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

City Garden - Kanal Labs

I had a very early start on the Saturday in order to attend the event ‘Kanal Labs: Traingulated’ planned for that day. After struggling to find the right tram to get me from the Eurostar terminal to FoAM, I showed up a little before midday. I met Christina and Weitske, as well as Lina, and had a cup of tea. Christina got out a large map and explained that we were to go foraging for food in a nearby wasteland. Leaving my bags in the entrance, we headed out not long after and made our way over to the area near Tour & Taxis (you can see it on Google Maps). Funnily enough, its tagline is ‘An Urban Experience’! Weitske pointed out the plants that we might collect and we set up about foraging for edibles. Although we had forgotten to bring a trowel or scissors, we came across a small strange metallic structure which could be unscrewed, and fashioned into two digging tools. We collected evening primose, rosehip, some plums, carrot flowers and more.

We had a late lunch and then set about preparing the food for the evening. The idea was that FoAM would serve detoxifying appetizers flavoured with plants from the canal zone, intended to combat urban afflictions. The kitchen: a space of experiments, unexpected combinations, and collective work. I helped out where I could and also had my camera to hand. Often, one of the group would be documenting the event and so I suppose I was documenting the documenters at times. People who are part of FoAM continued to arrive as the afternoon turned into evening, and two of them dressed up as ‘food doctors’. Their uniform: a white lab-coat with a mouth-mask around the neck. I was struck by the similarity of the outfit to those worn at the ‘Experimentality’ conference I attended earlier on in the year, and how this plays to familiar imaginations of science. They were to provide a sort of ad-hoc clinic, filling in forms of what ailments people had, sending these up in a basket to FoAM (several floors up) and then, a few minutes later, hand their patients a particular dish that would help. The basket was operated by a child of one of the FoAM collective and added to a ‘family feel’; one where everybody was comfortable and at home in this studio-lab-space.

I went down to see the doctors in action, on the terrace of another lab, Okno, and had been asked to take some photos of the event. On my way down the stairs, I noticed that the whole complex had a large number of cultural-, or creative-spaces which I looked up the following day. There were a lot of people out and about, and it seemed as if the Kanal Festival (organised by Platform Kanal) was proving to be a success. A little further down the street from the Kanal Labs, was a reconstruction of Checkpoint Charlie; a suggestion that Brussels was a segregated city, divided by its canal (a programme of events is available here). When I returned to FoAM, the pace of activity in the kitchen had slowed and later, we had a few drinks to celebrate. There were lots of questions from the others, many of whom I had met at the Luminous Green gathering, about what I would be doing… to which I had no answers but only smiles.

Kanal Labs: Triangulated

Start: 2010-09-18 19:00 Europe/Brussels

End: 2010-09-18 21:00 Europe/Brussels

Location:

FoAM & Open Green, The Mill, Koolmijnenkaai 30-34, B-1080 Brussels, Belgium

Three Brussels art labs invite you in Koolmijnenkaai 30-34. OKNO opens their rooftop garden and Open Greens-project to all. You can taste urban honey and drinks made of plants from the garden. You can nibble on FoAM’s detoxifying treats to help you fight urban afflictions, spiced up with plants from the Kanal area. Q-O2 invites the sound artist Pierre Berthet for a concert using waterdrops as an instrument.

After a day of walking between various urban gardens alongside the canal, FoAM will serve a range of detoxifying bites, especially crafted to eliminate toxins and pollutants from the human bodily ecology. The aperitif combines ingredients, methods and performance-eating techniques that can assist your body in fighting some of the most prominent urban afflictions, including allergies, stress related disorders, diabetes and cancer. In collaboration with OKNO and Irma Firma, the cooks will incorporate edible plants gathered and grown in the Brussels’ Kanal area.

http://f0.am/festival_kanal

'mmm, that's interesting'

Following breakfast we started the day with a new activity: ‘Taking one step’. This was to be done with a partner and we would tell the other person of a particular problem, idea or thing which we felt was holding us back. We would talk through the situation and if we felt like we could take a step, then we would. No pressure or expectation. We all crowded back into the room after ten or fifteen minutes feeling refreshed – it’s not a bad way to start any day. What was left of the first session was to be the first of a three-part ‘Open Spaces’ event which would run through the merenda and the start of the second session. We were distilling the essences and flavours of the previous day: daring to make choices. The questions: What do you really have energy for? Where is your contribution most needed? What do you want to learn? And: what could a luminous green world be like¹, and what possible path can we take there? I wondered what sort of session I could host – I considered ‘Experiments in resilience’ – but decided that I wasn’t quite ready for it and that a discussion on ethnography or co-experimenting might be misplaced.

11:00 – Do we need new rituals?

12:00 – [Butterfly-time / merenda]

13:00 – Poetry of witness

Open spaces - part II

For the first part, I decided to attend the session which was interested in thinking about rituals and how they could be subverted to be more luminous. Making visible other values than money, as well as introducing waiting, or inefficiency, were suggested. I didn’t feel I had much to contribute so I focused on being attentive and listening carefully. When it was time for lunch, or rather merenda, I took a break to enjoy my food and had a moment to myself. I had been looking forward to the afternoon session, ‘Poetry of witness’, and was curious to see what this was about. Maureen, who was running the session, asked why I had come along and I told her that there was an interest in some parts of geography in thinking the event and the event-ness of the world. She looked surprised but pleased, telling me that poetry of witness was all about events. I was thinking of Dewsbury’s paper:

“about the importance of witnessing and how such an act, or call, makes place or our place in the world. Pushing forward the agenda of nonrepresentational theory, this is about attending to differences – those imperceptible, sometimes minor, and yet gathering, differences that script the world in academically less familiar but in no less real ways.” (2003: 1907)

While witnessing for Dewsbury is a “stance oriented towards being in tune to the vitality of the world as it unfolds” (Latham & Conradson, 2003: 1903), the poetry of witness is a dialectics of the personal and political where the social is a third space. I was far from comfortable with this (both dialectics and society) but persevered and asked a number of questions. Poetry of witness could be a luminous green practice as it makes things new, transformed somehow. It does not need to be extreme writing, to be sure it could be rather ordinary but may evoke a strong sort of response. As an example, Maureen read us a piece by Carolyn Fourché (‘The Colonel’).

Feeding-back, checking-out

When we all came together once more, the wall – showing what had been harvested so far – had been rearranged and organised differently. We were to put our session summaries (an A4 page of comments and questions) onto a framework of the ‘order of civilization’ (fast layers innovate, slow layers stabilise; the whole combines learning with continuity). The order was made up of the layers: art and fashion, commerce, infrastructure, governance, culture and nature. I wasn’t sure it was the easiest or most helpful structure to work with, particularly as it pre-existed the sessions rather than being co-created with them. Still, perhaps it was a generative constraint! The session reports, feedbacks, were interesting to hear and I noticed that the hosts were keen to moderate or intervene if conversations became conducted between only a handful of people, being careful to open it up to the group (or shut it down, to be continued later on).  Next, we were handed out stickers (stars, fruit, birds, all sorts really) and asked to put them on those sessions that we would like to pursue. It wasn’t meant as a popularity contest, more as a way of showing interest. Before we had lunch, and before we were to leave, we were asked to check-out. Sitting in a circle once more, we did not pass the witch around but instead would have to get up, walk to the centre of the room, collect it and return to our seats before speaking. I was keen to thank the organisers and remarked that I had enjoyed my first gathering and the sheer diversity of participants. I thought Nik’s (‘collective attention’) and Maja’s (‘chaotic experiment’) comments were spot-on. At the end, we all stood up – in a cricle, of course – and faced right, then all of us were to massage the person in front of us, and then to our left (at the same time as being massaged ourselves).

The sign of a successful event?

After lunch I was lucky enough to be offered a lift back to Brussels to catch my train by Pieter and Rasa. We were making good time, until we got stuck once more in Liege. This time it wasn’t a diversion but traffic jams that stretched back for miles. Somehow, thanks to some incredible driving I arrived minutes before my train was to leave, the last one of the day. I was allowed to board even though my ticket had said I should be there at least thirty minutes prior to departure! Unfortunately, I had further travel difficulties: the train was stopped at Lille as police boarded, then we were asked to all get off and be checked through security again. I arrived in London three hours later than planned, missing my connection and the last train to Oxford. Eurostar however, offered everyone a taxi ride home. Phew!

Home-bound

A few days after the gathering I found an email in my inbox:

Dear green luminousities,

The colourful posters and sticky notes from our days in Vielsalm have been captured and found their way into the maze of the Libarynth. Photos from various cameras (more or less obscure) are now residing on  flickr. In other words, we have uploaded some of the seeds from Luminous Green 2010 online. You can access it through http://lib.fo.am/luminous/retreat_2010. The seeds still need some sunshine from their creators and watering from participants to assist the sprouting… As during the retreat, we need your help to keep the connections, thoughts & plans alive. Below are a few suggestions how to do that in the short term:

- To capture your experience of the retreat: Could you write a short testimonial – in a few sentences, can you describe what you appreciated, what you missed, how you felt, what were the things that still linger in the back of your mind? You can send the testimonial to bxl@fo.am, or upload it at http://lib.fo.am/luminous/lg10_testimonials

- To complete the picture of the content of the retreat: Can you help us with the harvest by filling in the blanks, completing the sentences and adding finishing touches to http://lib.fo.am/luminous/lg10_harvest

- To enrich the Luminous Green library: Please add books, links, articles (…) to: http://lib.fo.am/luminous/recommended_reading

- To remember the pearls spoken at the retreat: If you have noted some of the memorable sentences by LG10 participants, please upload them here: http://lib.fo.am/luminous/lg10_pearls

- To collect condensed wisdom relevant to luminousity, greenness & resilience: Please add quotes (your own or by others) to the luminous green reader: http://lib.fo.am/luminous/reader_2010

- Anything else: Feel free to send a message to luminous@fo.am or spread the word elsewhere.

I think these entries might fit into the ‘anything else’ section, a sort of extended testimonial. Writing and re-reading my hastily jotted notes made me realise how much we managed to fit in to just a few days. I also include a slideshow of the photos from the event on Flickr.

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References

Dewsbury, J-D. (2003) Witnessing space: `knowledge without contemplation’. Environment and Planning A, 35(11): 1907-1932

Latham, A. & Conradson, D. (2003) Possibilities of performance. Environment and Planning A, 35(11): 1901-1906

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Play-doodle-draw, Purpose Cafe

I awoke in a strange room and took a moment to reorient myself, before dashing to the shower so as not to miss breakfast. I made my way up to where the others were and took a photo of the timetable for the day, so as not to forget:

07:00 – Optional morning practice

08:30 – Breakfast

10:00 – Session 1

12:15 – Merenda

13:00 – Session 2

16:00 – Lunch

18:00 – Session 3

20:00 – Meze

“A circle of chairs, at the centre a candle in vase, a mint plant and a small figure of an old lady which serves as a bell. Everybody has arrived early and we wait for 10:15 to arrive.” (Excerpt from field journal, 27.07.10)

As we waited for the first session to begin, I jotted a few notes down and realised how apprehensive I was, feeling a little (or a lot) like an outsider. Maja opened LG2010 with an introduction to both the theme and the structure of the event. Rather than trace the history of LG – it doesn’t really matter where it started, Maja argued – the day opened with a statement of intent: the tired concepts of conservation and sustainability would be discarded in favour of resilience. The plan was to have an open and participatory structure, where there would be a collection of hosts (and not facilitators). This structure would enable different modes, and different speeds, breaking the normal pattern of daily rhythms. We drew up a set of ground-rules – no mobiles are ringing, we like it; share your thoughts but don’t feel obliged to; be on time; be present to each other; bring our native languages – and Twitter (#LG2010) and Flickr (Luminous Green 2010) were mentioned as part of the harvesting, or collection, of ideas. Interestingly, there was a slight discomfort with the suggestion of twittering during the gathering, perhaps due to levels of attention, and we were also provided with an offline twitter pad: a set of post-it notes. Excellent! There were also intriguing comments in the introductory talk, as Maja explained that we had all been chosen to attend (there had been no open call), based on (1) our views and approaches to the world and (2) shared interests or characteristics with two other people at the event. As such, the group was engineered to remain flexible and robust, and LG was and is for and about the people involved. With no action points or particular goals for the gathering, it was hoped that we would make one meaningful connection, regardless of age, expertise, social standing or other artificial restrictions. For this reason, Maja argued, there were no celebrities and/or keynotes present at the gathering; instead, we were all experts and novices at the same time.

Postponing judgement

Next: a change of pace. We were asked to arrive in the room and focus. To become aware of ourselves for a moment. To sit comfortably. We were invited to notice that we were sitting. To feel the sensations in our feet, in our legs, in our spines. As we were sitting, we were told we might notice continuous movement in our bodies, our breathing, our heart beating. Much travelling, planning, emailing: you’ll go back to that soon, try to let go. There is nothing here that we need to do. Whilst breathing, Maja asked us some questions, which we did not need to try to answer but just notice. Who are you when you stop moving? How are you when you stop moving? To just notice the questions, then return back to our breathing, our places in the room, open our eyes, and stretch out a bit.

This gathering is a place to open up questions, together. Luminous Green, its name, is a place that f0.am would like to live in: a luminous green world which is rooted but not retreating into the past, curious but not blinded about the future. This then, is about looking for ways to begin cultivate this world now. Here imagination and creation are encouraged, the world literally and figuratively electrified and green. We were offered a mint leaf, and asked to imagine we had never seen one before, to take one leaf and hold it in our hands. To look at it, to really look at it, to notice the leaf. What do you see? You don’t have to answer it (everyone laughs). Try and touch it. Take it to your nose and smell it. Put it on your tongue, between your teeth. Chew it. What does it taste like? Now swallow it. And so I did, feeling the dry crumpled leaf catch in my throat on its way down. Perhaps you have postponed judgement? Become a little more patient? It is in this spirit that we were invited to take part in the workshop: openness, curiosity, and non-judgement. To be fully present.

The first activity was to start a conversation about personal encounters with resilience: turning a difficult situation into a chance to change yourself. These ‘Dialogue Walks’ were to be with someone you had not yet had the chance to talk to very much. Once paired up, we would each have ten minutes to tell the other person about just such a situation and talk through it. It was my task to listen first, and talk second. One thing that came up in conversation was that creating obstacles can be productive. This reminded me of the notion of generative or enabling constraints (Latham & McCormack, 2009; McCormack, 2008; Manning, 2009).

Juicy questions

The dialogues were to feed into the next activity: ‘Purpose Café’. We were told to get into groups of four or five around tables, and were to report back on some of the topics and themes that we had covered, and what sort of questions we had. For example, if resilience is dealing with uncertainity, how and why do we want to be resilient? At the tables, a large blank sheet of paper was provided, plenty of felt-tip pens, play-doh and string. I was struck by how similar this set-up was to how I imagined a management company might operate to try to get the best out of their employees. How might we borrow these techniques and we mutate them in order to avoid being re-appropriated by firms? Claire Colebrook in a recent review of Nigel Thrift’s (2007¹) book Non-Representational Theory, notes however that it happily refuses to “defend or apologize for the ways in which this theory might be hijacked by management theory or various other non-anticapitalist practices” (2010: 677). I’m not sure what to think. But back to the café: together we were trying to come up with, or select, a set of ‘juicy’ questions (questions which are energising and/or stimulating) which we would like to think about over the following day or so. In the first group, we discussed generating futures and developing luminous techniques, and so when we were told to split up and change tables (one person remaining, as a sort of table-holder), we would share these juicy questions with other people. At the second table, we were particularly interested in asking questions rather than searching for answers. Perhaps I am seeing connections where there are none, but again, I was reminded of Thrift’s book. In particular, his claim that social scientists “must share with philosophers like Deleuze one ambition at least and that is to render the world problematic by elaborating questions. To simply offer solutions is not enough” (2007: 18). And again, in an earlier text, where he describes his non-representational theory, or project, as: “A machine for multiplying questions, and thereby inventing new relations between thought and life” (2004: 82). We also talked about how we might live the here-and-now and what sort of techniques we might employ when presencing yourself. Moreover, we discussed how you might be able to hold on to, or be-with uncertainty.

Open spaces

We took a break: merenda (Latin for snack, or picnic) instead of lunch so that we would not be feeling sleepy in the early afternoon. This was a clear move to disrupt our routines, our habits of eating, and encourage us to think-do differently. Before I knew it, the next session was already underway. ‘Open Space’ was more of a self-organising mode, which was based around the question: what do we want to explore now together, that is at the edge of our current knowledge and experience? There were four different roles: (1) as a host, you choose a question or theme and a location; (2) as a participant, you attend and engage with the session; (3) as a bumble-bee, you move from one session to another and in doing so cross-fertilise; and (4) as a butterfly, you might choose to find a place on your own for a while. And there were four different principles: (1) when it starts, it starts; (2) whoever comes are the right people; (3) whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened; and (4) when it’s over, it’s over. Furthermore, there is a ‘law of two feet’ which states that it is rude to stay where you cannot contribute or learn; indeed, it is perfectly acceptable to get up and leave a session if it just isn’t interesting you. Although it was described as self-organisation, there was still a fair amount of supervision and those who wanted to be hosts had to justify the session they were planning. The Open Space was divided into three parts; below, I’ve listed the sessions I buzzed to and from:

14:00 – Tactics for intervention | Making a food installation | Systems Maps

14:45 – [Butterfly-time] | How do we give up being what we are to continue being?

15:30 – Feedback

I enjoyed discussing interventions and opening a space for speculation. I watched the ‘food’ group, which merged those who wanted to collect food with those who wanted to make something, standing outside, looking at an iPad app and getting excited (about the plants rather than the app, presumably). I attended the last few minutes of a session on diagramming, or mapping, but as I caught the end of it, it was mainly incomprehensible. I decided to take a break and sat outside in the sun, before venturing over to the group dealing with the philosophical question of being. I had a fair bit to say but most of all, I appreciated that there was no pressure to deliver, to produce an answer. We brainstormed and chose a few further questions to share in the feedback session, which was mainly a way of letting those who had been unable (or chosen not) to attend, what had been happening elsewhere.

Different mode of gathering: Urbanibalism

Lunch was next: it was a leisurely and delicious meal and we were left with a decent amount of time after eating to rest. It was rather strange to have ‘lunch’ at around 16:00 though! I went for a walk around the nearby lake and came back for the third session feeling refreshed. There, we were asked what new seeds of connections, ideas, or projects were we finding? Was there anything that we needed to prune, to let go of? We all were to go our separate ways, in silence, and think about these questions before sharing our thoughts. I felt a certain pressure to self-evaluate, to think about how we were thinking. Up until then, we had been encouraging questions, such as why we were there and what we wanted from LG. It was a long thirty minutes or so to spend on your own thinking about the day, and yourself, after so many group activities. But I realised that I had enjoyed thinking about obstacles, constraints and interruptions which afforded a chance to re-think and re-consider. So when we came back together, and when it was my turn to talk in the circle (indicated by holding the figure of a witch that was passed around), I spoke of the cultivation of thinking-spaces and the various rhythms at play in the format of the gathering. My comments were fairly broad and I mentioned that generating questions collectively was stimulating. Some of the comments I listened to that afternoon struck a chord: an appetite for uncertainty, re-phrasing questions, how to live outside of institutions, tangent machines… There were also two happenings which were unexpected. The first, one person in the circle spoke of how these events were more than research projects, with a fixed look in my direction. It was a little awkward and although I suppose there was a chance I was just looking interested, I felt it was aimed at my own work. The second, was more intense but I’m not sure it can be labelled. Maja let us know of some very intimate news when her turn came to speak and the atmosphere of the room was transformed. All of a sudden, I felt a part of the group of people who were in the room, all listening to this, surprised and touched to be have had something so personal shared with them. There was silence. Then we played a game together, which was to try and make us more aware of our different sensibilities (I think): the room, and the group, were to be divided up into men, women, perverts or priests. We would find different energies by moving around, feeling the space. I was rather sceptical but enjoyed the game’s comedic aspects and the chance to be a pervert (obviously, the most popular choice). What changed my opinion of this game, led by one of the participants and not the hosts, was what happened right at the end. We were asked to form a circle once more, and hold hands with those on either side of us. In the circle was the person running the game (Vinay) and Maja. He put his hands on her shoulders and then asked us to give our energy to her. I focused on doing just that and, so it seemed to me, so did everyone else. The room was electric. Vinay pulled Maja close and held her. The following day Maja told me she had been unable to sleep she had felt so strange after the event.

We all headed outside on to the terrace for a drink and some snacks. I was feeling a bit hungry and was lucky enough that Annabel, our excellent chef for the gathering, took pity on me! It was very satisfying to end the day with a glass of wine, some nice cheese and good conversation. A little later on, I ran back to my room to collect my swimwear and ventured into the ‘wellness’ area where I was practically pulled into the Jacuzzi. Unbelievably, although meant for two people, there were sixteen people with at least a part of their body in the water! It was unexpectedly intimate and was one of most memorable parts of the event. I asked if this always happened, but was assured by several that it did not. I popped into the sauna, chatted some more, showered and headed to bed.

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References

Colebrook, C. (2010) Non-Representational Theory: Space|Politics|Affect, by Nigel Thrift. Journal of Regional Science, 50(2): 675-678

Latham, A. & McCormack, D.P. (2009) Thinking with images in non-representational cities: vignettes from Berlin. Area, 41(3): 252–262

McCormack, D. (2008) Thinking space for research creation. Inflexions, 1

Manning, E. (2009) Relationscapes: Movement, Art, Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Thrift, N. (2007) Non-Representational Theory: Space|Politics|Affect. London: Routledge

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Even tstructu re and other works, Lisson Gallery, London

While I was preparing the paper I presented at Aarhus, my research touched upon the work of John Latham (1921-2006), as he is a great inspiration for the work done by the Office of Experiments.

Latham had a visionary outlook that questioned scientific thought. An important contributor to the Destruction in Art Symposium, 1966, and a founder member of the Artist Placement Group, 1966-89, he created performances, paintings, assemblages, sculptures and films. This apparently eclectic practice was united by his concept of Event Structures and Flat Time Theory. Through his experimental and radical work he linked science and art, proving influential in both fields.¹

By some strange chance - coincidence? – it transpired that there was not one but four exhibitions of Latham’s work in London at the time I was writing about him! I took the chance to go to London the weekend before travelling to Denmark and visited both the Lisson Gallery and Whitechapel Gallery. I was unable to explore the collected works at Karsten Schubert as they were shut at the week-end, and Flat Time Ho, Latham’s former house, was too far away for me to manage it. As I was searching for the details (see below), I also found that there had been an exhibition of some of Latham’s art in New York, curated by the same person who had co-curated the archive at Whitechapel.

The Lisson Gallery, not far from Edgware Road underground station, was incredibly quiet; somewhat surprising given that it was the last day of the exhibition. One of Latham’s pieces which had particularly interested me, ‘even tstructu re’ (1966-67), was on display. A large collage, it has the words MAKE EVENT and SPECTATOR EVENT, which are linked by string according to different sets of conditions, illustrating the entanglement of artist, artwork and viewer. I asked the Gallery if I would be able to document the exhibition and they were happy for me to do so, as long as it was for my research. I assured them that if anything were to come of my trip and my materials, I would be sure to acknowledge them. So, my sincere thanks to the Lisson Gallery for enabling me to make a collage of some of Latham’s works. They also offered to provide copies of any publications that I might need, which was very generous.

The ‘Anarchive’ at Whitechapel Gallery was a lot smaller than I had anticipated, and was limited to one of the smaller galleries (#4). There were only a few of Latham’s works on display but interestingly, there were many of his publications, in particular exhibition catalogues, out on the tables of the adjacent room. This turned out to be the main archive room. I asked if I was able to take photos of these documents but was unfortunately unable to. Instead, I sat down and read through them, jotting down the publication details.

Here are the details for the exhibitions but please note that only Anarchive is still on:

Whitechapel Gallery | Anarchive | 02.04 – 05.09 | Tue – Sun, 11:00-18:00 | Aldgate East

Lisson Gallery | The Lisson Gallery Does Not Exist for 100 Years | 05.05 – 05.06 | Mon – Fri, 10:00-18:00; Sun, 11:00-17:00 | Edgware Road

Karsten Schubert / Richard Saltoun | Works 1958(61?) – 1995 | 05.05 – 11.06 | Mon – Fri, 10:00-18:00 | Piccadillly Circus

Flat Time Ho | The Story of the RIO | 06.05 – 06.06 | Thu – Sun, 12:00-18:00 | Peckham Rye Rail

apexart | The Incidental Person | 06.01 – 20.02 | Tue – Sat, 11:00-18:00 | New York (!)

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'Signal, Event, Affect' conference/colloquium, Aarhus University

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to be invited to, and attend, a conference-colloquium in Aarhus, Denmark, entitled ‘Event, Signal, Affect‘. There was a deliberate attempt at trying to create a different sort of space in which to share our work, and there was as much time for discussion as there was to present. Coupled with a small number of participants, a session of conceptual speed-dating, plenty of meals together and spread out over three days, it made for a really pleasant gathering (see also Christoph’s comments on the conference-colloquium facilitating lures for friendship). The sessions – Site and City, Crowded Events and (H)ac(k)tivism, The Signaletic Event,  Event Culture and Affective Interactions – provided some sort of loose structure and the keynotes were inspiring. Unfortunately, Nigel Thrift was unable to attend but this meant that Brian and Erin had more time to talk about their work and forthcoming project, Generating the Impossible. I’m really very grateful to Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen and to Jonas Fritsch, not only for their invitation but also for organising and pulling off such a great conference-colloquium. It was great to catch up with the group from  the SenseLab, and also to meet the likes of Leila Dawney (a fellow geographer), Merete Carlson (who I have since met in Berlin, at IfREX) and Christian Borch (whose papers I have since been reading).

My paper, Experimental aesthetics: The Office of Experiments, was a chance for me to start thinking and experimenting the Office of Experiments. Not experimenting with, “which would induce the idea of a separation between the experimenter and what she is experimenting on or with … [but] a practice of active, open, demanding attention paid to the experience as we experience it” (Stengers, 2008: 109). Here, there is no clear distinction, as in French, between the terms ‘experience’ and ‘experiment’. Whether or not it was a success is unsure, but it did at least generate a discussion and a set of questions. These have enabled me to re-think writing the Office as a temporary and distributed space. The short paper is embedded below with the help of issuu.

Reference

Stengers, I. (2008) A Constructivist Reading of Process and Reality. Theory Culture & Society, 25(4): 91-109

A series of parachute presentations, IfREX

On Thursday 15 April a day-long series of ‘parachute presentations’ was organised by the students. The idea, not dissimilar to pecha kucha, was for each person to give a 10-minute introduction to their work. The time constraint worked well, providing a set of appetisers, enabling the whole class to present projects, exhibitions and interests in one day. Leading up to the event, many students remarked that although they knew each other very well, and indeed Olafur had noted that the group had developed a certain intimacy, they were less aware of what sort of art everyone was engaged with. Further, for myself and other newcomers to the school, it was a great introduction.

I was invited to talk about my own work for 10-minutes and tried to provide an short overview of my research and why I am in Berlin, with the hope that it may be of interest to some! I found it difficult to know how to pitch my talk, as I wondered if what I had to say might be both obvious (we are interested in experiments at IfREX, nothing new in what you say)  and confusing (why and how will you investigate these issues as a geographer). It was hard to gauge a reaction, but I had tried to provide a bit of time at the end for questions. Two came my way: (1) What is geography for you? and (2) What sort of data will you collect? My rather vague answer to the first question was to discuss how I see it as a point of departure for all sorts of different projects, all with an interest in space. On reflection, I perhaps should have stressed my interest not in what something is but in what something does. In this respect, geography enables me to examine the spaces of aesthetic experimentation and draw on work from a range of other fields. In response to the second question, I tried to explain how I think of generating materials rather than looking to extract data or evidence, as such. This might include all sorts of different things and would not necessarily be restricted to text and/or talk; further the techniques would be open to suggestion, flexible and experimental (in that they might not generate much or anything at all). My fieldwork diary, audio recordings, photos, videos, sketches would be just a selection of some materials that might be produced.

The students’ talks were interesting and stimulating, as well as wide-ranging. To list them all here, or to choose just the highlights would be a disservice to their richness. The day finished with discussions on how you might, as an artist, talk about your work. How to let your artwork do its own work, rather than your talk having to supplement it. Although these are questions that might ordinarily be posed in art schools, I have no idea (!), I found it interesting to think through them with regards to geography and my own work.

Queuing for Pecha Kucha #14, SAT

I went along to a Pecha Kucha evening recently (although already ten days ago!), after I was invited by Chris Salter. He mentioned:

If you haven’t been, it’s totally fun and crazily packed with people. It will give you a good slice of what is going on with the design, architecture, arts and technology communities here.

Crazily packed is certainly true! Not only did I have to queue to get in, but the SAT was heaving with people (certainly well over 600 people). Although I had been ‘back-stage’ at the SAT – well, upstairs, anyway – I hadn’t seen the space they have for public events. There are two enormous rooms and these were both teeming with people.

Pecha Kucha Montréal #14
a unique kind of meeting with the design community
20 images x 20 seconds x come to be inspired !

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009
doors open @ 19:40
presentations start @ 20:20
SAT [Société des arts technologiques]
1195 Saint-Laurent
5 $

Pecha Kucha nights are unique, vital platforms for interdisciplinary exchanges and meetings organized with the primary objective of providing public forum in which creators from diverse horizons can present their thoughts and processes on projects that have been completed, are underway or that they are still dreaming about. The concept is simple: each participant presents 20 slides and comments on each one for 20 seconds.

Chris introduced the research he is doing in his lab (xmodal), part of Hexagram at Concordia and Luc Courchesne, the director of the Panoscope project, also gave a short presentation.

What is particularly interesting about xmodal is that is avowedly a studio-lab, a term which Chris himself takes from the work of Barry et al. (2008), which is where I discovered the term myself.

labXmodal is a studio-lab founded by Chris Salter dedicated to the research, development, and creation of performative environments – physical spaces with a focus on dynamic and temporal processes over static objects and representations. We research and develop new hardware and software sensing technologies, apply these tools and techniques in solo + collaborative, internationally disseminated artistic works and critically reflect on these practices through technical and theoretical/historical publications, talks and public presentations.

The evening was bizarre (people talking through the presentations, a bar open in one room, large screens on all walls) but of great interest and definitely entertaining. If only all conferences adopted this approach!

Pecha Kucha proves popular, SAT

Badiou, A. (2005) Infinite Thought. London: Continuum

It has only been in the last decade or so that Alain Badiou’s work has been translated into English; since then his (radical) ideas have percolated into various disparate areas of study. Within geography, two recent papers explicitly draw on Badiou’s work (see Bassett, 2008; and Dewsbury, 2007) and have provided very thorough commentaries on his innovative philosophy. As part of this on-going venture of translation, Oliver Feltham and Justin Clemens have collated what they describe as a representative selection of Badiou’s work: Infinite Thought (IT). In this collection of essays, Alain Badiou addresses the problem of the current end-state of philosophy and attempts to re-invigorate the discipline. He identifies the source of disquiet in the major branches of modern philosophy and pleads for an interruption to these practices in order to take a different position and find a way to allow a notion of truth to re-emerge as a legitimate philosophical concern. Rupture, or interruption as Hewson (2006) remarks, is a key word here, suggesting a radical shift towards truth and not meaning, things and not words.

Arguably the highlights of this collection are to be found at the beginning and the end of the book: Feltham and Clemens provide not only an excellent introduction to Badiou and his philosophical project but also include an interview with the man himself (‘Ontology and Politics’), which serves to query the nature of truth, situations and events. Following the introduction there are eight chapters which are entitled ‘Philosophy and …’; these topics include: desire, truth, politics, psychoanalysis, art, cinema, the ‘death of communism’ and the ‘war against terrorism’. It is only in the penultimate chapter that Badiou, albeit briefly, describes his definition of philosophy. It is perhaps worth noting that the translators\\editors have adapted the previous titles of the papers to create thematic chapter headings. The origins of these papers are in fact rather varied: three were presented at conferences in Australia in 1999 (1, 2 & 4), two are from Badiou’s book Conditions¹ (5 & 9) and the others are from journals (3 & 6), a book (7) and a talk in Paris (8). The last chapter, the interview, or rather a discussion, took place in Australia (10).

Truth is the central notion of Badiou’s philosophy: truth is what disturbs\\ destroys\\ interrupts the order of knowledge or politics. What is true forces us to commit ourselves to some new idea or new world of ideas. Truth occurs in an event to a subject, and it cannot fold itself into preformed or known categories. It proceeds in the subject in an act of faith on the one hand, but (being unknown and therefore unsayable) proceeds by chance and adhering to the lessons of the event. What is unnameable thereby becomes a kind of clean slate upon which the singular event and subject force their existence, generating something new in the face of the unknown. Hold on(!), I hear you say: what about Badiou’s ontology? And what does he mean by ‘event’?

Badiou understands mathematics as ontology²: maths speaks of or writes being (IT: 10). From this point of departure, he is able to draw on set theory which he argues makes no “claims concerning the nature of being, nor concerning the adequation of its categories to being” (IT: 13). Indeed, Badiou’s ontology is subtractive; it speaks of beings without reference to their attributes or identities. In effect, all qualities are subtracted. Already it is clear that there is a disconnect between ontology proper, the formal language of set theory, and meta-ontology, Badiou’s translation of set theory’s axioms and theorems into philosophical terms. This review does not dwell on set theory however, and is instead more interested in the notion of event which recurs throughout the book.

Badiou has a dramatic view of the event. For him, an event is a “major historical turning point, or moment of rupture in time and space, which brings something new into the world” (Bassett, 2008: 895). This is not the same as an ordinary event, such as a birthday, a sporting event or even death³; it is a totally disruptive occurrence (IT: 20) which is rare and unpredictable. Interestingly, although he employs the notion of rupture, Badiou is keen to stress that events cannot easily be recognised within a given state of affairs and thus have no well-defined location. Badiou suggests a certain fidelity to the event whereby it is named and believed to exist. He argues that “not every human being is always a subject, yet some human beings become subjects; those who act in fidelity to a chance encounter with an event which disrupts the situation they find themselves in” (IT: 5). Thus, an occurrence becomes an event to the extent that it is injected with subjective significance. Put differently: the singular truth, arising in an event, happens to (or calls into being) a subject.

Badiou argues that the nonlocation of an event and its relation to truth avoids a monolithic politics yet retains militancy: ‘truth’ emerges in the naming and militant fidelity. In other words, “someone must recognise and name that event as an event whose implications concern the nature of the entire situation” (IT: 20-21). It is quite possible that an event occurs in a situation but that nothing changes, simply because nobody recognises the event’s importance for the situation. Indeed, as Feltham & Clemens remark, they were required to create the neologism ‘evental-site’ (see IT: 28n.26), as ‘event-site’ would not be an appropriate translation for site événementiel, as it suggests that the site is defined by the occurrence of an event.

Although fidelity, event and situation are all technical terms of Badiou’s ontology, Feltham & Clemens remark that the “reader’s intuitive sense of these words can be trusted to provide an initial approximation” (IT: 26n.10). One way of thinking the event is through love. When two people fall in love, their ‘meeting’ (whether that meeting be a matter of hours\\days\\years\\life) forms an event for a couple in relation to which they change their lives; love changes their relation to the world irrevocably (IT: 5). The duration of the relationship depends, Badiou would argue, upon the couple’s “fidelity to that event and how they change according to what they discover through love” (ibid.). Although this hints at predestination, Badiou counters that there is “nothing other than chance encounters between particular humans and particular events; and subjects may be born out of such encounters” (IT: 6).

Here readers may begin to accuse Badiou of decisionism, an accusation he refutes wholeheartedly in the last chapter. To reiterate, the “crucial question is the event and the event is not the result of a decision [which he had claimed in his hefty tome ‘Being and Event’]”; the decision is to uniquely be faithful to the transformation of the logic of the situation (IT: 129-130). Philosophy, therefore, is “required to ensure that thought can receive and accept the drama of the event” (IT: 41), as well as “seize the event of truths, their newness, and their precarious trajectory” (IT: 57). Badiou writes that truth begins with an axiom of truth, a groundless decision: that the event has taken place (IT: 46). The truth is not, it occurs (IT: 125). If that’s hard enough to understand, there’s more: although a “a truth commences by an event, … this event has always disappeared or been abolished; there will never be any knowledge of it. The event thus forms the real and absent cause of truth” (IT: 65). Truth is something new⁴ (IT: 45), a commitment and an openness. Truth is something to which we commit ourselves, but it and we always must also remain open, because a new truth may strike at any time (Sartwell, 2005). Thus for Badiou, the event is a notion, “a sort of illumination” (IT: 140), although the consequences of an event within a situation are always very different.

There are, of course problems with Badiou’s work, some of them serious. Although Badiou no longer describes himself as a ‘Maoist’⁵, it can be rather disturbing to find Mao quoted as a political, or even philosophical, authority (see IT: 60, 102-103) which is rather ironic. This suggests that there is perhaps a totalitarian undercurrent even as he critiques totalitarianism. As it is, there are traces of Badiou’s movement towards a kind of anarchism, or at least a critique of the state (and its various machinations). Another awkward argument can be found in ‘Philosophy and politics’, where Badiou describes thought as the “specific mode by which a human animal is traversed and overcome by truth” (IT: 53, 55). This thinking seems to embrace a mind\\body separation which this reader, perhaps naively, had hoped was no longer.

Infinite Thought aims to “provide a brief, accessible introduction to the diversity and power of Badiou’s thought” (IT: 1) and it does not fail. As Hewson (2006: 376) notes, the “brevity and directness of the texts makes the book … a very useful introductory volume”. That the book is so concise is perhaps both the strength and the weakness of this collection: whilst the reader discovers many of Badiou’s arguments and interests, it can at times be difficult to follow the threads through the very focused yet discontinuous chapters. To be sure, Infinite Thought explores many themes and the discussions are at times frustratingly brief. Further, the editors\\translators do not reference the texts Badiou mentions, instead preferring to leave it to the reader to explore his oeuvre themselves. Although this rather ‘abrupt gesture’ (their description, not mine) is a shame, it does not dull the eagerness to read more of his work.

Basset, K. (2008) Thinking the event: Badiou’s philosophy of the event and the example of the Paris Commune. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 26: 895-910

Dewsbury, J-D. (2007) Unthinking Subjectivities: the location of thought in thinking politics after the Badiouian event. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 32(4): 443-459

Hewson, M. (2006) A fixed point, a point of interruption. Cosmos and History, 2(1-2): 376-379

Sartwell, C. (2005) http://www.crispinsartwell.com/badiou.htm (last accessed: 19/01/09)

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Black Box, Concordia, Montreal

It was an early-ish start at the lab today, meeting Xin Wei around 10:00-ish. We were to help Michael Montanaro move equipment down to the Black Box, in the basement of the EV building. It’s an enormous space which is often used for Hexagram events. The project that Micheal and others in the building (including the TML) are working on is called ‘Frankenstein’s Ghosts‘:

a collective creation-research project to build a hybrid critical discussion and performance work based on the substantive issues raised in Mary Shelley’s seminal novel, Frankenstein.

I’m hoping to spend some time with Michael and Jerome (who’s interested in responsive environments) in the Black Box over the next week or so. I’m wondering if the name is literal (it is a black box-like room) or a play on the Latourian notion (he uses the term to describe when something’s inner workings are no longer open to scrutiny)!

Panorama of the Black Box