued with a sense of anticipation. And grass at the window sill. And mirrors, lots of mirrors. Not just reflections but constructions of different spaces, a proliferation of new spaces created as you moved in the enormous structure known as the Mikroskop. Some parts of the exhibition felt as if they had been abandoned, leftovers, little holding them together. An experimental assemblage perhaps. And then a room, which you could not see. Bathed in fog and colours, lots of colours. Incredibly intense colour. Pure colour? I think of the fog now. It is blue. Nothing but blue.

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(Half)round-table, IfREX

On Thursday 22 April, the class reassembled for their regular round-table discussion with Olafur. Before that got underway, there were some more presentations (less parachute-like this time) from students who had either been unable to attend the week before and some students, those who had been away from the school for a while, presented their work for a second time those so that Olafur could see what they had been doing. There was much more discussion at the end of presentations and at times I felt that the atmosphere was rather charged as I listened to critiques, debates, and differences in opinion. Questions were varied, addressing not only site-specificity but how works might relate to art history, various techniques for sensing space, and exploring art as an object and/or experience.

A few hours later, the ’round-table’ began (although not at a round-table, which is half dismantled) and was primarily concerned with the forthcoming Keller exhibition, where the students will all show some of their work and reflect some of what they have been doing over the last two semesters. There was mention of a discussion last semester (perhaps another round-table discussion) where they re-considered the rules of what a show can be. Although the discussion did not lead anywhere in particular (and why should it?) the group have continued to re-evaluate making and presenting art. Olafur argued that experiments provided some sort of tentative foundation precisely for these re-conceptualisations; experiments as building stones for re-consideration. However, he also made the point that the students should only push for radical or avant-garde art if is what they want and that they should think carefully about what it is they are doing and why. Next time they have a show, it was suggested, they might work within the imposed constraint of pretending exhibitions had never been invented: how, then, might they display and share their work?

There was a lengthy discussion about the title of the Keller exhibition, with everyone keen to be involved in the naming process. I was asked to think of a name but since then, all the suggestions I have made to students has been met with blank looks. How to have a title for a group show, which is composed of autonomous works? It is a very diverse group and I opted for vague, general titles (such as ‘A series of spatial experiments’ and another, inspired by Erin Manning¹, called ‘timed spaces / spaced times’). I’m curious to see what title they do settle on, but in the meantime feel free to suggest titles below!

One of the other issues which came up included a book IfREX are working on, due to be completed towards the end of this semester alongside another show (the Rundgang). The book, it is hoped, will not represent the show but look to amplify its qualities; to see the book as an extension of the show. The plan is for it to not be an introduction to the students’ work but rather to engage more specifically with the work done at the school. I am sure this topic will return over the forthcoming weeks and I look forward to following the book’s life. Perhaps it might be possible for me to contribute something to it, time will tell.

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Galerie M, Marzahn

On Wednesday 21 April one of the students at the school organised a trip for people to get the chance to visit her work in a gallery just outside of Berlin.  Timea had been working with people living in Marzahn and wanted to show her work there too. A day before, an email was sent round on the IfREX mailing list with a few observations on the work from one of her colleagues:

What I saw was a somewhat fragmented afterimage of a long period of interaction between immigrants who stranded in Marzahn and Timea. The majority of the communities Timea got involved with where Vietnamese. This reminded me of the project ‘Reorient’ that has represented Hungary on the 2006 Venice Biennale of Architecture. Reorient had put enormous effort and time into mapping Chinese communities in Budapest just to find how impossible this undertaking was. After Reorient fell flat due to the impenetrability of the closed world of this huge immigrant community, they even had to come up with a plan-B that they were able to exhibit something.

Timea however was able find out a lot about the stories and the dreams of the people she worked with. What she presents I think is a model of this somewhat displaced life of former East German Vietnamese people making themselves at home in the concrete jungle of Marzahn. Listening to three generations of Vietnamese woman singing to a communist karaoke DVD at the opening certainly displaced me in space and time.

Although rather figurative, the work was interesting in how Timea had engaged with a heterogeneous immigrant community and been able to put together a series of works with their help, on the ground floor of a tower-block. This raised the question of how the work might travel, even if it was ‘only’ to the centre of Berlin. One suggestion was to have a round-way bus service as part of the artwork, which would ferry people from Berlin city-centre out to Galerie M, but also allow those who live in Marzahn to travel in to visit exhibitions or galleries that they might not otherwise get the chance to see.

One of the videos, part of the show, was a split-screen story where you would see the same room on both sides, but on one side it would be inhabited and lively, and the other bare and empty (except for some hidden traces, a theme which animated another work in the gallery). The camera would pan around the room before moving on to another room and the next and so on. However, the empty rooms started to appear on the other side after a while, and vice versa, and it was no longer clear whether the people we could see were moving in or out of the accommodation: pure transition. The slightly different speeds of the panning cameras created a rather unsettling perception that the split in the screen was moving from its central point to both the left and the right, but also seemed to indicate the different sorts of rhythms that create and produce a space. Upstairs from the gallery was an exhibition on Marzahn and art in large-scale housing projects which was also well worth a visit.

The trip to Marzahn, it had been hoped, would serve not only as a chance to see and respond to a student’s work but also as an opportunity to discuss various issues which had been raised at the transparency talk the week before, in preparation for the following day’s round-table discussion with Olafur. This did not materialise quite as planned, with the group disbanding before any decisions were made…

Institut für Raumexperimente, Berlin

On the 13 April there was a meeting for the Institute’s guests, those on scholarships and grants. Christina Werner and Eric Ellingsen who run the Insitute (along with Olafur Eliasson) talked a little about IfREX and discussed the provisional blueprint, or timetable, for the summer semester. Later we were invited on a tour of the studio (1st floor), the Institute (2nd floor) and the kitchen (ground floor). The studio is far bigger than I had anticipated and there were many people looking very busy. Upstairs, the Institute, or school, appears even larger due to the white walls and open-plan design. There are partitions between work-spaces but these can and do move around as needed. Although we only met for a few hours, there was a lot of information to process.

The next day there was a ‘welcome back and transparency talk’ with Olafur, followed by food and drinks downstairs. I arrived early for the talk and sat myself down on a spare seat, clutching a book tightly in my hands (Whitehead’s Concept of Nature, if you were curious). Nothing seemed to happen for a while but after a while there was a critical mass which moved over to sit in, between, and on, what was somebody’s work-in-progress: a large wooden contraption with mattresses here and there. Normally, I was told, there is a roundtable in this space where everyone sits around but there was no room for it with the structure there. Instead, we tried to sit in a sort of circle and waited for Olafur to arrive.

When he did arrive, shortly afterwards, his eyes darted around the room: “You are new, hello!” he said to me, before moving on and around the circle in search of other unfamiliar faces. He settled down and welcomed back the other more familiar faces. He asked about the students’ recent trip to Japan. He talked about the Institute.

IfREX has a specific duration: 10 semesters. And then it will end (perhaps). There is no clear structure but rather different speeds or intensities. This semester will be running at 100% (instead of double-time, apparently).

Olafur praised the development of a certain sort of intimacy between the students and how they had been able to work together, sharing the space at the school. A sensitivity for being-together, is what he called it. He was also keen to cultivate hospitality towards guests, gesturing vaguely in my direction, as they can bring new ideas and approaches to the school.

Eah guest was introduced and welcomed in an official yet thoroughly personal manner. I remember feeling wanted and excited to be told that IfREX could see overlaps between its work and mine. Olafur mentioned Doreen Massey to the students and his interest in her work; later on in the evening, I reminded him that I had met him through her almost a year ago.

The blueprint was sketched out in more or less detail, and some internal issues were addressed (such as food, storage space, and the school’s homepage). I wondered if these issues would persist during my time here.

And then it was time for a drink and some food. And small-talk. And further discussion.

If only all inductions were so interesting.

I’ve been meaning to post this video for a while now as I think it’s a really beautiful and quirky take on the everyday. It’s created by David Jhave Johnston, a multimedia-poet currently living in Montreal and teaching/researching at Concordia. Check out his website glia.ca for more digital poetry!