Hertford College, Oxford

Earlier on in the month, I received a reminder email asking me to renew my hosting arrangement for this website. It was only then that I realised that it had been a year since I set up and started this blog! I have found it really quite useful for a number of reasons. Firstly, it serves as a record of my research and how the process is developing. It is not quite my research diary but as a friend put it, a form of public note-taking. Secondly, it is a space for me to engage with different kinds of topics as well as experiment styles of writing. Thirdly, it has allowed for a sharing of my work with both those who may search for me online and/or stumble on my site after searching for a certain collection of key words. Unfortunately, this sharing has been rather hampered by on-going problems connecting to other sites through the use of trackbacks and pingbacks (apologies for the recent ‘test’ posts). I have asked for help from both those on the wordpress fora and my internet host but have had no luck as yet.

There are a set of posts which are in draft form at the moment but that I shall try to finish off during the course of this week. Here’s hoping! As ever, please feel free to leave comments or get in touch with me directly,

t

Inside IfREX

On Monday 19 April I met up with Christina and Eric to continue our discussions about my work and what might be possible while I am in Berlin, and at IfREX. They were both keen to hear how I had found the first week of the semester, realising that it might be quite different to what I was accustomed to. The students, I noted, were quite noisy during the arranged events and would get up, leave, (sometimes) return, make tea, chat even. Christina was quick to reassure me that this was something that her and Eric had become used to and that they understood as the students had so much timetabled. Indeed, this semester they are trying to have fewer things on so the students have more time to do their own work. I also mentioned that I had found the week rather intense, with discussions going on for several hours; it transpires that is rather rare to have so many hours in one week. They were also eager to hear about my time in Montreal and to find out what initial comparisons I could make between here and there. As it had been only a week that the semester had been underway, it was difficult to make any clear connections and I was anxious to not sound as if I understood all there was to know about IfREX (I’m not sure I ever shall). Instead I answered that I had picked up on some resonances but that my hearing might be out, pointing to artists as students, collectives and experimentally-driven spaces. To this end, they were receptive to me organising some sort of dialogue between the various sites I have spent, and will spend, time at – whether in the form of a conference or publication.

On this note, we also talked about how I plan to ‘use’ my field-sites in my work. For example, would I be comparing the labs, judging the labs? Rather than critique the labs, or nominate one as being better than another, I outlined how I would like to draw on these empirical engagements in different ways to explore quite theoretical ideas about experiments, aesthetics and participaction (among others). In a sense, I would be attending to these experimental spaces as I seek to elucidate or assemble a sketch of what an experimental geography, or a geography lab, could be like. Related to my plans for how to incorporate the field in my writing, as if they were somehow separate, was the question of what I could write. There was no need of a contract we decided together but there were matters of circulation (who could access my work) and timing (when my work would be available). It turns out that I am one of the first people to have access to the school and it is important how IfREX is talked about; indeed, what the press writes about the Institute is a intertwined process. For the time being, they are keen to read more of what I have written – I had submitted an essay when applying to the school – and we hope to continue the conversation, or dialogue, over the coming 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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View of downtown Montreal

Now in the last week of my stay in Montreal, I am preparing to head back to Oxford. There’s been a lot to take in and at times, I’ve wondered what research materials I am generating. I recently filled in a Graduate Supervision System (GSS) entry on my ‘progress’ this term and thought I might include it here as a (somewhat limited) summary or reminder of some of the things I’ve been doing and thinking since I arrived.

I have spent this term in Montreal, where I have been exploring a variety of spaces of aesthetic experimentation. Affiliated to both the Topological Media Lab and the SenseLab, as well as an active member of Hexagram (an institution for research-creation), this fieldwork has allowed for a prolonged engagement with notions of experimentation, interactive or responsive environments, rapid prototyping and ethico-aesthetic play, as well as collective action.

I have been involved in reading groups, classes, colloquia, workshops and aspects of experimental design. I adopted an experimental approach where I have sought to be not only an attentive observant but allow room for the research to unfold and develop in unexpected ways. An example of this has been working with a choreographer in the development of a theatrical production.

It has been very stimulating to work with people who have read similar philosophers to myself (such as Bergson, Deleuze, Guattari, James, Whitehead) but also be able to share new avenues of enquiry (including, but not limited to, Bateson, Debaise and Simondon). Moreover, it has been fruitful to talk about my work to others, forcing me to rethink and refine aspects of my questions. One area that I’ve been thinking about in particular concerns collaboration, and how this might not necessarily result in some ‘thing’. Collaboration might be better thought of as processual, and not necessarily goal-oriented. This also relates to how to how I might address questions of participation, ‘critical distance’ and my role, such as it is, within the labs.

I have tried to generate materials through visual means (photos, video), textual (diaries, blog entries) and talks (recorded, remembered). Responding to the call to attend to registers which are neither talk nor text has proven more problematic but has been explored through diagrams.

I’m hoping to keep active on the blog when I return to Oxford – with an aim for more regular posts rather than flurries of them – and have a few book reviews that I’m working on at the moment. I’m also trying to translate one of Didier Debaise’s articles. As ever: watch this space!

t

Michael demonstrating his program, TML

The blog has been down for just over 24 hours. I apologise – it was completely my fault. I have been trying very hard to get my trackbacks to work and fiddled around with my SQL databases. Thankfully, I keep regular backups.

It has been a difficult time and at several points I thought I would not see my posts, let alone the website again. Thanks to Michael Fortin, of the TML, for helping (read: doing it all himself). The blog lives on!

Lines to where?

hitch // hiking: adventure is dead

gerlach, j. & jellis, t.

09:29, walking the slip-road on the A34, playing another Situationist trick, a dérive of sorts. Hitchhiking to where, we didn’t know, but that, after all, was the point. Thomas and Joe had sketched this psychogeographical experiment in the departmental coffee room a week beforehand, fretting over whether two guys together would ever get a lift, how far they might get and whether hitchhiking was illegal or not¹. The aim of the experiment: to trace and animate lines; lines of movement and lines of affect – traces which might point towards, or be generative of, micro-political actions, or what we’ve been calling ‘small acts of repair’².

We hoped to generate encounters. Different ways of meeting people, engaging with them, ‘doing’ research. We left postcards. Please draw some lines. Perhaps your journey, or journeys. It’s up to you. We’ve put an address and there’s a stamp on it too.

We chose hitchhiking as a field method for two reasons. Firstly, we wanted to recruit other things and other people into the society of molecules; by hitching lifts – intersecting and generating lines with others, we illustrated that abstractions are not so distant from lived experience. Secondly, we wanted to reclaim hitchhiking as a technology of experimentation, a geographical experiment where the only constraint was that we would accompany those who stopped and follow them, wherever it might lead us. An open-ended experiment, in which the lines travelled were constantly unfolding and never fixed.

Chaosmosis³ lent some direction and now we have three postcards back ⁴. Through a series of co-produced encounters along A-roads, motorways and hard-shoulders we have traced several maps of affects: the scores of everyday lives. Lines drawn, but lines to where? We still don’t know, but following Foucault, we’re all cartographers now. Experimental cartographers, radical empiricsts.

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