Brussels: fieldsite / collaboration?

I spoke with Maja Kuzmanovic last Friday over Skype, following several emails over the past few months, about the possibility of spending time with f0.am in Brussels. When I was in Montreal in the Autumn, Sha Xin Wei mentioned the group, and Maja, to me as they had worked together on a project. The fo.am website looks amazing and is really interesting; I’m intrigued by their committment to

growing inclusive, resilient and abundant worlds.¹

Although we did not speak for very long, I was able to explain my research interests, provide a flavour of my work and hear a little about their research group. Maja explained that they had had experience of ethnographers and anthropologists spending time with the lab; many of them had gone on to became actively involved in the group. When we tried to deal with practicalities, dates were problematic. Whilst f0.am are planning a workshop (or gathering) at the end of July, I was told it would not make sense for me to arrive beforehand unless it was for a few weeks. I would be very welcome to do so, and be involved in the organisation of the gathering, but shall be in Berlin at that time. Therefore, Maja suggested that I apply to present at the gathering; although if selected, I would be a participant and not a collaborator with f0.am. There would then be the chance to meet at a later date; perhaps in September as the lab will be very quiet after the July gathering. I’ve sent over a short bio as requested and am keeping my fingers crossed to be involved in some way. Here’s hoping!

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Bernauer Strasse U-Bahn, Berlin

I arrived in Berlin at the beginning of April for the first stint of two month-long trips.  I’m staying in a small but nice flat along a quiet street, situated between Mitte (city centre) and Prenzlauer Berg (trendy 19th century apartment buildings). I have a pleasant walk to work and enjoy varying my route, exploring different streets and pathways. My travel pass is valid for a month and so I’ve also been trying to visit some of the tourist sites in my spare time.

The semester started on the week beginnging the 12 April and will run until mid-July. My plan is to stay here for the opening and then return towards the end. Unfortunately, up until just recently I have had trouble getting online which has been frustrating; I had hoped to provide more regular updates on my research but it just hasn’t been possible. The following posts are an attempt at ‘cathcing up’ and sharing some parts of the last few weeks.

Berlin: fieldsite / intervention?

We agreed to ‘meet’ on Skype at 14:00 (GMT) on Thursday 21.01.2010 to continue our discussion, started in September, and before that by email. By we, I mean myself, Anna Engberg-Pedersen and Christina Werner. Anna and Christina are both based on the Institute for Spatial Experimentation [Institut für Raumexperimente (IfREX)] in Berlin, itself an on-going experimentation in pedagogy.  Unfortunately the Skype connection was unstable and Anna and Christina ended up calling me on my home phone (I was in my flat). It was much better audio quality but meant that I was unable to record both sides of the conversation. Anna asked how my work was going and wanted to know about my time in Montreal. I explained as best I could what I had been up to, outlining the people I had been working with and the spaces I had been moving in. Although Anna had not heard of the SenseLab or the TML, she was well aware of Brian Massumi and Erin Manning and told me she had very much enjoyed reading Brian’s (2002) book Parables for the Virtual.

Christina then came on the phone – I was on loud-speaker their end – and asked me about my interests, but said that first, she would tell me how the previous semester had been. Christina and Eric Ellingsen take care of the running of the school and their work oscillates between the studio (Olafur’s) and the school. The winter semester (2009/2010) was very busy for them, and the twenty students or so were involved in class discussions (some with Olafur), reading groups (organised and led by Christina and Eric) as well as workshops with invited guests. There are also public lectures and meetings which follow a more classical (or orthodox) form. The time with Christina and Eric aims to cover what they describe as the ‘standard stuff’, which seemed to suggest reading which would help situate the more experimental sessions. One example of these sessions was to create a book on-the-fly; the students had three days to design and make a book comprised of lots of different parts. This can be seen as part of the Institute’s attempt to challenge and actively work against so-called ‘ready-made’ knowledge.

The Institut für Raumexperimente is in itself an experiment. To me, the experiment as a mode of inquiry is necessary if we are to insist on a constant, probing and generous interaction with reality. Or to put it differently: by engaging in experimentation, we can challenge the norms by which we live and thus produce reality.¹

It was now my turn to explain so I sketched out my research questions and interests, notably: the historio-philsophical lineage of their experiment(s), the architecture of space and how it might facilitate experimentation (as well as what kinds of experiments) and an exploration of what is at stake (in effect, asking what purpose the Institute/school serves). All really relevant questions, I was told, and Christina and Anna were keen to detail some of the facets of the Institute. Firstly, whilst it is an Institute it occupies a strange position in relation to the College of Fine Arts at the Berlin University of the Arts [Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK)] and operates outside of the institutional framework of the university, although its public lectures are open to all of its members. Secondly, the IfREX provides hybrid space which at once offers close ties to a practising artist’s studio (downstairs) as well as a place to do research. The students are invited to lunch in the studio twice a week – where they are able to make links to all kinds of people – and are provided with an accessible place, with room to work. Thirdly, there is no syllabus as such; instead there are themes. The IfREX is concerned with trying to make connections: it works to push us to think differently. So whilst the semesters are unplanned, there is room to respond to invited speakers and other visiting academics or artists. Trajectories are constructed, connections are seized upon and there is a tendency to experiment with ideas. Indeed, the teaching is an experiment in itself which is a five-year research project. The IfREX is an educational platform, a space where people are trying to learn how to learn, an experimentation with experimentation.

The Institut für Raumexperimente is a research experiment attached as a satellite to the College of Fine Arts at the Berlin University of the Arts. Its purpose is to experiment with new approaches to teaching art in the university setting. The programme focuses on spatial practices and problems in the fine arts and their intersection with architecture as well as their relationship to the humanities and natural sciences. By way of workshops, experiments, different exhibition formats, publications, and symposia, participants are encouraged to interact across disciplinary boundaries and to productively engage with the intersections between art and scholarship.

When asked what I would like, or hoped, to do in terms of fieldwork, I replied that I would be guided by them although I would very much appreciate the chance to visit the Institute and to meet the people who worked there. Christina said that they had been discussing beforehand what they could offer me, and made two different propositions. The first is to apply for a short-term grant for postgraduate study which would last six months, or one semester (April-September). This position is offered to those who are either (a) involved in further education more advanced than the students at the School or those who are (b) not artists, in order to make different sorts of connections. The role is fairly open-ended, with the award-holder expected to be there full-time, attend all events and be able to mediate the content, to provide another perspective. The deadline: 15^th February 2010. The second option would be more non-committal and would allow for me to be in Berlin for a month or so, where I would be able to sit in on all the events that I would like. The IfREX is keen to cultivate a feeling of hospitality as well as make links across and beyond disciplines. The next semester’s theme will be landscape architecture, with an interest in architecture and sound. Sounds good!

At Institut für Raumexperimente, time and space are considered inseparable even at a methodological level. Space cannot be externalised; it isn’t representational and nor are the experiments with which we work. To work spatially does not necessarily entail the creation of representational distance, and we can precisely avoid this distance, essentially static and unproductive, by insisting that time is a constituent of space. Or as a friend has said: space is ‘a constantly mutating simultaneity of stories-so-far’.

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Library card and key to the TML

I’m now two weeks into my stay in Montreal and am starting to find my feet. I know where to get my food and buy my ink cartridges, I have a key to the lab and a (provisional) library card. However, I’m still not too sure what I am doing in terms of methods, I have terrible internet connection (when I do have a connection, that is!) and it’s getting pretty cold. Fieldwork/fieldlife; modulations of intensity.

On that note, Joe and I have just submitted a paper on precisely this sort of theme to the journal ‘Performance Research‘, following their call for contributions on ‘Fieldworks’. Here’s the outline of our proposal:

As geographers we are often recognised by our commitment to fieldwork and it is arguably one of the discipline’s motifs. Yet despite the intimacy between geographers and fieldwork, the actual doing of fieldwork remains a black-box; particularly for students who, whilst well-drilled in ethics and risk-awareness protocol, can be unfamiliar with the messy yet productive encounters that fieldwork can afford. Therefore we propose to write a short, performative piece which traces some of the small stories from our respective Masters research. One story narrates the ethnography of glaciological research in Sweden, whilst the other illustrates the ethnography of a participatory mapping group in Colombia. The aim here is the animation of the frenetic rhythms of fieldwork, or as we call it, fieldlife; the contention that the space-times of research are not compartmentalised into desk/field or work/play binaries, but are contingent, overlapping and unfolding encounters; events which can, and should be, deployed productively rather than omitted, from an on-going ‘writing-up’ process. We think that this paper intersects with both the performance-led and scholarly concerns of the proposed issue of Performance Research.

Papineau Metro, Montreal

It’s the end of my fourth day in Montreal and I’m writing this entry from my new ‘home’ for the next eight weeks or so, Papineau. It’s a fairly quiet part of the city, in the north-east, and is only a few stops from downtown. I’m staying in a flat (called a 2 1/2, although not entirely sure what this means) in what was once a 19th-century hotel. It’s dated but should do the job! I now have a monthly metro pass, food in the fridge and I’ve just about worked out how to cross a road at an intersection.

In terms of fieldwork, I have met up with Xin Wei, the director of the Topological Media Lab (TML), to discuss what I hope to do while I am here and what materials we might be able to generate together. It’s exciting to be here and meet  people whose work resonates with that I have been thinking about. Here’s my provisional schedule for the rest of the week: Harry Smoak has invited me along to his lecture tomorrow on the ‘Architecture that happens’ , there’s a reading group for a project on ‘Memory and Place’ on Thursday and then a two-week event combining music and Frankenstein (more details to follow!) will kick off on Friday. I’m also due to introduce my work to the lab tomorrow late afternoon…