Project: L’ultima Cena

I have been invited to visit and respond to an exhibition/project entitled L’ultima cena, taking place at the Refettorio di San Michele in Pescia, Italy (3-4 September). L’ultima cena is a project initiated by an invitation issued to 13 artists (including Brigid McLeer with whom I have worked before) to make sited work in response to the little known and rarely seen ‘Last Supper’ fresco by Fieravante Sansoni (1625) located in the former convent refectory, the Refettorio di San Michele in Pescia. It is anticipated that this context will provide a foil against which to explore slippages of representation, time and reality occurring both within the fresco, through its relationship to an ‘original’, and also to the site itself. Starting points for exploration are likely to include ideas around 'being with' and empathy; relations between individual and collective identity; the affective potentiality of everyday situations; a collapsing of the binary relation of fidelity and betrayal. More to follow soon.

Project: Summer Lodge

Over the last few weeks I have been involved in the Summer Lodge at Nottingham Trent University. For ten days in July the Fine Art studios and workshops of Nottingham Trent University played host to a gathering of thirty diverse artists. This group comprising of current staff, student interns, and artists working in the city of Nottingham and beyond, initiated new dialogues and critical exchange through engaging together in a period of sustained studio/workshop practice. The Summer Lodge was intended as an opportunity to think through making by being able to work for a while without many of the usual constraints and distractions. As part of the Summer Lodge I have been thinking more about the potential of residency-based approaches to making work which I hope to explore further over the coming years. 

The Summer Lodge also involved a one-day symposium entitled, The Speculation. Outline: "In the current economic and political climate, the old cliché rings true: the only certainty is that there is no certainty. In such times, existing models and familiar territories can no longer be relied upon, a situation that is especially pressing within the fields of art practice and research, given government prioritization of STEM subjects within universities and the decrease in arts funding outside academia. Whilst it is all to easy to become despondent in such gloomy times, by contrast the Visual Arts research area will seek to speculate upon new directions and alternative possibilities, exploring a troubling grey area, a critical terrain vague which might disturb the smooth landscape of what is already named and known. This work develops out of an already extant research cluster in Visual Arts, which has hitherto focused upon ideas of irresolution, doubt, deferral, uncertainty to explore the potential of remaining ‘Still Unresolved’, but is intended to help us shape the future direction/s of Visual Arts research, and to further develop conversations, collaborations and other projects with colleagues across the School of Art and Design and beyond, as these ideas intersect with other disciplines."

Presenters: Will Bowden (Associate Professor of Roman Archaeology, Nottingham University), Emma Cocker (Artist, Writer and Senior Lecturer NTU), Dr. Nick Flynn (Programme Leader Applied Criminology, Community and Criminal Justice Division De Montfort University) Alice Gale-Feeny (Intern and 3rd Yr Fine Art student NTU), Rebecca Gamble (Artist and Research Student NTU) Dr. Jonathan Gilhooly (Brighton Based Artist and educator) Prof. Julian Henderson (Professor of Archaeological Science, University of Nottingham), Sally O’Reilly (Writer), John Plowman (Artist, Curator and Co-director Beacon Art Project), Tim Rundle (Design Trend Forecaster, Principal Lecturer, Programme Leader Fashion Marketing Management & Communication), Niki Russell (Nottingham based Artist/Producer and member of REACTOR), Nicola Streeten (Illustrator, co-director of Laydeez do Comics and co-director of Beacon Art Project)

Publication: Nature (Documents of Contemporary Art Series)

Heather and Ivan Morison, installation shot from Earthwalker at Danielle Arnaud Gallery

My short reflection on the exhibition Earthwalker by Heather and Ivan Morison (from 2007, originally published on interface, a-n) has been selected for the forthcoming publication, Nature (Documents of Contemporary Art series, Whitechapel/MIT, 2012) edited by Jeffrey Kastner. 


About the publication

Nature is one of a series documenting major themes and ideas in contemporary art.
Nature, as both subject and object, has repeatedly been rejected and reclaimed by artists over the last half century. With the dislocation of disciplinary boundaries in visual culture, art that is engaged with nature has also forged connections with a new range of scientific, historical and philosophical ideas. Developing technologies make our interventions into natural systems both increasingly refined and profound. And advances in biological and telecommunication technology continually modify the way we ‘present’ ourselves. So too are artistic representations of nature (human and otherwise) being transformed.  

This anthology addresses these issues by considering how the rise of transdisciplinary practices in the postwar era allowed for new kinds of artistic engagement with nature. These include the post-minimalist inscriptions associated with Land art; environmentally engaged practices designed to propose novel forms of stewardship; and more recent projects concerned with relationships between the most subtle and minute components of life and the large-scale appearance of the world. These problematize and unsettle the most basic operations of ‘natural’ personhood and identity.

Including a wide range of writings by and about artists, juxtaposed with influential texts from diverse theoretical bases, this collection provides an overview of the eclectic scientific and philosophical sources that inform contemporary art’s investigations of nature. 
Writers and artists surveyed include: Giorgio Agamben, Jesse Ashlock, Michael Auping, Aziz + Cucher, Gaston Bachelard, Brandon Ballengée, Gregory Bateson, Jane Bennett, Henri Bergson, Joseph Beuys, Claire Bishop, Suzaan Boettger, Roger Caillois, Oron Catts, Mel Chin, Emma Cocker, Steven Connor, Lynne Cooke, Critical Art Ensemble, Walter De Maria, Jacques Derrida, herman de vries, Mark Dion, Vilém Flusser, George Gessert, Oliver Grau, Tim Griffin, Félix Guattari, Hans Haacke, Henrik Håkansson, Peter Halley, Donna Haraway, Helen & Newton Harrison, David Harvey, Pierre Huyghe, Eduardo Kac, Bruno Latour, Pamela M. Lee, Jean-François Lyotard, Tom McDonough, Denise Markonish, Mary Mattingly, Ana Mendieta, Laurent Mignonneau, Jacques Monod, Robert Morris, Arne Naess, Thomas Nagel, Trevor Paglen, Jane Prophet, Ingeborg Reichle, Alexis Rockman, Nikolas Rose, Andrew Ross, Tomás Saraceno, Mark Sheerin, Bonnie Sherk, Robert Smithson, Christa Sommerer, Alan Sonfist, Stelarc, Paul Tebbs, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Vladimir Vernadsky, Victoria Vesna, Carl Zimmer, Andrea Zittel and Ionat Zurr.

Jeffrey Kastner is a New York-based writer and critic, and senior editor of Cabinet. Formerly senior editor of ARTnews, he has written extensively on contemporary art in numerous catalogues and journals. His books include Land and Environmental Art (1998).

Event: Site / Sight Lines

Images: Emma Cocker, Site / Sight Lines, 2011

Site / Sight Lines

Friday, 10th June, Institute for Transmedia Art, Vienna

Workshop/Seminar

Fusing practical and conceptual concerns, this one-day workshop with Emma Cocker and Nikolaus Gansterer investigates how the performative practices of wandering, waiting, drawing, writing and reading can operate as creative ‘tactics’ or methods for navigating or negotiating space differently to expectation, convention or habit. By mapping or diagramming how spatial relations are organized and orchestrated within various public spaces, workshop participants will be encouraged to devise ways through which to draw attention to or even interrupt these habitual social patterns or flows. The workshop will explore and test how invitations, instructions or even drawn scores can be used to activate different ways of navigating or traversing public space, producing temporary and experimental forms of connectivity and social interaction.


Documentation and reflection from the workshop will be gathered here.

Image: Emma Cocker, Diagramming Relations, test propositions

Guest Lecture: Emma Cocker

The workshop 'Spatial (Inter) Relations' will be preceded by a guest lecture at the Institute for Transmedia, Vienna, on Thursday, 9th June


UK based artist-writer Emma Cocker reflects on how public space is both produced by and productive of the ways in which it is inhabited or lived, how it can be reworked or re-conceptualized through the prism of both artistic representation and production. Referring to selected artists’ projects including her own collaboration with the performance-based collective Open City and the recent publication, Manual for Marginal Places, Cocker will explore how the performative practices of wandering, waiting, drawing, writing and reading can operate as creative ‘tactics’ or methods for navigating or negotiating space differently to expectation, convention or habit.

Events: Manual Reading

During June, I will be presenting ideas at a number of forthcoming events where I propose to elaborate upon the invitational or instructional aspects of the ‘manual’, with reference to various examples of ‘manual’ including the recently published Manual for Marginal Places. Events include:

TRAVERSE

Traverse is the inaugural exhibition at new Bristol gallery, Geneva Stop. Traverse features new video work by Close & Remote and the book launch of ‘Manual For Marginal Places’, which includes text by Emma Cocker and images by Sophie Mellor and Simon Poulter.

X Libris

Site Gallery play host to a series of book-based discussions around the themes: 'Public', 'Machines', 'Manuals' and 'Maps'. I will be involved in the session on 'Manuals' which will take place on 14 June. As part of this session I explore how aspects of Baden-Powell's boy scout manual 'Scouting for Boys' can be considered as a kind of proto-conceptual script; its suggestions and propositions akin to the instructive imperative of Perec's Species of Spaces and Other Pieces or even certain Fluxus scores.

Image: Artist Bob Levene during the X-Libris event with a copy of Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys.

Background to X Libris Book Club 3 - Manuals

From Douglas Adams' 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy' to George Perec's 'Life: A User's Manual', we will explore the guide books, user's guides and manuals generously donated to X Libris. Artist Bob Levene will discuss her contribution, 'A User's Guide to the 21st Century' and Emma Cocker will introduce her book 'Manual for Marginal Places' created in collaboration with Close and Remote:

“To be useful, a manual often needs to give the user an overview of how a thing works and then more detailed information on its application and maintenance. In this case the manual format is extracted from the mechanical and re-directed towards the desire or yearning for authentic experience. Unlike the well-known Haynes automotive manuals, this book does not offer a complete strip down and rebuild of a location; it makes suggestions in the direction of raw experience. Away from how things work and toward how you might work.” (closeandremote.net)

Presentation: Close Reading / Open Reading

I am in the process of testing out some new work, in preparation for my presentation Close Reading / Open Reading, which is part of the Writing (the) Space Event, Thursday 19 May at Wild Pansy Press Project Space. Close Reading / Open Reading investigates the capacity of methods of close attention for producing uncertainty, indeterminacy and formlessness rather than fixing or clarifying any single, stable meaning, where paradoxically perhaps, the more something becomes scrutinized the less it becomes known. Within my practice, processes of extraction, fragmentation, listing, footnoting and cross-referencing become used for generating 'openings' rather than conclusions, for appearing purposeful whilst remaining without clear or discernible intent. 

My presentation will move from considering my recent collaboration with Rachel Lois Clapham (Re -) towards introducing aspects of my more emergent research collaboration with artist Jim Boxall entitled, Close Readings. As part of this new research project we propose to explore the notion of close reading or of an ‘explication de texte’ as a tactic through which to interrogate the performative and spatial dimensions of written text. Here, close reading is not understood as the critical attention paid to the meaning of words themselves as signs, but is instead interested in those meanings produced by looking at the spatiality of words ‘close up’, through a process of visual magnification or close visual attention. Close Reading / Open Reading explores the threshold space where writing or text collapses into its component parts (ink and page), or the point where the sense or legibility of a word is rendered illegible or nonsensical the closer it is attended to, as writing slips towards image. I envisage future experiments emerging from this presentations exploring the relationship between the practices of flitting and lingering (over a text). 

Event: RaRa & Manual for Marginal Places Launch

On Saturday 14 May, S1 Studios hosted the RaRa symposium,  Just Do(ing) It: Artist-led and self-organised cultural activity as resistance to Capitalism and the book launch for closeandremote's Manual for Marginal Places. Images from these events to follow here and also on S1 Studios forthcoming facebook pages.

Image: RaRa symposium, an S1 studios hosted event at S1 Artspace, 14 May 2011

Details about the event

Just Do(ing) It: Artist-led and self-organised cultural activity as resistance to Capitalism.

Building on previous RadicalAesthetics-RadicalArt (RaRa) events that have focused on the theoretical and socio-political landscape of a ‘radical (art) praxis’, this event in an artists-led space in Sheffield continues the exploration of strategies, tactics and work being carried out ‘on the ground’ by artists and cultural activists towards a better world. How might we begin to understand artist-led or self-organised art activity in this light?  What examples of DIY, informal or purposefully marginal art practices exist which aim to imagine, create, or operate within new spheres for cultural activity? How do such practices resist and/or maintain a critical relationship with the dominant order and state capitalism? How does the empty but increasingly inescapable rhetoric of Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ effect or alter the stakes of such practice? What role do practices of subversion operating ‘within and against’ the system play in this struggle?

Image: R ebecca Gordon-Nesbitt's presentation

Speakers include:

-  John Holloway (Professor of Sociology, Insituto de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Mexico, and Leverhulme Visiting Professor, School of Geography, University of Leeds. Author of Change the World without taking Power (new ed. Pluto, London, 2010) and Crack Capitalism (Pluto, London, 2010).

-  Leeds Creative Timebank (Alternative economy initiative http: //www.leedscreativetimebank.co.uk/)

-  Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt (Sheffield-born writer and investigative researcher).

-  Milena Placentile (Winnipeg based curator, writer, researcher)

- with special video contribution from Gregory Sholette (US-based artist/writer on informal art practice, author of Dark Matter, Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture, 2011)

This one-day event – initiated by Andy Abbott (Black Dogs and University of Leeds), in collaboration with Jane Tormey/Gillian Whiteley (Loughborough University) and S1 (www.S1artspace.org) - aims to provide a space for discussion, critical reflection and evaluation of such questions and tactics through the example of current practice and writers on the subject.

RaRa is a Politicized Practice Research Group project. 

EVENT: WRITING (the) SPACE

19 May 10.45 - 8pm

Old Mining Building, University of Leeds, Woodhouse Lane, Leeds LS2 9JT

Contributors include David Berridge, Rachel Lois Clapham, Emma Cocker, Victoria Gray, Claire Hind, Mary Paterson

Charles Olson’s Projective Verse invites writing to be considered spatially, as OPEN, or as FIELD (of) composition in three dimensions. His proposition is one of text as space of action, of breath as punctuation, and of the bodily pressures of writing in which ‘form is never more than an extension of content’. Drawing together the practices of UK artists and writers, this day-long event attempts to further explore notions of physical and spatial writing, drawing on the installation Re – (WRITING (the) SPACE) and Olson’s notion of Projective Verse.

10.45 – 6pm: OPEN OLSON OPEN Laboratory


A laboratory exploring practice-based examples of Olson’s Projective Verse. Presenting is David Berridge talking on PHRASE POETICS and Olson’s “field”, Rachel Lois Clapham on FINGER and three dimensional ‘diagramming’, Emma Cocker explores the 'spacing' of extraction, condensation and close reading, Victoria Gray unpicks her performance of Loop (2011), Claire Hind examines voice and breath in response to Olson’s insistence upon the author’s body and Mary Paterson uses her online text 'Navigation Through Unbound' as a case study for writing the unknown. Audience space is limited so booking essential, please email rachellois@opendialogues.com.

6-8pm : How is Art Writing?


Dinner, drink and a live performance by Giles Bailey as part of the In a word…artists’ dinner series. Free but booking essential via rachellois@opendialogues.com or by clicking here.

This event has been developed in conjunction with the exhibition WRITING (the) SPACE, a presentation of the project Re – by Rachel Lois Clapham and Emma Cocker at the Wild Pansy Project Space. 

Exhibition: Re - Writing [the] Space

Writing (the) Space,  Rachel Lois Clapham and Emma Cocker at Wild Pansy Press Project Space, Leeds, including new Re- Reader designed by Marit Münzberg. More to follow soon.

Image: Re - Writing [the] Space, Rachel Lois Clapham and Emma Cocker, Wild Pansy Press Project Space, Leeds, 2011

Updates: Drawing a Hypothesis

Image: Nikolaus Gansterer

I have been invited by artist Nikolaus Ganster to present a lecture/workshop for the Department of Transmedia Arts (University of Applied Arts in Vienna) in June. The lecture will be used as a space to specifically further ideas developed as part of my essay for Gansterer’s forthcoming publication, Drawing a Hypothesis: Figures of Research. Whilst in Vienna, we will also be developing ideas for a performative reading, which we intend to operate in conjunction with the launch of the publication (Autumn, 2011); and ideas around a possible international research project exploring expanded drawing practices. 

More information about Drawing a Hypothesis

Drawing a Hypothesis is an exciting reader on the ontology of forms of visualizations and on the development of the diagrammatic view and its use in contemporary art, science and theory. In an intense process of exchange with artists and scientists, Nikolaus Gansterer reveals drawing as a media of research enabling the emergence of new narratives and ideas by tracing the speculative potential of diagrams. Based on a discursive analysis of found figures with the artists' own diagrammatic maps and models, the invited authors create unique correlations between thinking and drawing. Due to its ability to mediate between perception and reflection, drawing proves to be one of the most basic instruments of scientific and artistic practice, and plays an essential role in the production and communication of knowledge. The book is a rich compendium of figures of thought, which moves from scientific representation through artistic interpretation and vice versa.

Contents

Drawing a Hypothesis (Preface), Nikolaus Gansterer

I Must Be Seeing Things, Clemens Krümmel

A line with variable direction, which traces no contour, and delimits no form, Susanne Leeb.

Grapheus Was Here, Anthony Auerbach

Asynchronous Connections, Kirsten Matheus

Figures of Thoughts, Gerhard Dirmoser.

Collection of Figures of Thoughts, Gerhard Dirmoser

The Line of Thought, Hanneke Grootenboer

Dances of Space, Marc Boeckler

Distancing the If and Then, Emma Cocker

Processing the Routes of Thoughts, Kerstin Bartels

The Hand, the Creatures & The Singing Garden, Moira Roth

Drawing Interest / Recording Vitality, Karin Harasser

Hypotheses non Fingo or When Symbols Fail, Andreas Schinner

Three Elements, Axel Stockburger

A Fragmentary Collection of Emotions and Orientations, graphically recorded, Christian Reder

Radical Cartographies, Philippe Rekazewicz

Measuring the World, Katharina Bösch, Christine Haupt-Stummer, Andreas Kristof

Subjective Objectivities, Jörg Piringer

The Afterthought of Drawing: Six Hypotheses, Jane Tormey

Nonself compatibility in Plants – The Floral-Animal continuity, Monika Bakke. 

On the importance of scientific research in relation to the humanities, Walter Seidl

Strong Evidence for telon-priming Cell Layers in the mammalian olfactory bulb, Nardo, M. L.; Adam, A.; Brandlmayr, P.; Fisher B. F.

Expected Anomalies caused by increased Radiation Activity, Christina Stadlbauer

On Pluto 86 Winter lasts 92 Years, Ralo Mayer

The Unthought Known, Felix de Mendelssohn

wiry fantasy or the electronic line is also a handwriting and itself effects the overcoming of its system, which it draws, constructs and leaves: into the poetical eye, too, which has dreamed its original state of pure perception and launches itself into the dialogue as source, Ferdinand Schmatz

During the Summer I will be developing a series of performance presentations in collaboration with Nikolaus Gansterer to launch Drawing a Hypothesis (which are scheduled for the Autumn at a number of venues including MUHKA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp; KNAW, The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam in collaboration with Jan van Eck Academy; and the Secession, Vienna in collaboration with the University of Applied Arts Vienna)

Publication: To Have and To Hold

I have been invited to contribute a text to a forthcoming publication that expands on a project entitled To Have and to Hold, which was curated by NVA, a Scottish environmental arts organization, for the Venice Architectural Biennale, 2010. The Scottish Government & Creative Scotland in partnership with the British Council worked with NVA to represent Scotland at the 12th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale. NVA’s contribution to the Biennale focused on a project that they are currently involved in at a site near Loch Lomond that includes a late-modernist ruin. Their involvement in the biennale was staged through a series of events aimed at provoking debate and discussion around the proposed redevelopment of this site.

More about the broader project here:

More about the the events in Venice here:

The proposed interdisciplinary publication will include invited contributions from architect Ed Hollis, geographer Hayden Lorimer, architect Henry McKeown, landscape designer Tilman Latz, Adam Sutherland from Grizedale Arts and myself. It is being organized and edited by Gerrie van Noord.