VVVV - Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll

Transcription

Pilot Issue
HER EYES
AND MY
VANESSA VISUAL
in conversation with
VIRGINIA VERBAL
KHADIJA CARROLL LA
Three Tiles of Text
FRANCESCO PEDRAGLIO
‘Don’t expect too much
from an object...’
VOICE : A
RELATIONSHIP
IN EKPHRASIS
CONNIE BUTLER
We; The Language of Collectivity
SHARON MORRIS
Ekphrastic Poems
LAUREN GODFREY
Giving Talks
JOE CROWDY
Talking through Building
VANESSA VISUAL
AND VIRGINIA VERBAL
Seventeen Poems
for Charleston House
Cover image : Joe Crowdy
VANESSA VISUAL AND
VIRGINIA VERBAL
Her Eyes and My Voice : A Relationship in Ekphrasis
This is the first issue of ‘Her Eyes and My Voice’
a collaborative project put together by
Connie Butler and Lauren Godfrey.
For more information, get in touch on:
3
Vanessa Visual in conversation
with Virgina Verbal
11
Khadija Carroll La
Under These Robes
13
Connie Butler
We; The Language of Collectivity
and Word as Truth in
Halldor Laxness’ ‘Under the Glacier’
25
Khadija Carroll La
The Silk Cage
29
46
Lauren Godfrey
Giving Talks - ‘An attempt to discuss practice in a form sympathetic to the work in discussion.’
53
Sharon Morris
Ekphrastic Poems
57
Joe Crowdy
Talking through Building:
Architectural Creoles of the Spanish Holiday
71
Khadija Carroll La
Raven Row
Vanessa Visual and Virginia Verbal
Seventeen Poems for
Charleston House
Insert by Francesco Pedraglio
[email protected]
April 2012
Printed by Hato Press
1
VV in Conversation with VV
VV : OK, So lets discuss what happens in the void or transference between
something visual and something verbal. Do words fall flat?
VV : ‘Fall flat’ seems such a visual phrase. Falling with a sort of weightlessness,
a mass which is then cut dead with a jolt.
Your use of phrase explores a third transference, the weighty, embodied or
haptic.
VV : Mmm, fingery eyes. We can put a certain amount of trust in words to
haptically deliver the ‘feeling’ or sense we want to communicate. Words can be
visual as well as verbal. Perhaps this can be more successfully achieved through
the choice of words rather than a literal attempt to describe.
VV : Transference and description, what are they doing differently. A transfer I
guess is more of an exchange as opposed to description – a ‘script’– to interpret
2
3
– to literally ‘put into words’.
Now what is the exchange that is taking place? We could look to Homer’s
description of Achilles’ shield at beginning of The Iliad as a literary example of
such ekphrasis. Or we could pick another?
VV : The words become as important as the thing they ‘describe’ – an entity
in their own right, so actually the word ‘describe’ no longer (describes) what we
have done. The centre of gravity has shifted and set up camp in our new location.
As an aside to the audience (at which point VV puts some paper under my nose,
a day or so ago this paper was sprayed with perfume. I write with the tickle of
sweet flowers in my nostril hairs)
VV : The thing they describe in its thingness. Thing is a very descriptive word
in its adaptability and apparent chameleon like nature. There are debates within
critical theory into our use of the word and also ‘thing theory’.
I guess in Plato’s articulation of ekphrasis his choice of objects (things) are like
letters in an algebraic interpretation of language
x+y=z
a bed in its ‘bedness’ or a thing in its ‘thingness’
VV : Or perhaps rather than x + y = z its more like x →then y→ then z. The bed
(as a divine notion,) the bed the object made by a craftsman, and the artists bed
as an interpretation of the craftsman’s.
This also awakens questions about the difference between craftsman and artist –
should the artist be at the bottom of the food chain?
In this formula it is more like a transference than a sum of parts.
VV : That’s true, a transference rather than a sum of parts, less a food chain
than a series of re-imaginings of the thing. Maybe it’s interesting to imagine
the process as fluid and non-linear. Circular. The different modes of transferral
as a collaborative effort to illuminate its thingness. Duncan Grant’s bedstead at
Charleston house, with its sleeping head and totem like Navajo spread wings, is
just as much a painting of a bed as it is a functioning bed.
4
VV : Yeah, maybe with a literary leap of faith, hurtling into the arms of T.S.
Elliot, we could see the bedstead as an objective correlative of sleep and
bedtime... a symbol that indexically triggers the sense of sleep or illustrates that
experience somehow.
Also we seem concerned with surface, its illustrative qualities. The embellishment
of a surface that is functional places the entire thing in a wobble between
decorative and useful. The image of a bed as it should appear.
VV : We find ourselves in this moment, this kind of ‘point of compromise,’ when
we say a thing is enough of what it is. Does the painted bed have enough bed-
ness? Enough of whatever we hope to transfer to the support (in this case a bed
frame) to be coherent, or literate to itself.
Often decoration is put in binary opposition to function, but decoration has
a function for us as artists and writers and humans. This work in Charleston
knows this, it is a playing out of this transferral of a very base understanding of
ourselves in relation to things through decoration. Scratching, painting, marking,
repeated strokes and forms, ritualistically, to ‘describe’ the human in relation to
the inanimate.
VV : So by scratching into a cupboard there is some sort of mapping of human
presence...
This reminds me of something I saw at Maeshowe in Orkney which is a neolithic
chambered cairn. The guide took us inside and told us about the history of the
cairn, at one moment in history, some vikings had used it as a shelter – almost
a hundred in this tiny stone enclosure. At that time, the prankster vikings had
graffitied the space by carving into the walls in runes. She pointed out one
carving high above the entrance – they had had it translated and found that it
merely said ‘I am carving high up’
The way this message articulated the space and raised consciousness of the
human height, and the mental image of several vikings supporting one to reach
his desired carving location. There is something about the trace of human and the
claiming or mapping of a space through decorating or marking it that converses
with the idea of human in relation to inanimate.
5
VV : To use your earlier phrase, did the vikings words ‘fall flat’ as a document
of his embodied experience of the cairn?
VV : Not in the slightest – they were perky, long lasting words if ever I saw
them.
VV : These transferrals could be understood as attempts to be loftier than
the first, in height. The idea of reaching up to the top of the cairn, the heavens,
medieval craftsman and masons adorning spires of cathedrals spell out the
phrase ‘ I am carving high up’ just as well. Or does the series of transferences
stretch out horizontality like you said before as a food chain.
We have spoken a lot about movement, ‘leaping’ between ideas, mark making,
and animate and inanimate states. Could the transferral of verbal to visual or
visual to verbal be thought about as movement.
We could swap the pegs on our noses or undress and swap all our clothes, you
could pour me a glass of water and I could drink it...
(
VV : Yes the physical swap to dispel the hierarchical potential of the linear
progression. Visual and verbal as interchangeable and equals. I suppose a lot
of the hierarchy comes from belief or opinion – ‘only Allah is perfect’... the
craftsman could never equal in this circumstance. Hence my biased question
‘should artists fall to the bottom?’ lets do some physical leaping between the
two, I think this will help us to understand more fully the space between us.
VV
: There is always that moment in a game of pictionary, where the players
and stuttering and clambering about as their mouths try to get the name of the
image appearing before them. The “Baby Fish Mouth!” moment in ‘When Harry
met Sally’ – its in this kind of moment that you want to explore more action or
movement and leap - the inarticulate moment.
6
)
7
VVVV & Khadija Carroll La
VVVV
met
with
Khadija
Carroll
La
in London’s Raven Row, amongst Seth
Siegelaub’s collection of textiles. In search of
the ekphrastic they began to describe this
matter, material, ‘stoffe’ under the glass in
front of them.
The trio observed how as an avid collector
of books Siegelaub’s textiles begin, against
the washed out white walls of Raven Row, to
build their own textual archive. The leap from
‘text’ to ‘textile’ spelled out through their
modes of display designed by 6a Architects,
and through careful curation taking cues
from selected books in Siegelaub’s collection.
The Georgian building was playing out
its Spitalfields silk weaving alter-ego for us,
neatly contextualising the displayed textiles
with the original functions of the room.
VVVV and Khadija discussed the repeating
and unrelenting human urge to adorn and
inscribe pattern onto themselves and the
interiors they inhabit.
They discussed how these textiles could
be read, and the ekphrastic potential of such
a reading.
Khadija Carroll La’s submissions to this
publication have been made in response to
that afternoon.
8
9
Charlotte von Zinnenburg’s hand embroidered curtain over Japanese rain hat from Seth
Siegelaub’s collection.
Under these robes
my body has gone wild
a nun’s vestment
slung over
my hairy
Magdalene
10
Khadija Carroll La
11
Connie Butler
We; The Language of Collectivity and Word as Truth
in Halldor Laxness’ ‘Under the Glacier’
A fog descends. Our protagonist is lost, he had been narrating for
us, and for prosperity, the actions of a group; but time and place are
hurtling away from him as he travels alongside a shapeshifter whom
his narrative voice can never quite find the language to describe.
We are all comprised of multiple selves which are in dialogue. The
boundaries of the self are ʻshifting, foggy and de-constructible,ʼ¹
in collaboration we explore this ground, expanding ownership
of our own ideas and sharing tasks to create a polyphony only
accessible beyond ourselves. There is a stark difference in the
language used and produced when we work alone and therefore
in dialogue with our selves, when we work in a pair or when we
work in a group we build from one to many and collapse back
again. We construct narrative to describe the rise and fall,
the crescendos, within polyphonous language used by groups
and individuals to achieve a sense of a mounting multiplicity.
12
13
Connie Butler
‘The individual can be sacrificed to a historical cause that
7 Badiou, Alain. ‘The
‘Embi,’ the central character in Halldor Laxness’s 1968 novel
exceeds him. [...] It is only by dissolving itself into a project that
Century.’ Cambridge: Polity
Under The Glacier, is a narrator in a community in which he looses
exceeds him [that a subjective reality can be created]. The WE
Press, 2007
himself. Laxness wrote over sixty novels from the age of nineteen
constructed in and by this project is the only thing that is truly real―
8 Sontag, Susan.
to ninety five. He moved from rural Iceland to Hollywood in the
subjectively real for the individual who supports it. The individual,
‘Introduction; Outlandish’,
1920’s, spending time with Brecht. Once a devout christian he lived
truth be told, is nothing. The subject is the new man, emerging at
Laxness, Halldor.’Under The
in the Soviet Union in the 30’s and was an active communist for
the point of self-lack. The individual is thus, in its very essence,
Glacier’, vintage Books,
decades, eventually winning the Nobel prize for literature in 1955
the nothing that must be dissolved into a WE-subject.’⁷ Badiou
before returning to Iceland. Under The Glacier was only translated
talks of dissolving the individual into an idea of the multitude. As
into english in the late 90’s by Magnus Magnuson. Shortened from
indeed embi is the naive and lost individual struggling with how to
‘emissary of the Bishop to the bishop’, and not even crediting
exist amongst others; whilst mediating his new experiences into
himself with a capital letter, embi’s identity and ʻhybrid voiceʼ²
a cohesive self. Laxnessʼs narrator, truth be told, is nothing. His
are formed by his role in recording the mysterious goings on of
purpose is to record the others around him without judgement.
a remote community which appears to have given up burying its
dead. The shapeshifter he cannot describe that we heard of earlier
Embiʼs assignment leads him to record his own journey as he
is called ‘Ua’, pronounced ‘ooh-a.’ Constantly knitting gloves for
goes astray from the church and finds religion in nature and in
the fishermen of Peru and said to have never bathed, eaten or slept.
ordinary life in the mystic Snaefellsnes peninsula. Embi falls in
love with a woman conjoured from a frozen fish and who nobody
1-5 Sontag, Susan.
‘Introduction; Outlandish’,
Laxness, Halldor.’Under The
Glacier’, vintage Books, 2004
6 Laxness, Halldor. Under
the Glacier, Vintage books,
2004.p.12
14
Susan Sontag aligns the novel in a kind of genre she outlines
is sure really exists or ever existed. Essentially, Under The Glacier
as mapping an initiation of an ‘ingenious young person into
traces the dissolution of an individual to a group. It describes
mystifying wisdom or revelatory abjectionʼ³. For Sontag such
and confuses multiple selves leaving characters boundless,
works are inhabited by ʻcharacters who have supernatural options,
unknowing and unfinished. Everyone is in the dark. Susan Sontag’s
like shapeshifting and resurrection; novels that evoke imaginary
‘Outlandish,’ coincidently the last she wrote, she describes
geography ‘⁴. Embi is instructed to keep his eyes open, take notes
how the work resists genre, existing across many. ‘Science
and listen and to ʻwrite in the third person as much as possibleʼ⁵
fiction. Tale, fable, allegory. Philosophical novel. Dream novel.
On protesting as to how he can be as impartial as his recording
Literature of fantasy. Wisdom lit. Spoof.’⁸ The characters seem
equipment, the bishop explains, ʻspoken words are facts in
to inhabit an unknown multiplicity of selves. Sontag highlights
themselves, whether they are true or false. When people talk they
this by making an analogy to Virginia Woolf’s ‘The Waves’ in
reveal themselves, wether they are lying or telling the truth.ʼ⁶
which the characters’ internal monologues on the physical
Laxness’s novel becomes both the narrative and the report of the
and visual can only be mediated through the author as if in a
journey. This narrative voice is so interesting because although it’s
séance. Both works have an uncanny and otherworldly character.
a common device to present a philosophical fiction as a document,
found or recovered; Under the Glacier is a report submitted to us.
Roland Barthes writes, ‘As soon as a fact is narrated no longer
with a view to acting directly on reality but intransitively...
15
Connie Butler
disconnection occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters
with the other to hear their response and indeed their own voice in
14 Bromberg, Craig,
into his own death, writing begins’⁹ Embi is not Laxness, he is a
order to gauge how effectively they have put their ideas. Parts of
‘That Collaborating Itch’,
tool for the Author. Barthes dictates that ‘the Modern Scriptor
this dialogue still remain unspoken. ʻSometimes collaborations are
ARTnews, vol. 87, no.
is born Simultaneously with the text’¹⁰. I think embi embodies
about a sense of procedure, about concrete social relationships
9, nov 1998, p.161. 19
the ‘modern Scriptor.’ ‘For him, on pure gesture of inscription...
- the conversational quality of day to day exchange. Others take
Rogoff Irit. ʻProduction
traces a field without origin – or which, at least, has no other
place in the realm of the symbolic, in a repository of power where
Linesʼ collabarts.com
origin than language itself, language which ceaselessly calls into
the proper names of individuals come together and are essential.’¹⁴
15-16 Rogoff Irit.
question all origins.’¹¹ This is precisely embi’s task, to inscribe and
What I am talking about here is the former, the work that arises
ʻProduction Linesʼ
decipher the language of others, but as he tries to find meaning,
through the non-verbal elements of existing together over time as
collabarts.com
pattern or sense they slip further and further from his grasp.
opposed to collaborations of mutual convenience. Remembered by
Fogginess and unknowing are constants in Under The Glacier,
historians for their ‘dominant leaders’ Irit Rogoff draws attention
embi knows nothing; his inexperience is his virtue. In her talk
to how a history of collectivity is recorded and remembered in
at the symposium ‘This Sentence is Now Being Performed’
ʻProduction Linesʼ. For Rogoff, collaboration is bent and warped
in the Academy Bildenden Kunst Vienna November 2010,
to fit ‘the orthodox narrative of modernism.ʼ¹⁵ She argues that
an aging and shaky but fiercely sharp Simone Forti recited,
‘this traditional modernist perception of collaboration ignores
eyes closed, a new and unpublished haiku from memory.
the inherent radical possibilities for a revision of the relation
between imagination, cultural activity, and artistic institutions.ʼ¹⁶
9-11 Barthes, Roland. ʻImage
‘I pray in a language I don’t understand,
In contrast to how we narratively describe and record groups and
in fact I don’t pray in any language at all,
collectives within history, recent turns in psychology mean that we
and I don’t understand’¹²
are thinking differently all the time about how our minds operate
Music Text.ʼ ʻDeath of the
Authorʼ p 142. Fontana
alone, in pairs and in groups. In fact sometimes it is arguable how
Forti articulates an internal voice trying to report back, but
our collective thinking is actually changing within these fields, or
press, 1992.
failing to find sense in the language she has to do this with. It
whether it’s more that our language for our experience is changing.
12 Forti, Simone. ʻIn
could be said that all we are is the stories we tell about ourselves
Conversation with Carrie
at any one time. Our capacity for forming autobiographical
Psychologist Gwen McAdams describes how we are unreliable
lambert-Beatty.ʼ Symposium
narratives is our most important tool for creating a unified
narrators of ourselves, when we act ‘out of character’ what is it
‘This Sentence is Now
sense of self. ‘A person is a composite of person-like parts.’¹³
we act out of? She favours the word ʻdisorganisationʼ. When we
Being Performed’ Academy
like the icons on our desktops we are an organised assemblage
become disorganised in our narrative we become fragmented and
Bildenden Kunst, Vienna. Nov
of parts, our sense of self is not necessarily illusionary.
in-cohesive. McAdams describes how existing with other people
2010
13 Strawson, Galen. ʻAgainst
16
changes the way the mind works; group dynamics can change
Collaboration demands an externalisation of an internal
a persons ability to create narrative. This is the lens through
Narrativity.ʼ ‘The Self?’,
dialogue. To collaborate you often have to talk to them out loud.
which I would like to look at Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell’s
Wiley-Blackwell, 10 May
Speaking out loud is not something we always do in an individual
collaborations. This type of collaboration finds its roots in what
2005
practice. One collaborator aims to communicate a point of view
Stimson and Sholette define as ‘modernist collectivism.’ I could
17
Connie Butler
talk here about Charles and Ray Eames or Jean Arp and Sophie
a type of de-construction normally associated with a post war
17-20 Gilles Deleuze, Felix
Teuber-Arp. Sisters Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf access this
political turn, seemingly revisited here in the wrong decade. The
Guattari, ‘A Thousand
dual creativity, facilitated by the verbi-visual nature of Virginia
pair claim ‘literature is an assemblage, it has nothing to do with
Plateaus; Capitalism and
Woolf’s prose. For a time Vanessa Bell made the original book
ideology.’¹⁹ I would claim their recognition that a revisiting of a
Schizophrenia’ Athlone
cover design’s for Woolf’s publications. Often woodcuts, with
fragmentary deconstructed style as a contemporary tool, is a
Press, 1992
Wonky woodcut typefaces, free hand and un-set. Illustrations
kind of ideology, as they say ‘A book is all the more total for
21 Rogoff, Irit. ʻProduction
would often come close up to Virginiaʼs letter-pressed prose
being fragmented.’²⁰ The aim here is totality rather than a truly
Linesʼ collabarts.com
or sometimes the page would be set around the swirling or
bewildered and wandering prose. The ‘we’ voice devises a third
rhythmic patterns. Often combining black and white or buff
space for their ideas to hover beyond an ‘I’ and therefore subjective
with one colour and a repeating floral motif. The dust jackets
position, they hope to achieve totality in their timelessness.
were produced through the Hogarth Press in collaboration with
Duncan Grant and the Omega workshop. These woodcuts were
In ʻInscribing the temporalʼ Helen Gyger interrogates ʻhow
both painterly and graphic, and although we would only see
to ʻinscribeʼ ourselves amongst others. From sprawling and
them in rare book shops or compendiums on Bloomsbury and
multidisciplinary collectives like 16 Beaver, ʻthe temporal ; for
Omega now, the will to see great piles of multiples all stacked up,
although these dialogues may be fleeting, operate most effectively
able to be reproduced so quickly with Bellʼs ‘decorations’ must
in the moment, their cumulative effect is to build a continuing
have been rewarding to a painter. As opposed to a published
conversation, the past evolving into the future.ʼ Gyger explains that
author, Bell would not usually access a ʻreadershipʼ, the designs
this type of collaborative practice ʻsome part of the temporal will
began to be read graphically. A quick and mass production of
always evade inscriptionʼ For group practices the ʻinscription is not
the sisters duality; Virginia, verbal and Vanessa, visual into one
the end, but another beginning,ʼ as this articulation exists as just
concise multiple object added weight to both, Woolfʼs work now
one of many outputs up for constant re evaluation and discussion.
more associated with Omega design iconography and palette,
For Rogoff, a collective is a ‘mutual and coherent’ coming
and Bellʼs able to access something of her sister’s poetry.
together in order ‘to re evaluate the ways in which meanings
are constituted in culture through the dual, interrelated
18
Writing together in a shared language, Gilles Deleuze and
framework of authorial subject positions and the workings of
Felix Guattari’s Introduction ‘Rhizomeʼ in their collaboratively
the institutions of culture.’²¹ Often a group of collaborators
penned ‘A Thousand Plateaus’ establishes that ʻsince each of us
look to language to establish common ground. This can move
was several’ in their writing practice, ‘there was already quite
from conversation to written ideas. When collaborating in
a crowd.’¹⁷ They merge their authorship to create a very direct
groups individual authorship is dissolved. In the case of a
interpretation of Barthes ‘Modern Scriptor.’ In working together
collective this rejection of authorship can be a political device.
they aim to ‘reach not the point where one no longer says I,
Paolo Virno Writes; ‘It is Marx who, for ʻgeneral intellectʼ, uses
but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether
the term ʻsocial individualʼ. We can postulate that the general
one says I. We are no longer ourselves...We have been aided,
is something pre-individual, a kind of general consciousness that
inspired, multiplied.’¹⁸ A boundlessness is achieved through
exists before individuals form, and from which they form. This
19
Connie Butler
general pre-individual is a we that exists before the different Iʼs
highly orchestrated four or six part medieval religious choral music.
develop, so is not the sum of all Iʼs.’²² Virno reverses my analogy
26 Schlieben, Katharina.
‘Polyphonous Language
with the character of embi, that of an individual building towards a
In ʻTaking the Matter into Common Handsʼ Katherina Schlieben
and Construction of
multitude, by talking of a universal multitude in which we form an
takes a closer look at the use of polyphonous language in the
Identity; Its Dynamic and
ʻIʼ. This could be a more useful way for us to think about the way we
construction of identity within collective processes. These
its Crux’ Taking the Matter
can cooperate in a collective, that we are creating a place to access
ʻpolyphonous
within
into Common Hands; On
something ʻpre-individualʼ as opposed to post-individual if you will.
collective work by way of a ʻdestruction of the rhetoric that has
Contemporary Art and
been practiced within and crept into them.ʼ²⁶ The Publication or
Collaborative Practices’
Deleuze and Guattari alternately place the individual as in
ʻanthologyʼ tracks contemporary collaborative practice through
Black dog Publishing, 2007
opposition to the group and subsumed within it. ‘A teeming
the lens of a symposium held in Stockholm in 2005. The project
27 Barthes, Roland. ʻImage
crowd... A swarm of bees...A rumble of soccer players...A group
attempts to list all known education collectives from The Flying
Music Text.ʼ ʻDeath of the
of tuareg.’²³ Simone Forti’s ‘Huddle’, a nomadic and reoccurring
University founded in Warsaw in 1883, Black Mountain College to
Authorʼ p 146. Fontana
sculpture in which dancers collect in a tightly packed group,
the University of Openness London 2002 and the Paraeducation
press, 1992.
taking turns to climb over the mass, to then be reabsorbed into
Department in Rotterdam. We now have the collectively penned
it; like a swarm of bees. Forti’s dance constructions are based
wikipedia as our first frame of reference, and multiple platforms to
on improvisation and chance, making an interesting analogy with
perform your practice for passing traffic; a new and ever changing
the individual and the group, for example an artist collective, or
language for such storytelling. Shollete attempts to archive all
even a family. Deleuze and Guattari quote Woolf’s ʻMrs Dallowayʼ
known and operating collectives through his Dark Matter project
in a passage describing a characters negotiation of the singular
online. The list reads incomprehensibly, a mix of heavy internet
and plural. ‘To be fully part of the crowd and at the same time
presence and more word of mouth spread names ending in dead
completely outside it, removed from it; to be on the edge, to
ends of untrodden paths and failed hyperlinks, expired domains.
identities
by
analysing
the
language
take a walk like Virginia Woolfʼ²⁴ in relation to the narrative voice
22 Paolo Virno ‘The Grammar
of the Multitude; For an
Analysis of Contemporary
Forms of Life’ MIT press.
23-24 Gilles Deleuze, Felix
Guattari, ‘A Thousand
Plateaus; Capitalism and
Schizophrenia’ Athlone Press,
1992
25 Ball, Hugo. ʻThe DaDa
Manifestoʼ
20
in Mrs Dalloway admitting ʻnever again will I say, ‘I am this, I am
‘‘In the multiplicity of writing, everything is to be disentangled,
that.’ʼ Woolf certainly knows how to achieve totality through
nothing deciphered; the structure can be followed, ‘run’ (like the
fragmentation. Such practices of collaborative writing with a
thread of a stocking) at every point and at every level, but there
disjunctive or deconstructed narrative position take root in early
is nothing beneath; the space of writing is to be ranged over, not
modernist collaborative practices such as the surrealist reading
pierced.ʼ²⁷ Barthes illustrates how we use language to un-define
groups at Cabaret Voltaire. Tristan Tzara’s simultaneous poetry
our artistic identities as readily as we can to pin it down. So now
readings would consist of groups who would read aloud over each
I submit to you my report which is a narration of my research
other in different languages, with different rhythms and tonalities.
practice, but there is always something lost in interpretation, in
This collective was concerned with ‘how articulated language
ʻinscribing the temporalʼ. Since much of our communication within
comes into being... Words emerge, shoulders of words, legs, arms,
groups is not language based, and recordings of oral traditions of
hands of words.’²⁵ This interest in the oral and intangible takes
story telling seem like relics; embiʼs phonographs from the glacier
cues from both improvisational oral and musical traditions, or even
in his duffel bag will never articulate his embodied experience.
21
Connie Butler
ʻWhere am i?ʼ asks embi, losing his companion in the fog. He
shouts for her, ʻUa!ʼ, ʻThe reply to this extraordinary shout was
a chilly cry from out of the fog like that of a great black-backed
gull, and yet not that.ʼ The noise is Uaʼs laughter, ʻshe laughed
and laughed. The house laughed.ʼ²⁸ When Embi was out of sight
of the house he took to his heels, laces untied, and ran as hard
as he could back the way heʼd come, hoping ʻto find the main
road again.ʼ²⁹ embi is brave in his surrender to this group at
the glacier, setting sail to explore these people, with no map or
compass. If ʻour life in language is like a journey within polluted
airʼ³⁰ then our articulation in groups is often only describing
undefined edges of ideas. The individual must put trust in the
collective. Language, or in fact, storytelling is our defense against
the fogginess of the unknown. We have considered what it is
like for an artist, or anyone, any ʻI,ʼ to give up or hand over a
practice of articulating the self. This is a discovery of how
exciting, if risky and bewildering, it can be to become a ʻweʼ.
28-29 Laxness, Halldor.
ʻUnder the Glacierʼ Vintage
international, 2004. p.240
30 Copenhagen Free
University
22
23
Khadija Carroll La
Silk Cage
The silk cage was in a tower built on top of a Shiva temple. It was a room over
the crowd of buildings that push forward, standing on each other’s feet to be
close to the river Ganges. I had thought to myself, there must be rooms with
views in Varanasi, I cannot sleep with the smouldering,
“burning is learning”
bodies.
In this room, could I see ‘India’, could I see the things I had been missing?
It wasn’t glazed, only shuttered. Bars gripped the window,
barring a romantic view of the Orient
but bars could be forgotten in the blur of bartering
with the eager Benari renting the room.
A grotesque bald monkey appeared on the banister.
As we stood on the roof of the room looking over the city
Like an animated gargoyle it circled the rooftop.
“It has eaten some drugs” the landlord said by way of explanation.
24
Carefully I inched from the bald monkey and its commentator and
back down into the room. I was exhausted from the day of
wandering for a sense of inclusion in the mysteries I was sure were happening all around, if only I knew how to initiate myself. Sapped of the last reserves of energy, which seemed to be administered only by the forces of hope, all I wanted was sleep, and soon it came, awhirl with paranoid dreams.
25
Khadija Carroll La
I woke to the skin of my scalp being torn from the cranium.
Little hands were groping through my hair,
pulling so hard they stopped me from sitting up.
Through the bars came this bony fossicking of little hands
yet in terror the hands were gigantic
the hard spine of Rudyard Kipling jabbed into my back
in his description of battle with a Bengal tiger, Kipling also perceived it
supermagnified.
The abrupt haze of twilight on the equator lit this stage of torture
behind the plastic shower curtain, which dressed the window,
the silhouette of a small creature emerged.
I looked again.
Cheeky little monkey hands groping for the food next to the bed.
The monkeys were far more ominous than the tigers here,
swarming and looming like Hitchcock’s birds.
The all too detailed tapestry of colours came in a threadbare burst, before disintegrating entirely under the pressure of night. I watched out of the bared window, like a guard on his first shift, nervous of invasion.
They came, and so did laughter, hysterical,
in the face of which they laughed back and gnashed viciously,
bobbed their whole bodies and holding the bars in one hand,
flew into the room like charred paper monkeys at Chinese new year.
26
The fear, the absurdity of watching, protecting my things, instinctively,
trapped in my cage of choice, always, but now the monkeys outside, wanting to get into the cage and my wanting only to get away from their gaze made the irony acute.
In the prison of my habits, the chaotic was reversed. I sat in a cage and the monkeys leered freely in, with the amusement of children at the zoo.
Photograph by Alex Flynn
27
Lauren Godfrey
1. Mark Beasley ‘Ryan
Gander, Focus’ FRIEZE
Magazine, Issue 86,
October (2004), http://
www.frieze.com/issue/
article/ryan_gander/
2. Beasley, ‘Ryan Gander,
Lauren Godfrey
Giving Talks - ‘An attempt to discuss practice
in a form sympathetic to the work in discussion’
Focus’ (2004)
‘…This is the artist’s account of self, an attempt to discuss
practice in a form sympathetic to the work in discussion.’¹
Writes Mark Beasley of Martin Kippenberger’s 1991 publication
‘I Had A Vision’. This sentiment is key to my investigation; the
artist’s talk that embodies the art work or somehow performs the
subject rather than just discussing it. The quote above was found
in an article about Ryan Gander in Frieze Magazine, its main focus
being the way that Gander uses the format of lectures to deliver
stories or anecdotes and flesh out the stream-of-consciousness
imagery that appears in his artwork ‘The Appendix: A translation
of practice’ (2003) Beasley highlights Gander’s ‘attempt to
give voice to practice’² and spearheads this work as a method
of exposing something deeper about the artist himself. Whilst
Gander’s performative lectures exemplify an entry point into the
artists’ mind or thought process, the packaging of speech act
into artwork is not the focus of my investigation. Rather, I would
like to hone in on a more blurred position between the artist,
lecturer and artwork; the artists’ talk. Specifically a realm in which
the artist is expected to somehow pad out or clarify their practice
28
29
Lauren Godfrey
before an audience. It has become a convention of art schools
3. Francesca Grassi,
and institutions to invite contemporary artists to give a talk
Introduction to Ryan
about their work. Since becoming sensitised to this and acting as
Gander, ‘Loose Associations
a sort of talk gatherer, I have noticed various trends or similarities
and Other Lectures’ (Paris,
in most speakers and the occasional break from the norm, which
Onestar Press, 2007)
subverts or experiments with the format presented to them. I
4. ‘The modern period
shall investigate those lectures that more ambitiously attempt to
is characterised by the
embody the work, discussing various methods and the difficulties
development of the
that are encountered when embarking on such a journey.
“subject” as an individual
at the centre of knowledge’
In the introduction to Gander’s book accompanying his lectures,
Jones p5
‘Loose Associations’, the ‘lecture’ is defined as ‘a situation of
transmission of knowledge from a specialist to an audience.’³ If
we agree that within the institution, we see the artist inevitably
as a specialist on his or herself⁴ , then the audience member can
expect some sort of knowledge transfer to occur; Whether that
be an anecdotal or autobiographical example of experience; an
explanation or introduction of their practice; or the provision of
some kind of actual experience there and then during the lecture.
I shall touch upon the performative and potentially spectacular
aspect of such an event and investigate where the line is drawn
between the artists’ work and the way that they talk about it.
The location of artist’s talks tends to be disembodied from
the work, in a borrowed lecture hall or an appendix room to a
gallery. Resulting in a humming absence of the original work itself,
therefore the essence of the objects or events (whatever the
artwork may be) must be conjured up through language with the
assistance of a slideshow of images. A shift from the physical
to the verbal must occur, an ekphrasis of the original artwork.
The transference from one art form to another, particularly the
visual to the written, ekphrasis is the process of attempting
to describe fully and vividly the existing object or moment in a
way that is disjointed from the original.
30
‘The term ‘ekphrasis’
31
Lauren Godfrey
32
5. Stephen Cheeke ‘Writing
is composed from the Greek words ek (out) and phrassein (to
revelatory moments in her research; we could glimpse into her
Ideology’, Word and Image
For Art, The Aesthetics
tell or to speak).’⁵
This is the artists’ tool to reinterpret their
intimate thought processes and begin to understand more about
7, 1991 301-10 (309)
of Ekphrasis’ (Manchester
work in a new context. They can create new tactics with which
the work through the honest and fluid exposure of its formation.
8 -9. Cheeke, introduction
University Press, 2008) 19
to demonstrate or ‘do’ the work rather than just talking about it.
The lecture was titled ‘Points in a Cloud’ and she said that the
to ‘Writing for Art…’
6. ‘The quivering, ardent
However, it can also be a hindrance if not used to good
diary entries seemed to her like coordinates to map the work. The
(2008) 2
sunlight showed him the
affect. The poetic connotations of the concept of ekphrasis as
work itself involved a certain type of mapping not only with an
10. Held in the
lines of cruelty round the
exemplified in Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’⁶ present
advanced computerised mapping system but a more conceptual
Christopher Ingold
mouth as clearly as if he
it to be something of a delicate tool when appropriated for use
or abstract map through the people relating to the space and their
auditorium at UCL
had been looking into a
in artists’ talks. Whilst the vivid description of an artwork before
memories. She was a cartographer of memory and experience
11. Falke Pisano ‘Figures
mirror after he had done
an audience could be entertaining and potentially poetic, it also
as well as geography or location. The talk therefore acted as an
of Speech’ (Cristoph Keller
some dreadful thing.’ Oscar
contributes to a mythologising of the artwork that the artist
extension of the work itself, sprawling into the lecture hall as an
Editions and JRP Ringier
Wilde, ‘The Picture of
may not feel comfortable with.⁷
Unless the work can be easily
extra limb belonging to the original body. Stidworthy said, upon
Kunstverlag AG, Zürich,
Dorian Gray’ (Cricket House
described, it is difficult to truly communicate the essence of the
being asked whether she saw the talk as part of her work, that
2010) 17
Books Ltd 2010) 68
real thing through description alone. Cheeke remarks upon the
she used the talk format as a place to vent those aspects of
7. Reinforcing the potential
‘gap between language and the visual image’⁸ in his book ‘Writing
her work that did not fit in elsewhere. There was a performative
problems with ekphrasis,
for Art’. If we present ekphrasis as a dilemma, or something that
element but only in the sense that it so faithfully represented
Grant F Scott writes;
the artist needs to appropriate and manipulate for their own
and mirrored the artwork itself that the two seemed to blur.
‘Everywhere in ekphrastic
needs, we can perhaps begin to understand how artists can use
studies we encounter the
this to their advantage. Though talking about poems written for
A dialogue was created between the work and the conversation
language of subterfuge,
paintings, Cheeke identifies the way a writer on art should grasp
about the work that filled a void, allowing us, the audience to
of conspiracy…there is
the reins; ‘The best poems for paintings are themselves works of
find a way into understanding it more coherently. Falke Pisano
something taboo about
art, offering a commentary upon or an interpretation of an artwork
writes in her inquisitive book ‘Figures of Speech’ “each moment
moving across media,
that is simultaneously open to interpretation or appreciation as
of communication embodies an entrance (into the work)”¹¹
even as there is something
an artwork in its own right.”⁹
In Imogen Stidworthy’s talk on
we are given access to a more intimate aspect of the work
profoundly liberating. When
16th February 2011¹⁰
she explained that she would illustrate
that allows us to more fully understand the depths behind
we become ekphrastics we
one of her works by reading diary entries she made during the
it, without them being blatantly stated. One feels that this
begin to act out what is
conception of the work. It was an involved research project
process may be somewhat therapeutic for Stidworthy herself, an
forbidden and incestuous;
that meant she spent a lot of time asking people about certain
opportunity for the artist to solidify and test ideas that seem
we traverse borders with
histories and memories they had related to a particular demolition
still hazy or less determinate than the central focus of the work.
a strange hush, as if being
site. Each day she noted down highlights of conversation and
Stidworthy stated that through this method of delivering a
pursued by a brigade of
observations she had made, probably not anticipating the future
lecture, she wanted to “do something about how (she) work(s),
aesthetic police.’ Grant
exposure of this writing but being aware of its importance
not just explain (the work)” It is these speech acts that cement the
F Scott ‘The Rhetoric of
for her progress and tracking the work. While flicking through
sentiment in a more certain way. The notion of language having its
Dilation: Ekphrasis and
photographs of the location, she read aloud the descriptions of
own agency, the power to ‘do’ something rather than just describe
33
Lauren Godfrey
it is explored by the linguist John L Austin; “Austin distinguishes
The humming presence of the artist creates an invisible buzz
15. Katherine Kuh, ‘The
‘illocutionary’ from ‘perlocutionary’ speech acts: the former are
in the nearness of the human beings to each other, we can
Artist’s Voice: Talks with
speech acts that, in saying do what they say, and do it at the
understand the artwork more fully by seeing and hearing the
Seventeen Artists’ (New
moment of that saying; the latter are speech acts that produce
artist behind the works. The human interaction can physicalise the
York, Harper & Row, 1962)
certain effects as their consequence; by saying something, a
work, highlighting the intricacies that signal sincerity or falsity;
16. Pisano ‘Figures of
certain effect follows.”¹² To make a slightly tenuous link between
“Even the way an artist uses words…”¹⁵ states Katherine Kuh
Speech’ (2010) 46
this aspect of linguistics and the active speech when talking about
romantically in ‘The Artist’s Voice, Talks with Seventeen Artists’.
17. O’Dell refers to the
art, it seems that through the description or active performance of
How does the perception of the work change when the artist uses
interaction of the human
the work, the artist is actually producing art before our very eyes.
words to talk about it? The attempt to make the talk that is being
touch bringing us closer
This gesture was exemplified in a talk that Michael Dean gave
delivered more human, to bring it to life or try “to implement a
to the viscerality of the
on 25th January 2011¹³. He repeated the words “I am thinking
human aspect, feelings and stuff like that, maybe also in the form
image in her book ‘Contract
about” as he introduced the thought process behind the work,
of a person breaking into the text”¹⁶ If we read the word ‘text’
with the Skin’; ‘Pane draws
solidly placing us in the present of his thinking. As if right there
also to mean ‘artwork’, the artist attempts to break into the work,
us close by accentuating
and then he really was thinking about it, even though he was
injecting it with humanness or, more effectively, hinting at the
the invitation to touch the
actually describing a previous moment of thought that resulted in
absence of the work through the embodying presence of the artist.
photograph; included within
the works he showed slides of later. There is nothing to say that
these thoughts were stopped dead when they were vented into the
Alice Channer attempted to infiltrate her work with her own
her own hand touching the
artwork, the continuous nature of his thinking is connoted through
body during a lecture at the Slade on 11th November 2009. She
mirror.’(O’Dell, 1998, p27)
the unending phrasing. His delivery was punchy and urgent, the
twitches in front of the students, shoehorned into a lecture hall
words implying action through their immediacy. This allowed us
meant for scientists. She erects a ladder that obliterates part
into his thought process, another entry point that opened up the
of the projected image, a mirror of her computer screen. The
complexities in his work. On the subject of this instantaneousness
beams of light from the projector catch on the metallic surface.
in speech, Falke Pisano presents her interpretation: “the figure’s
The image of a gallery office, Alice climbs the ladder in order to
speech is both expressed and perceived as to be within the
interact with the image, as though she is climbing to reach the
present, but because the effective circuit between the speaker,
top shelf. On the virtual top shelf, she has placed a large red dot.
12. Judith Butler, ‘Excitable
the spoken and the context is self contained, the affects that
She seems to be re-enacting the moment she climbed a ladder in
Speech, A Politics of the
are produced beyond these limits, always exist in the past or in
the office the first time round to commit the actual gesture. She
Performative’ (Routledge,
the future.”¹⁴
It is true that Dean is talking about something
reaches to a blue dot on the other side of the screen, touching
1997) 3
he has done already or is yet to do, but at the same time, at
the nothingness with her hand. The ladder comes down. She
13. Held at The Slade
the moment he utters the words, he is very much in the present
introduces some of her works, all photographs of an installation.
School of Fine Art lecture
of it. This balance of earlier, later and now is delicate, but it is
For a few minutes she allows a disjointed self to do the talking;
room.
an effective way of making the work seem relevant and forward
a video made by Art Review Magazine of her exhibition at The
moving to place it in the present. It is the knock-on effect
Approach. The camera follows her finger (in shot)¹⁷ around the
that carries the speech act forward and confirms the action.
exhibition, as her voice, leading the interviewer says ‘This bit is
Speech’ (2010) 59
34
the frame is an image of
35
Lauren Godfrey
important, this bit is important, and this bit is important’ as she
events of Channer’s work, she has commissioned a guest to
19. Sam Thorne ‘Alice
points to the spaces between hung sheets of paper and the gaps
wear a particular vintage dress relevant to the work shown; a
Channer, Focus’ FRIEZE
inside wall mounted ‘bangles’. The repetition seems especially
subtle hint at the strong relationship between her work and the
Magazine, Issue 129,
important here, similar to Michael Dean’s use as I mentioned
human body. This interest for Channer seems to have stemmed
(March 2010) http://www.
earlier. The significance of such an utterance is drummed into
from an observation she once made: ‘In a short essay she wrote
frieze.com/issue/article/
the viewer’s head and they leave with it chanting in much the
about Barbara Hepworth’s garden in St Ives (published in The
alice_channer/
same way a catchy jingle or motif from a song can repeat in your
Coelacanth Journal last year), Channer noted how, in photographs
20. ‘As (Chris Burden)
mind. The reminder of the human presence throughout this talk
of the sculptor, ‘it is as if she is actually “wearing” her work’’¹⁹
spoke, I kept looking back
is fundamental to the work itself. She communicates this aspect
36
and forth between the
of the work silently but poignantly as she leads us through the
The presence of the artist and the presence of others embody
slides of his performances
virtual exhibition, substituting the lack of work there and then
the completion of the performance. It is this interdependent
and the actual person
for signals of the content of the art itself. To demonstrate the
relationship that creates a certain atmosphere of exchange and
standing before me.
physicality of her work, while describing a piece involving fabric
excitement during an artist’s talk.²⁰ The relationship not only
Burden was calmly talking
draped from the ceiling, she climbs the ladder again and, standing
exists between the artist and the audience but the artist and
about crawling across
at the top, she unravels metre upon metre of fabric. Allowing
the artwork as well. Pisano explains this mutual dependency in
broken glass or having
us to experience in a disjointed way, the mass of material and
her book; “A figure existed as part of the context it created by
nails pounded through
physical presence of the work. While she could not bring the work
speaking. The created context, in return, would set the limits
his hands, but his short
itself to us, she attempts to conjure up a sense of the realness of
of what the figure could concretely speak about. Therefore
descriptions did not match
the encounter with that representative object. Channer has said
everything that this figure would speak about simultaneously
the overwhelming power
that she sees the talk as material, treating it with the same care
constructed and affected the speaking figure itself.”²¹ She also
of what I was seeing. At
as the fabric she holds in her hands and the work that she hints to.
states in an interview that certain aspects of her own work, in
the time, I was confused
particular the talk which is closely integrated if not intrinsically
and a little anxious. Now, I
Something else happens when Channer appears alongside the
part of the work itself, is non existent without an audience to
think that what Burden was
work itself. At an ‘in conversation’ event at Raven Row¹⁸ , she
project it towards. She uses Paolo Virno’s ideas of the virtuous
saying – precisely by not
seems almost to wear the work. She stands before us, her work
performance in which to nestle her own relationship with talks;
saying it – we as viewers,
an exploration of petrified elastic waistbands, cigarette smoke
“According to Virno, an activity is virtuous when it finds its own
are an active part of the
rings solidified in metal, the banister of the space at Raven
fulfillment, in itself, without objectifying itself into an end product,
artist’s work.’ (O’Dell, 1998
Row wears a marble bangle. The building is dressed in strange
without settling into a “finished product,” or into an object
Page xii (preface))
solid attire. And Alice herself sports silky trousers, elasticated
that would survive the performance. Secondly, it is an activity
at both the waist and the ankle, and a gravity-defying bangle
that requires the presence of others, which exists only in the
Speech’ (2010) 28
18. Thomas Bayrle
lodged halfway up her arm. The similarities are unmissable and
presence of an audience.” ²² It is the public nature of this kind of
22. ibid. 24
and Alice Channer in
clearly not accidental. She appears as an extension of the idea
interaction that allows a new and unpredictable situation to take
Conversation at Raven Row
or perhaps a verification of the sincerity or the depth at which
place each time the artist appears in public amongst an audience.
1st July 2010
the work runs for her. It has been noted that at certain opening
37
Lauren Godfrey
Drawing on ideas from Hannah Arendt’s concept of ‘spaces
the students searched the Wikipedia article and began reading
27. Foucault in Peggy
in Lewis P Hinchman and
of appearance’, the presence of the artist among the ‘public’ or
it with him. Gradually, a cacophony of voices, like a chant, filled
Phelan, ‘Unmarked: The
Sandra K Hinchman (Eds)
lecture-goers creates a necessary realm of interaction that has
the auditorium. His lecture was available to all, at the touch of
politics of performance’,
‘Hannah Arendt: Critical
the power to complete the personal identity. Arendt states that
a button and the original lecturer quickly became one of many.
(London; New York:
Essays’, (State University
‘the space of appearance comes into being whenever men are
Who did this talk belong to now? The question of ownership and
Routledge, 1992) 163
of New York Press, Albany,
together in the manner of speech and action’²³
this situation
authority is raised here as Foucault argues in ‘The History of
28. Grassi, Introduction
1994) 181
rings with an awareness of presence. The projection of the artist’s
Sexuality’; “the agency of domination does not reside in the one
to Ryan Gander, ‘Loose
public self and the viewers’ expectations or interpretations of
who speaks (for it is he who is constrained), but in the one who
Associations and Other
Speech’ (2010) 20
that image are at play. Implicit power-relations are awoken at
listens and says nothing; not in the one who knows and answers,
Lectures’ (2007)
25. Certeau, Michel de.
this point and, again Falke Pisano regards this; ‘a constructed
but in the one who questions and is not supposed to know”’²⁷
29. Held at The Slade
‘The practice of everyday
moment of communication implies an author’²⁴. The tension
His refusal to speak pedagogically was an aggressive decision.
School of Fine Art lecture
life’ translated by Steven
between speaker and listener is exercised and has the potential
This speech act, his presence and the denial of his authority
room on March 17th 2011
Rendall, (Berkeley,
to be upturned. De Certeau perceives the ownership of a moment
by a handful of students created an unusual power balance.
California; London,
of communication or a ‘conversation’ to be shared; ‘the rhetoric
University of California
of ordinary conversation consists of practices which transform
It is a dilemma for the speaking artist how much to divulge.
Press, 1984) p xxiii Intro
“speech situations,” verbal productions in which the interlacing
There is an expectation for them to be honest or exposed to the
of speaking positions weaves an oral fabric without individual
audience. Through the alternative methods of giving artist’s talks,
owners, creations of a communication that belongs to no one.
they can choose how much of their true self to reveal. Gander
Conversation is a provisional and collective effect of competence
spoke candidly on this topic; “The idea is that I’m going to try to
in the art of manipulating “commonplaces” and the inevitability of
be honest about my work. I thought that would be challenging
events in such a way as to make them “habitable”’²⁵ The ownership
because I get to talk about my work at colleges and places a lot,
is beyond the control of those taking part in the conversation.
but when I do I generally tell lies and exaggerate to make the
23. Canovan, Margaret
26. (Slade, http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slade)
work sound better than it is.”²⁸ One expects a certain level of
38
Merlin Carpenter’s talk at the Slade on 16th February 2011
honesty but there is no way of knowing how much the artist is
was a prime example of the shifting power relationship. Carpenter
subjectively twisting the information they reveal to manipulate
commenced his lecture with a brisk clearing of his throat, holding
the audience’s perception of them. One method is the disturbingly
a piece of quivering A4 paper, he began to read: “Slade are an
open, anecdotal way of delivering a lecture, á la Marcia Farquhar.²⁹
English rock band who rose to prominence during the glam rock era
Arriving in the lecture room, I sat down, one of only two audience
of the early 1970s…”²⁶ proceeding to read the entire Wikipedia
members on a cold Wednesday morning. Marcia was stood at the
article for the rock band Slade, his dead pan delivery and refusal
front of the informal room, “no wonder there’s no one here” she
to reveal anything about himself and his work riled up members
said, “the posters are too small. Now that’s what I call a real Slade
of the audience. As the ‘author’ of the lecture, Carpenter had the
welcome…” A shy chuckle scattered the space. Gradually a few
power; but the students were not comfortable being treated so
more people arrived, thanks to Dryden Goodwin rounding up from
carelessly and a battle broke out. In the advent of ‘smart phones’,
the studios. All the while, Farquhar was chatting away, talking
39
Lauren Godfrey
about how she didn’t know what to wear for art school and how
know that Loose Associations is presented by the artist in
32. Grassi, Introduction
she eventually settled on a ‘po-mo’³⁰ shirt. She padded out our
person and that it continues to stand undefined somewhere
to Ryan Gander, ‘Loose
perception of her through anecdotes about making dens for her
between a presentation, a performance and a lecture…I can
Associations and Other
children with rock star’s wives and wishing she could be back at
see why it defies definition as any of the above.”³² Returning to
Lectures’ (2007) 7
art college. Her manner felt as though we were being told her life
the importance of the artist in person, the voice of their own
33. Canovan, ‘Hannah
story in the way she might confide in a close friend over a cup of
work, we see a potential autobiographical aspect to the artists
Arendt: Critical Essays’
tea in her kitchen. There was no beginning and no real end to the
talk genre. Arendt sees the importance of appearing in public or
(1994) 139
lecture, she just began talking and continued talking until people
sharing certain anecdotes as fundamental to the completion of
34. Cathy Lane (ed.),
had to leave for other engagements. Recognising the potential
a personality; “personal identity remains inchoate until it can be
‘Playing With Words, The
controversy in the involved anecdotal approach, she blurted, “This
encapsulated in stories about what one has done and suffered.”
Spoken Word in Artistic
is talking about my work by the way Dryden”. The performative,
She even went so far as to say; “that those who are deprived of
Practice’ (CRiSAP, 2008)
one-time-only aspect to her work was being demonstrated before
opportunities to see and be seen in public, lack an ingredient that
181
our very eyes but without explicitly mentioning that parallel. She
is essential to a satisfying, fully human life.”³³ Perhaps there is a
35. Jacques Derrida ‘Of
told us of a performance she did on the underground before
cleansing or therapeutic element to the performance of the self
Grammatology’, (The Johns
smoking was banned in which she set off indoor fireworks on one
that allows the artist to gain perspective on what is important
Hopkins University Press,
of the carriages. She explained that her heart was warmed when
to them as well as solidifying their own perception of the self.
Baltimore and London,
she met someone twenty years later who had been present for
the original performance and had remembered it. Then declared
This disorganised self that relies on the mythologising or
that she would recreate that experience right there in the
fictionalising of your experiences can be destructive as well
lecture room. She set off an underwhelming puff of a firework
as beneficial. Laurie Anderson said, in an interview with Cathy
and we clapped in good humour. It was clear that she was laying
Lane; “I was known at one point as an ‘autobiographical’ artist,
down the foundations for myths to be spread, creating a semi-
which was one of these very clumsy terms that was invented
spectacular but certainly memorable experience that we could
to try and put people in some kind of bin”³⁴ Of course in this
take away and tell to our friends.³¹ This plays with the balance
situation,
of speaker-as-performance-artist versus artist talking, blurring
of her artwork, but her immediate dismissal of this term
the space between the two. Whilst what she was doing before
exemplifies a fear of exposure that can also play a part in
us was not packaged as ‘work’ or given a title, presented in a
artist’s talks. Merlin Carpenter’s method, for example, could
30. ‘Post Modern’
gallery or even recorded; she was embodying the work to the
be seen as protection from the embarrassment of divulgence.
31. ‘The document of a
extent that it was difficult to decipher between her personality
performance then is only
and the work itself. Similar to Imogen Stidworthy, she was
The rigid preparation behind some of these lectures suggests
a spur to memory, an
‘doing’ something about the work rather than discussing it.
a level of manipulation or attempt to rein in the potentially
to become present.’
(Phelan, 1992, p146)
Anderson
is
speaking
about
the
pigeon-holing
digressive natural speech. Perhaps this solid nature resides only in
encouragement of memory
40
1976) 11
In the introduction to Ryan Gander’s book ‘Loose Associations’,
the written language; “Spoken words …are the symbols of mental
this smeared space of definition is highlighted; “Some might
experience…and written words are the symbols of spoken words”³⁵
41
Lauren Godfrey
Derrida flirts with the idea of a hierarchy between the written
me alone and I leave them alone”. Upon being reminded of this,
38. Phelan, ‘Unmarked:
and the spoken, perhaps for this reason, a viewer more closely
Hamilton was somewhat surprised and said “Who would say that
The politics of performance’
identifies with the spoken talk as opposed to one read from a
about their work, I can’t remember saying that, you would have to
(1992) 148
pre-written script. There is a process that the written words have
have a very strange relationship with your work to say something
39. J-J Rousseau in Derrida
been through that disjoints them from the mental experience.
like that.” Whether there was a misunderstanding or the artist
‘Of Grammatology’ (1976)
There is something uncanny in listening to a well calculated, but
had genuinely forgotten, that statement that was once uttered
27
not recited, speech. Alice Channer had a peculiar delivery during
by Hamilton, came back to haunt (or support) her, the words
her lecture. She showed us an image of a clock. ‘Here is a clock
had been said and retained by someone and could not be erased.
with two faces’ she said. Then later in the talk “Here is another
clock with two faces”. Her voice warbled with a certain fear but
To some extent I have performed that paradox in this
her words were calculated and precise. She had no script but the
essay, paraphrased artists whose words I have solidified and
talk seemed very restrained and slightly wooden, as if she knew
regurgitated. In a way, the very act of writing about talking
exactly what she wanted to say, preventing rogue words from
counteracts the event itself, Peggy Phelan observes this in
escaping her mouth. This presents to us the idea of language
relation to performance documentation; ‘‘To attempt to write
having opacity, a certainty or solidity in the utterance of words.
about the undocumentable event of performance is to invoke the
rules of the written document and thereby alter the event itself.
Judith Butler contradicts this idea in ‘Excitable Speech’ in the
Just as quantum physics discovered that macro-instruments
statement; “My presumption is that speech is always in some
cannot measure microscopic particles without transforming
ways out of our control.”³⁶ There is alchemy in the moment
those particles, so too must performance critics realise that the
between the words being thought and uttered. No matter how
labour to write about performance (and thus to ‘preserve’ it) is
carefully you plan, the words take on an agency of their own once
also a labour that fundamentally alters the event.’³⁸ The topic
they have left the speakers mouth. Each listener can interpret the
of artists’ talks specifically seems to be somewhat neglected in
words or actions during an artists’ talk to mean different things,
written criticism, maybe the shift from utterance to the written
perhaps in relation to their own work or based on the knowledge
word is too awkward. J. -J Rousseau puts this in a more brutal
they already have of the artist. This calculated method heavily
way, “Writing is nothing but the representation of speech; it is
36. Judith Butler, ‘Excitable
opposes the attitude towards speech in the Surrealist tradition;
bizarre that one gives more care to the determining of the image
Speech, A Politics of the
“The surrealists argued for thought that was ‘made in the
than to the object.”³⁹ Perhaps the investigation into artists’ talks
Performative’, (Routledge,
mouth’”³⁷ Allowing the artist to appear impulsive and intuitive.
should be more fluid and loose, not taking the statements of
1997) 15
This can be dangerous however, as one is made aware of the
the artists too seriously in that moment of utterance. Allowing
fact that once words have been uttered, the artist or speaker
them some leeway to say something they do not entirely stand
Introduction to ‘Thinking
can be quoted on them. This is where opacity of speech comes
by. However, there is much to be said for the importance of the
Aloud, Richard Wentworth’,
back into play. Anthea Hamilton was invited to talk by Martina
artists’ presence within an artwork. Over centuries the celebrity
(Hayward Gallery Publishing,
Schmeuker at the Slade on 8th March 2011, on the basis of a
of the artist has been hailed and their words relating to their
1998)
statement she had made in a previous talk; “my sculptures leave
work embody a way into the art or a new perspective on it. The
37. Roger Malbert,
42
43
Lauren Godfrey
artist holds a huge amount of responsibility in that moment of
series of the same talk, which took the form of a sort of ever
communication to faithfully represent their process or feelings
changing edition. Tailored to suit the audience but using the
subsequent to making the work. Of course this is inevitably a
same format as the first, his performance exposed a ‘pile up’ of
subjective account of personal experiences, I have not noted any
experiences from all the previous versions, including a photograph
lectures I have not attended in person; my interpretation of the
of our audience, which was sure to appear in number 10.
significance of these moments is amplified by my own interests
and my own artistic drive. Jones and Stephenson identify the
delicate nature of such a situation, ‘Adopting the notion of
performativity as a critical strategy within the study of visual
culture thus enables a recognition of interpretation as a fragile,
partial, and precarious affair’.⁴⁰ Through the talks I have flagged
up, it is clear that there are ways to more physically express the
intricacies of the work without simply describing it to an audience.
As Jennifer Higgie put it in a talk she gave at the Royal College
of Art about writing about art, the press release should offer an
‘equal illuminating flourish’ to the art it is supporting. If we see the
artists talk as an equal add on or supplement to the artwork as the
press release, this statement summarises the desire or attempt to
embody the work under discussion rather than simply introduce it.
The completion of this text lays in the performance of it.⁴¹
40. Amelia Jones and
In order to confront or remedy the paradox I mention above, I
Andrew Stephenson (Eds.),
adapted the written word into a spoken flow in front of an invited
‘Performing the Body/
audience, acting as a spokesperson or researcher of the topic for
Performing the Text’,
whom the announcing or utterance of the words on these pages
(Routledge, London, New
is an exercise in understanding the discussion I have placed myself
York, 1999) 3
within. I made the original speakers’ text ‘habitable’ as De Certeau
41. ‘Giving Talks’ Lauren
writes, ‘like a rented apartment’⁴² and you, the reader (or listener),
Godfrey and Maki Suzuki,
likewise appropriate my words and those I quote. Re-emphasising
4th May 2011, Harrie
the notion of the shared text or collaborative authorship in a talk,
Massey Lecture Theatre,
the utterance of the words releases them into a free market of
UCL
captured moments, open to interpretation and appropriation.
42. de Certeau ‘The
44
After I delivered my somewhat academic lecture, I invited Maki
Practice of Everyday Life’
Suzuki, a member of the graphic design group åbäke to deliver
(1984) Introduction
his talk about talks, ‘Seriously Forks’. This was number 9 in his
45
That lilac cross hatching cherub fellow
She did re paint it in nineteen fifty two
Took its toll
White underneath that painting
Hand painted
They are all spanish except the second from the left.
Describe it.
Just say what it looks like.
Opaque charcoal grey very flat
Chevron marks buttery yellow (we now wonder)
So flat chalky chalky chalky.
Traditional staffordshire, you know, pottery.
Spain again.
Angelica Bunny Garnet aspects of love say no more.
Got married and never split up
Collapsed after about
Nine years
Mainly gay gave it a go
Various pictures, various boyfriends, local farm, four daughters
She still lives in france.
So thats the family,
Be very careful
Excuse me hello
Thanks so much thank you upstairs.
These are on loan
Thats hers as well
Pot with lemon nineteen twenty nine
Private collection
Cockerel to wake her, dog to guard her
nineteen twenty five book, er, case.
French paperbacks, own quarters really.
Eighteenth century chairs grey fabric nineteen thirty two
Recovered reprinted in eighty seven
Through Laura Ashley
Same with Edwardian chair
Originally Duncan Grant
circa nineteen thirty two facsimile
46
Nineteen thirty seven very close to one in dining room
I don’t know if they showed you
Behind the table
Well its called clouds
But there seems to be a duck
Brown duck,
Chaise longue with spotty dot to dot man
Quite eighties looking bubblegum pink squiggles
Crosshatching popping up
To fill gaps Almost Nineteen thirty nine
(When Clive Bell moved here)
Nineteen thirty nine.
Shade of green
Clad wood walls arsenic,
Bath decorated with a lounging woman
Very
Low
window
Strange laminate flooring,
Imagine floor boards,
Green repainted more going on on the walls,
Paint effects
Slap
Dash.
Favourite collage
Whole pile of pre painted paper,
Newspaper immediately think dada
Rauchenberg pre-dated
Grant trying to be a bit clever,
Nineteen fourteen
Oh right.
That piece of newspaper follows on from that because it says
ʻA child’s best friend
Enrich the blood,
motherhood can be avoided.ʼ
Couldn’t be avoided in nineteen fourteen.
47
Probably eighties
Laura Ashley houses up and down the country
faded in a different way
What have you
Wear of someone having sat in it
Not quite right
Re upholstered
Omega fabric looks like a
Laura Ashley fabric,
Thats really interesting because Itʼs a Laura Ashley fabric.
Collaged pieces of wall paper
Cut out pieces of painted paper
Pulley on light to lower it up and down
Couple of paintings Pipe end thought bubble appearing Aphrodite
Fairy surrounded by some little stars Initial P.R
Drug induced, pipe conjured vision.
V Bell.
Lady using a loom to weave some fabric.
Scratching into the dry paint
Scratching into the wet paint
End of a paintbrush
Door panels of a door
Green, crimson, star sandy coloured, crimson
Opposite side of left hand crimson
Maybe they forgot
Dried too quickly
Bedroom looks homemade boiled sweets stained glass.
One small clue Political leanings of the household
Photocopies
Blown up press cutting nineteen thirty eight
Downing street trade and industry fair
Spiv type character anti slump precautions
Camp positions
ʻThe fellow ought to be ashamed encouraging rainʼ
Katy Moran, (paints off of her mobile phone screen) quality.
48
Oh wow.
Single bed.
Spectacular mask hat nose one eyebrow wings
Native american painted fade
Stone and black orange to sand to yellow, dusky pink, blurry pink
Marbled camouflage like red black blue cream squiggles
Characters closed eyes bright blue eye shadow.
fast Asleep.
Good looking chap
Dylan Thomas.
Written records?
Painting everything,
Holed up here.
Experiment they painted over,
Constant art shouldn’t stay still.
They didn’t paint over their mistakes.
He did come in, height of the ceiling,
Sponged, gave some of their objects,
they gave some of their objects.
paintings do come and go.
Thicker scraper not much of a view out of this window
pointed slate roof.
Duncan Grantʼs mother did all of the stitching in this room.
It really was a family affair.
Stages of the moon or something.
She’s quite something, peer into,
Very feminist very
Connected with the literary movements,
Art school, good grades, its not very long.
wheres everyone else gone?
Theres nothing through there is there.
Mountains.
Straight ahead of you, portrait, self portrait, Still life on loan,
You don’t often see it.
Turn left towards the right.
Macrame. knot string together
Around the radiator, to hide the radiator.
49
Dyed yarn, fringe.
Wallpaper pattern, apostrophes, definitely flowers,
bands, similar, faded.
Little pottery things.
The ways the curtains hang? very well spotted.
What do you mean I really like the look of that bit.
Have you seen our lovely lion yet. its not the original.
Thats a nice one.
Sketch of a bowl of lemons,
All you can make out of the lemons, the
yellow blob,
Classical bowl on a podium.
There is quite a lot Of black actually.
Whats that print there?
Two massive ears pertruding from the wall.
One slightly bigger than the other, not a set.
Imagine they have been cast, stone statue or something.
Made from a mould,
Study of ears for drawing.
This bust, long sort of drawn face.
Pulley system again,
Light pull great big handles,
Lower a long flouresant bulb Down from the beam.
Or raise it.
Mask motif with closed blue eye,
Holes where things have been pinned up.
Darts on the mantle piece.
Children’s drawings, mantle piece, overlap better make out one,
Double sided drawing,
Turning horizontal, miniature stripy legs
Tail without a head, hunting scene,
Massive stationary smily faces
Scraggly scribbled hair
Top hats
That fill to the top of the page.
Very nice painted plates.
What its doing here.yes very bright piece of fabric,
50
Out of place i couldn’t agree with you more,
It seems so out of place,
Find it for you, one no it isn’t it 3,
Off white linen
Rayon brought back from Morocco,
Sixties printed correct correct,
Vivid, doesn’t fit in at all,
Bright the colours were,
What about this, virgin mary,
Bent wood arm chair, gave it to them,
Sent by Sickert
Thought it was the ugliest chair ever seen.
Well I agree with him
Covered with printed cotton,
Covered with printed cotton printed
With saint teresa
She died young and was beatified Probably french.
Nineteen twenty. I cant tell you anything more.
Back again,
That screen, my favourite thing.
Screen Furthest panel
Lilac corn flowery greyish blue stripe down one side,
Square top left hand corner
Very messily painted
Egalitarian, different artists would execute
Different artists designs nineteen thirteen to nineteen nineteen.
Right, decorative arts. back of that panel.
Abstract, angled, triangle, brushy fringe
Turquoise through middle
More figurative gentlemen, yellow cap, futurist body
Bulging legs pink backdrop thin band minty,
bold base rich raspberry pink,
perhaps a woman Sheer skirt,
make out
Thin ankles
Animal like haunchy legs.
Square shoulders,
one very square one very round one eye.
Fringe of quivering ivy, covered in roses
Only the windows from within the ivy.
I’ve got terrible.
51
Sharon Morris
Sharon Morris Ekphrastic Poems
Que me veux-tu? 1928: what do you want of me?
For Claude Cahun, surrealist, artist and writer,
exiled from Paris to the island of Jersey in 1937.
Jailed for her acts of resistance, pushing cars
requisitioned by the Nazis over the cliffs,
telling everyone the truth about the war;
writing everywhere — on walls, sails of boats,
napkins, scraps of paper stuffed into matchboxes,
secreted in soldiers’ pockets. A member of Brunet,
the Trotsky group, first translator of Havelock Ellis,
author of ballads, pantoums and the collage book
Aveux non Avenus, a critique dissembling not
only her self and art, but us, her readers.
Her self-portraits, snaps, deceptively small,
show Cahun as pierrot, coquette, her head
shaven, elongated and doubled in the mirror,
cross-dressed as a dandy, a theatrical mask
hiding her eyes, face white with thick paint,
peeling back successive personas to the body.
From her navel grows a tree bearing fruit —
a hand, ear, mouth, asking Que me veux-tu?
52
53
Sharon Morris
Warpehowski, London, 1988
‘Trust me. Trust me. If you trust me
raise your hand above your head!’
he cried, bringing his fist to his chest,
and yes, you thrust your hand into the air,
whereas the rest of us shuffled our feet
and cast our eyes down to the grey
stone floor of the gallery, knowing
we could never abandon ourselves
like this, to anyone, even though we trust
him to hold faith with the candles
he lit on the streets of Poland,
in the darkness of the cold war.
Woman
for Breda Beban
To see this woman on screen —
watch for fifteen minutes
her face, turn her head once
on the pillow, hair spread out in a halo,
muscles in her neck stiffen, eyelids closed, silence,
except for ambient sounds
in the room
full of people sat gazing at
the shape of her lips
change, her mouth opening,
appearance of her tongue,
widening of her mouth, and after
the moment of orgasm,
eyes flying open
looking back at us,
a smile on her lips,
and as Breda Beban says
this work is less about masturbation
than Van Goch’s field of corn, crows
flying overhead, is
about agriculture.
54
55
Joe Crowdy
1. Of course,
creoles can become the
languages of intellectual
discourse
Joe Crowdy
Talking through Building: Architectural Creoles of the Spanish Holiday
Myron Goldfinger is party responsible for bringing the study of
vernacular architecture into the modern architectural discourse
with his 1969 book Villages in the sun: Mediterranean community
architecture, which details the traditional coastal buildings of Spain,
alongside those of Italy, Greece and North Africa. Whilst undoubtedly
a rich resource, the book betrays a romantic and somewhat
colonialist conception of southern European ways of life as somehow
fixed in time - an architectural Eden untouched by modernity.
The architectural creoles of the small clusters of single-unit
houses in the town of Aguilas on the Spanish Costa Calida are
composed of appropriated physical features from both the imported
International Style, and the vernacular architecture of the area. By
definition, a creole is constructed from a mix of languages for the
purposes of its speaker-producers’ everyday lives – it is not created
as the medium of theory or academia¹ . These particular creoles
demonstrate a liberal approach to architectural composition unlike the absolute truths and strict logic of Modernism – and
reflect a building strategy that is simultaneously cosmopolitan,
yet aware of its local context. Through a reading of the individual
56
57
Joe Crowdy
iterations of these creoles, a complex circulation of messages -
dominated by northern-derived Modernity, the pitched and tiled
2. Goldfinger, Myron,
between the influence of international orthodoxy, the knowledge
roof instantly signifies a desire to evoke the past. Whilst Myron
Villages in the sun:
of local builders, and the desires of national tourists - is exposed.
Goldfinger does note the “red-tiled pitched roofs over wooden
Mediterranean community
framing”² of some traditional coastal architecture, the use of
architecture, 1993 (1969),
Most of these small houses are rendered in stucco and painted
very steeply pitched roofs, and wooden cladding - impersonating
Rizzoli New York, p94
white – perhaps the most widely recognised visual motif of early
the buildings of completely different climates - still retains the
Modernism. Whilst this clean and ‘pure’ aesthetic was employed by
connotation of historical reverence. Interpretations of meaning
the International Style as a signifier of buildings’ abstract, formal
have become so distorted by repeated iteration through building
qualities, it has also been used in Mediterranean architecture for
over time that it is impossible to apply simplistic judgements
centuries. For despite the Modern claim of universalism and clean
of authenticity or origin to any of these individual forms.
breaks with the past, the traditional architecture of the southern
European coast was openly admired by various northern-european
Can surfaces be ornamented with skins of stone without the
architects. How did this seemingly incompatible debt to traditional
loss of the material’s connotations of solidity and integrity?
design within the doctrine of radical modernity come to act as one
Traditional, sturdy, rough-cut stone buildings are called to mind
of the most popularly defining features of northern Modernism? It
with the thinnest tiles of re-constituted material, or even printed
could be because the depiction of tourism itself as an alien cultural
images of marble on ceramic tiles. On patio floors, crazy-paving is
import – confirmed by the detachment of foreign tourists engaged
ostensibly an economical use of broken remnants of an expensive
in their socially isolated practices of insousiance and heliolatry –
material, but the pattern has really become a desirable style in
got wrapped up with the new architecture that was being imported
itself - available in pre-cast concrete shapes that produce surfaces
along with it. Perhaps the sense that this was a completely foreign
implying informality, familiarity, and a sort of rustic charm. As
architectural language concealed the reality that it had certain
a system employed in the creation of an atmosphere, crazy-
innate connections with the native architecture of the area. In
paving is inherently communicative rather than purely functional.
making this relationship apparent, the small houses of Aguilas
open up an extremely complex conversation on the very notion
Other ceramic tiles construct geometric patterns on semi-
of what can be attributed to the traditional or to modernity. This
external walls with blue glazes: are they reminiscent of the
conversation is articulated by various other concrete features of
interior decoration of ‘quintessentially Spanish’ monuments
these buildings, which all come together as a defining vocabulary.
like the Alhambra in Granada – which is indeed itself a relic of
Spain’s period as a colonial territory of Islamic northern Africa?
58
Flat roofs also act as emblems of modernity despite their
On the other hand they sometimes seem to belong to the
historical presence in the area; they have come to be associated
art-nouveau tradition of Gaudi’s Barcelona. Or perhaps they
with the box-like structures of tower blocks which eke out the
divulge a subscription to a Modern obsession with hygiene?
maximum usable interior space possible, as well as implying modern
Utilised from bathrooms to metro stations, the tile is the
concrete construction techniques. Despite a long history of flat
perfect Modernist device: mass-produced, simple to assemble
roofs serving hot and dry climates, in this urban environment
in a grid formation, and easy to keep shiny and dirt-free.
59
Joe Crowdy
animalistic body, not to the educated mind or enlightened visual
Along with this lexicon of materials and surfaces, a fundamental
perception. The International Style is essentially Cartesian – it is
structure used throughout all this small holiday architecture is
architecture primarily designed for floating eyeballs with brains
the solarium – in many different variations. From timber framed
attached, it belongs to “a future... that is to be one of disavowal of
loggia running along the front of buildings, roof-spaces opened up
the body, and of the primary and organic functions, in the name of
as terraces, short arched arcades acting as sheltered solariums,
radiant and functional objectivity”⁴ . Despite Le Corbusier’s battle
or covered patios and semi-open courtyards – these houses are
cry of the ‘house as a machine for living in’, this is living that strives
dominated by their inclusion of open-air space into the functional
to appear simply as being and consuming, as opposed to producing
business of living. The outside is colonised by the interior; these
(meals, money, babies) and working (cleaning or childcare).
4. Baudrillard, 2005, p43
substantial additions to the floorspace of houses provide useful
spaces to eat, prepare food and hang out clothes to dry – they
Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye (1928 -1931) is a sort of Cartesian
create a controlled space to make best use of the local climate.
exemplar, functioning much better as a persuasive intellectual
The different enclosing solutions of these spaces carefully regulate
manifesto than a place to actually live in. This flowing series of
light, heat, wind, and moisture - often by facing the cool wind
ramps, and long curving walls with windows cut horizontally out of
of the sea, sheltering behind permeable screens or next to the
them in order to provide a directed sequence of carefully crafted
bigger bulk of other buildings. Whilst the high-rise blocks nearby
views of architecture and garden, is the setting for German artist
all recognise the need for some sort of semi-outdoor space,
Ulla Von Brandenburg’s 2009 work Singspiel. Projected onto the
it almost exclusively takes the form of the balcony. Of course
final wall of a small labyrinth of block colour fabric panels, a black
balconies vary in size, and some can perhaps come to provide
and white film composed of a single shot glides along a seemingly
space to eat, but it is fundamentally a structure designed to look
controlled route around the Villa Savoye, occasionally bringing
out from: to admire a vista. These long thin balconies with their
silent characters into view, but passing them by before the nature
waist-high railings, all facing out to the blue Mediterranean Sea,
of their activity becomes clear. The frame eventually settles,
belong to Modernism’s essential emphasis on the visual. Rather
circling a group of ten people apparently taking tea, who open
than comprising another variant of the sheltered extensions of
their mouths to converse in one single childlike voice (the artist’s
everyday life in the clustered houses of Aguilas, the balcony is in
own), singing what sounds like a forlorn folk song. Their gestures
fact part of the idea of the modern ‘house of glass [which] does
are heightened and mannered, perhaps to compensate for the
not open onto the outside at all; instead it is the outside world,
stealing of words from their mouths, as they are constrained
nature, landscapes, that penetrates... The whole world thus
to converse only in these pre-set lyrics. This seemingly family
becomes integrated as spectacle into the domestic universe”³ .
group, made up only of adults of diverse ages, doesn’t fit the
mould of the nuclear-family unit that almost all Modernist urban
3. Baudrillard, Jean
The system of objects,
2005 (1958), Verso
London, p43
60
Wildly diverse aspects of the Modernist programme – from
planning and house design caters for and therefore venerates.
horizontal strip windows, to urban design based on graphic zoning
Katarina
Gregos
delineates
this
domain
of
Brandenburg’s
– reveal that the visual is valued over and above any other sense.
work as a site “where communication takes place on a pre-
Hearing, touching, or tasting – these are senses that belong to the
linguistic level”, dispensing with “immediately legible narrative
61
Joe Crowdy
structure”⁵. Is Modernist architecture by its very nature a visual
The clean lines and grid-like order of the rectangular block
domain designed to be read, not listened to, or spoken with?
buildings on the other hand are set in stone from the moment
they leave the designer’s table – they are fixed forms according
The decorative concrete blocks that are used to form
to pre-conceived ideas of what life will (should?) be like. The
permeable screens in Aguilas certainly look like a foreign
gaps between buildings also communicate different ideologies;
typography waiting to be de-coded. The functionality of these
hulking multi-storey slabs are set around open spaces containing
ubiquitous forms comes from their very decorativeness – as
lawns, tennis courts and swimming pools, facilitating an integral
facilitators of the patio culture through moderating the harsh
component of Modern leisure – sport, self-improvement, and the
summer sun but allowing sea breezes to circulate into these
aspiration for perfect bodies. The beach itself has been vastly
outdoor rooms. Although they are sometimes used as net curtain-
expanded by earthworks bringing tonnes of grey grit to create
like privacy devices, due to the very close proximity of lots of
broad swathes of flat shore, providing plenty of room for rows
these houses they can be actually quite easy to see through
of sun loungers and volleyball pitches. The cluttered clusters of
into the outdoor rooms they often surround. Indeed, compared
smaller houses on the other hand are characterised by their tight
to the completely isolated cantilevered balconies of tall blocks,
conglomeration; the abundance of shared external staircases,
impossible to peer up into, these open screens seem quite
alleys, and overlooking neighbours results in plenty of shade and
sociable. Within the standardised square block format, quite a
shelter – making use of the protective benefits of the built crowd.
lot of variation in pattern-making is possible; different ‘letters’
can be called upon to compose Moorish, Modern, mathematical,
organic, or baroque narratives. This typography and the whole
“Tout Communique!” - at home with the cybernetician
patio format spread all over the suburban front gardens of
Britain, evidence of holiday-makers not only importing their
Whilst these small clustered holiday houses offer such a rich
own cultural practices to Spain, but exporting elements of
dialogue between references, influences, desires for the future,
these architectural creoles back to their domestic spaces.
and everyday ways of life, the Modern project in architecture
does itself place great emphasis on the transmission of
5. Gregos, Katerina
Ulla Von Brandenburg,
Flash Art no. 267, July –
September 2009
62
The system through which all these different material and
messages and the articulation of relations between objects. In
structural elements are composed is like a flexible grammatical
his comprehensive structuralist analysis of the modern interior -
rulebook. Most immediately distinguishable is the articulation of
The System of Objects, Jean Baudrillard details the rise and rise
single houses within larger conglomerations. Whether they are
of the new organisation of domestic space, where “everything
completely detached, or terraced up a slope, the clear separation
has to intercommunicate”⁶ , as part of the idolisation of the
of single units sits in contrast with high-rise architecture’s
machine. The rapid acceleration in technology over the 19th and
endeavour to unify individual houses within large, pure forms.
20th centuries brought about a change from a society that used
As well as the practical benefits of additional roof-space and
individual tools for individual functions, to one in the thrall of
terracing, this organic approach to growth allows for continual
complex machines composed of myriad smaller functioning parts,
alteration and addition according to the needs of its inhabitants.
coherent and synthesised orchestras of action, where each part
63
Joe Crowdy
is multifunctional and inter-dependent. The modern era was – and
rendered entirely ‘logical’. Is there something we can poach from
9. Seremetakis, C. Nadia
still is – characterised by an increase in the speed and efficiency of
the idea of “tout communique” that acknowledges their criticism?
The memory of the senses,
the transmission of goods, people, and information – from canals
Perhaps, if the notion that it can be controlled and rationalised
1996 within Ben Highmore
to trains to motorways, and through newspapers, magazines,
is dropped, a space of intercommunicating objects and subjects
2009, Routledge London
radio and now the internet. The fetishisation of communication
can actually be a messy, unexpected, and ultimately creative site.
p205
manifests itself in the domestic environment through a shift from
10. Seremetakis, 2009,
defined rooms containing stable sets of symbolic objects, to fluid
In The Memory of the Senses, C. Nadia Seremetakis describes
p212
spaces of modular parts artfully arranged in the communication
a sensory landscape of objects that contain the historical
11. Seremetakis, 2009,
of “atmosphere”⁷ . The trials and tribulations of Monsieur Hulot
residue of previous interaction, that can provoke gestures,
p212
in the films of Jacques Tati articulate this shift perfectly; in
discourses, or acts, which in turn alter the strata of information
12. Gómez-Moriana, Rafael,
Mon Oncle (1958), Hulot’s modernity-embracing sister Madame
that defines what the objects mean once more ⁹. Every act
‘Strike a pose, Mark’
Arpel gives visitors the tour of her newly decorated open-
of sensing is therefore tangled up with collective memory:
Issue no 32 June/July
plan home, moving between functional areas and the carefully
there can be no isolated perception. Seremetakis locates the
2011, Frame Publishers
placed apparatus of living, exclaiming “Tout Communique!”.
senses in “a social-material field outside the body”, allowing
Amsterdam p148
for “multidirectional channels of meaning” between subjects
also “A close reading of
modern house-furnishings
reveals that they converse
among themselves with
an ease in every way
comparable to that of the
dinner guests, that they
mingle and drift apart with
the very same freedom, and
that they convey the same
message: namely, that it
is quite possible to live
without working.” p48
64
Madame Arpel’s husband, as the manager of a plastics
and objects¹⁰ . Crucially, this transactional and improvisational
factory, fits the role of the “jeune cadre” (young executive)
nature of perception means that “authorship is not only linked
that Kristin Ross describes in her brilliant analysis of the often
to production but also to use and consumption”¹¹ . The sensory
ignored interdependence of the processes of decolonisation and
consumption of the perceived, and the use of artifacts, is not
modernisation in postwar France. Whilst the second process
simply a repetitive carrying out of an existing idiom, but can open
tried to distance itself from the first, Ross demonstrates that
up a rich and fertile space for the production of new meaning.
modernity was in fact born out of the ashes of colonialism:
that the technocratic and bureaucratic practices that France so
emphatically adopted in the postwar period were in fact roles
Writing Architecture and speaking building
learnt and practised in the colonial territories in the efficient
control and organisation of its overseas subjects. These
Whilst Modernist architecture may fetishise communication and
practices are brought home in the evening by the modern
try to control coherent systems transmitting information, and the
man that Baudrillard christens “the cybernetician... someone
small holiday buildings of Aguilas can be read as living conversations
obesessed
between references and agents, there is a third kind of dialogue that
with
the
perfect
circulation
of
messages”⁸
.
can take place through building - one that is a lot closer to the verbal.
Whilst Baudrillard or Tati criticise this ‘tout communique”
culture, what they are really opposed to is the idea that
“Building becomes architecture when it is reproduced
subjects can or should have complete control over their physical
photographically”¹²
environment, and that this environment can or should be
65
Joe Crowdy
If we understand writing as the recorded transcription
of language on the page or screen, then
Most significantly, speaking is a physical act - it is created by
Architecture with a
the physical manipulation of the mouth and lungs, it enters and
capital A (a profession and space of intellectual discourse)
fills space, it travels and is received (willingly or not) by ears.
is a fundamentally written mode. That is to say, it exists in
documented form, is transposed to a code through which
If speaking is fundamentally a complex series of gestures
it can be disseminated and entered into the discourse. The
that the body can employ in order to communicate in physical
primary site of the manifestation of Architecture lies in glossy
space, then those gestural practices of builders and inhabitants
magazines and journals, books, conferences and exhibitions.
can undoubtably form part of the very same spoken mode.
Research, writing, model making and the general design
processes that take place before building begins, and the
documentation and publication that happens afterwards – this
is the stuff that the practice of Architecture is really made
of – not the activities of the labourer or project manager,
not the gestures of the bricklayer or plasterer, and certainly
not the cooking, crapping, and copulating of its future users.
If building only becomes Architecture when it is documented
and
shared
–
and
demonstrates
some
knowledge
of
contemporary architectural discourse, it follows that those
buildings which don’t participate in this discourse are not
actually Architecture. This non-architecture is defined by the
gestures of its physical creators and social inhabitants, that
take place not on the page, but within its built iterations.
Written language is used when the writer and the listener are
not physically together, it is required when communication takes
place between people in separate places, at different times. Modern
Architecture too wants to exist beyond time; expressions of pure
rationality are designed to remain rational forever, not become
obsolete or dated. Speaking, on the other hand, normally dissolves
almost as soon has it has come into being. It generally takes place
66
between parties physically present, who construct their utterances
This is an excerpt from a longer essay, which can be found online
specifically for the other body in the room, and expect a response.
at: www.joecrowdy.wordpress.com
67
Joe Crowdy
Holiday Chalet: Sitting on level platform to compensate for slope, tall vertical
sides of resulting terrace faced with rough shaped cream stones in style of older
buildings. Wooden railings stained darker run between short stocky stone pillars
on top of retaining wall to lean on and look at view.
Holidaying Relative: Hang wet swimming towels and costumes over railing to
dry. On stone tops of ivy-covered pillars, bash pine nuts with designated rock to
extract tasty kernels. In crazy paving and gravel desert below terrace, cram two
white plastic sun-loungers with stripy piping-edged cushions into small circle of
shade cast by tall pine tree.
HC: Lower paved area surrounded with short perforated concrete block wall
provides generous space for post-swim sunbathing. Small pool lined with square
white ceramic tiles, thin line of dark blue tiles around water level, surrounded with
smooth pre-cast concrete coping blocks.
HR: Family divided into those who swim and those who don’t. Water quite cold
but sun hot, so float as near to surface as possible to feel warm rays, careful to
duck under often to escape wasps landing on wet hair. After swim, jump back
across hot patio to house for drink in as few steps as possible to avoid burning
feet.
HC: Solarium incorporated at corner to make most of winter sun and summer
shade, formed with rustic pointed but broad arches on two perpendicular sides
with thick pillar between, covered in stucco and painted white.
HR: Bare arms and back scratch against rough stucco whilst moving to sit down in
sort of traditional pastiche arched corner loggia. Drink foamy beer - avoid ashtray
beercan - gobble up tinned mussels and crisps, flick flies off palm heart salad, talk
about morning hike, move inside for rest of lunch.
HC: Main exterior door opens straight into open-plan sitting and dining room. In
centre of space, heavy stone chimney and fireplace divide room into two zones.
Long thin horizontal windows with black ironwork grilles lie along wall which faces
towards best views outside.
HR: Close shutters, too hot. Move tables together for big lunch brought in by
inlaws on unceasing series of plates, piled with barbecued sardines, fish with
unrecognised names. Family disperses to cooler rooms for naps. Whole house
darkened by closed shutters. Lie on sofa next to fireplace to sleep, look at brass
knick-knacks hung around hearth.
68
69
Khadija Carroll La
For Seth Siegelaub, Elfriede Gerstl, and Charlotte von Zinnenburg,
who had their reasons for collecting textiles.
A Georgian room in Raven Row
paneled where the textiles go
100YearsWhiteCubeViolencePostIndustialLondon
Ripped out, cut up, laid out, vitrine
politics repressed, repainted, reseen
fragments under Siegelaub’s bed
textile-books on Capital reseamed
holocaust hide-out under lingère
Elfriede’s childhood smuggled in Other’s dresses
absent breasts in tailored silk vests
hung on whited-out panels
fabric swatch, concept, referent
denial of vestment.
La Lingere (from L’art de la lingere by Francois-Alexandre-Pierre de Garsualt),
Textile collected by Seth Siegelaub, Dressing Room at Raven Row, The Stuff that Matters, 2012.
70
71

VVVV - Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll

Transcription

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