viii Anywhere

Anywhere viii Anywhere Art at the Outermost Limits of LocationSpecificity viii Anywhere viii FRONT MATTER iv Foreword Professor Su Baker AM vi Foreword Anne Gaines viii Introduction Simone Douglas and Sean Lowry pROjEcTs 04 Navigating Digital Landscapes Amber Eve Anderson 08 A Thing You Could Repeat to Yourself if You Wanted Archie Barry 10 The Missing Album Joanne Choueiri 14 In Memory of Water, Towards a Poetry of the Unimagined Shoufay Derz 18 Collective Intelligence | the Ecological Stewardship of Honeybees Mark Gardner 22 The Essence of Fashion Adam Geczy 26 Live Stream Christine Howard Sandoval 30 Cups of Nun Chai Alana Hunt 34 I feel like trying. I mean crying. LungA School 40 New Hypothetical Continents: Experimenting with U/Dystopia Benjamin Matthews 46 Technās Tranquil Submission: On Being Spoken Nancy Mauro-Flude 52 Parsons X Hela X Unfpa Lifecycle Undergarment Project Brendan McCarthy & Isobel Webster 56 On Drawing Ana Mendes 60 #exstrange: A Curatorial Intervention on eBay Rebekah Modrak & Marialaura Ghidini 64 The Grid Annie Morrad & Ian McArthur 70 And The World Will Be As One Jacob Olmedo 74 In the Wake of Museul Whiteness Macushla Robinson 78 Matsushima Bunko Museum Ryota Sato 82 Textiles as Art, Culture, and Science: Discovery of the Ephemeral and Perennial Imprints Through Modeled Ecosystem Luciana Scrutchen 88 The Common Ground of Light and Dark Leela Shanker 92 What Happens if Tommy Lee Jones Doesn’t Write Back? Mark Shorter 96 Filming a Quasi-Fictional Cartographic Landscape and Other Absurd Methods: Typographic Landscape Ecologies, Alameda, Ca, USA Joshua Singer 100 Three Conversations Bird Closet (SOIL SERIES: A Social Drawing) 106 Elsewhere / Tomorrow Kaspar Stöbe + Nicolò Krättli 112 High Island Circumambulation Andrew Stooke 116 The Cubby Cave; the Raft; the Return Threshold; and Sun, Moon, Walk Shan Turner- Carroll 120 Ris Publica Jessica Winton 124 Walking With Satellites Christopher Wood ENd MATTER 128 Bios 134 Editors The publication was designed and printed on the lands of the Boonwurung and Wurundjeri people of the Eastern Kulin nation. CoVA / University of Melbourne would like to acknowledge that we work on land belonging to the world’s longest living continuous cultures, and that sovereignty was never ceded. Foreword iv We congratulate the artists and writers and all participants The Centre of Visual Art (CoVA) is proud to partner with Parsons Fine Art (Parsons School of Design, The New School) on Anywhere viii and to celebrate our new partnership with Parsons Fine Art. CoVA is a joint project between colleagues at the Faculty of the Fine Arts and Music and the Faculty of Arts School of Culture and Communication and is a new nexus of visual arts study fostering innovative research, collaborative projects and fertile exchanges across various university facilities and with international partners such as Parsons, The New School. Both contemporary and historically-minded, CoVA charts the changing climates of local and international visual art practice and pedagogy, acknowledging and foregrounding the unresolved cultural and geopolitical conditions into which it arrives, on the traditional lands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. New knowledge will be discovered and applied through this lens, forging global connections from within our Asia-Pacific region and beyond, thus influencing fundamental discussions in art and design practice, art history and writing, curating and arts management. We congratulate the artists and writers and all participants and look forward sharing to the multiple modes of experience contained in this issue. PROFESSOR SU BAKER AM Pro-Vice Chancellor Engagement & Director, Centre of Visual Arts CoVA | Victorian College of the Arts | Faculty of the Fine Arts and Music | University Of Melbourne v Foreword vi We celebrate these generative thinkers and creators The School of Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons School of Design is so pleased to continue to support the thriving partnership with the Centre of Visual Art in the Victorian College of the Arts at the University of Melbourne for this third volume of Anywhere. There is a deep commitment through this collaboration to uncover and investigate larger questions regarding human life on earth through a range of interdisciplinary practices in a global context. There is an investment in raising consciousness for life, society and culture with a mind towards transcending the known. We celebrate these generative thinkers and creators that you will encounter in this volume and their work across hybrid approaches to practice, their challenges to current limitations and progress towards the future of practices. ANNE GAINES Dean for the School of Art, Media, and Technology Parsons School of Design vii Anywhere viii Simone Douglas and Artistic research, like the world of a work of art, can be accessed and represented in numerous ways in its uneven passages from conception through production to dissemination. Sean Lowry viii Artists and curators have long reached beyond the constraints of established institutional structures and traditional exhibition spaces. These tendencies were first clearly articulated (with some notable historical avant-garde precedents) in the language that framed conceptual and systems-based art in the 1960s and 1970s. The focus then, as it is today, was upon locating or creating alternative circuits. Today, notwithstanding our significantly technologically augmented capacity to reach and create new audiences, much contemporary artistic activity still invariably plays directly to an audience of connected peers. Moreover, given that much of this activity is now documented and disseminated as it happens through its surrounding peer network, the robustness of documentation and critical discussion can become easily distorted. Consequently, an inherent correlation to social acceptance and favorability can limit our capacity to meaningfully evaluate quality, and often excludes contributions outside a core group. Also, given that much art now shares media with other databases and websites, algorithmically driven perceptions of popularity can further influence ways in which art is evaluated, interpreted and valued. This situation invariably presents challenges to artists and curators seeking to establish new audiences or disseminate ideas. For many contemporary artists, the often asymmetrically invested power wielded by traditional institutional models and globally mobile “super” curators can be problematic. Consequently, it is more important than ever to create alternative vehicles for selecting, evaluating, and disseminating advanced art. Undeniably, using technology to engage with communities of interest is as much the domain of everyday life as it is art. Project Anywhere, which was founded in 2012, is promoted online through artistic and institutional networks as a global blind peer reviewed exhibition program dedicated to art and artistic research at the outermost limits of location-specificity. Although Project Anywhere is primarily communicated via a dedicated website and related online networks, it is not an online exhibition model. It is instead a vehicle presented through the Internet as an exhibition comprising the entire globe in which the role of curator is replaced with a blind peer evaluation system. With no curatorial imperative to develop specific thematic orientations, this radical curator-less approach is specifically designed to suit highly speculative and often radically transcategorical artistic projects potentially located anywhere and elsewhere in space and time. At the cessation of Project Anywhere’s annual hosting period, all projects are considered eligible (irrespective as to any demonstrated capacity to meet proposed objectives) for inclusion in our biennial conference Anywhere and Elsewhere, which is held at Parsons School of Design in New York. Interestingly, it is at this juncture that a form of curatorship is introduced to the mix. This free two-day event features presentations from artists that have successfully navigated blind peer evaluation through Project Anywhere, together with a complementary selection of invited presentations from established artists, curators and writers. Following the conference, participants are invited to develop material for our biennial series titled Anywhere. This issue is the third in that series. Like its predecessors, Anywhere viii features contributions ranging from scholarly texts to photo essays to annotated diagrams and graphic illustrations (or indeed any other page-based representation that points toward artistic projects located anywhere and elsewhere in space and time.). Considered together, Project Anywhere, Anywhere and Elsewhere, and Anywhere all seek to locate alternative reflective moments in the often-uneven process from conception through production to dissemination in artistic research. Today, new artistic and curatorial approaches are emerging in tandem with digitallyactivated modes of presentation and dissemination distinguished by perpetual reproducibility, ix multiple intersecting temporalities and materializations, and the subsidence of physical space. Significantly, many of these approaches are no longer necessarily connected to singular events or spaces and are perhaps better understood as omnidirectional movements between modes of conception, production and dissemination connected through the screen as a communal space. This communal space might offer either access to new works, illuminate the existence of works understood to be elsewhere in time and space, or offer multiple or alternative materializations, versions, attributions, interpretations and representations of existing works. Artistic research can be represented in multiple ways as it moves between modes of conception, production and dissemination. This volume explores a broad range of questions associated with presenting, experiencing, discussing and evaluating art located anywhere and elsewhere in space and time. We are delighted to welcome you to the many worlds contained within Anywhere viii. SIMONE DOUGLAS AND SEAN LOWRY x 1 Projects 2 3 Navigating Digital Landscapes Amber Eve Anderson Caribbean Paradise, 2016, Screen capture of publicly-uploaded Google Maps image, 1920 x 1080 pixels Amber Eve Anderson Digital technology is significantly altering the ways in which we experience place and the real world. Through the internet, we can travel anywhere without leaving the comfort of our own home. 4 Google Maps, specifically, has had a major impact on the ways in which we explore new places. While traditional paper maps force the user to insert oneself into an existing landscape, services like Google Maps situate the user as a dot in the middle of a digital map that is constructed from the center outwards. This has a profound impact on the way we conceptualize ourselves in terms of the spaces we inhabit, as well as how we navigate those 1 Lohr, Steve. places. We are constantly locating ourselves, but we don’t really know where we are. “Facial Recognition When I moved to Rabat in 2014, the capital city of Morocco, it was the first time I had is Accurate, if lived abroad since purchasing an iPhone 4 the previous year. As a late adopter of this handheld You’re a White Guy.” The New York technology, I was acutely aware of how accustomed I had become to following the course Times at nytimes. dictated by my device. In Rabat—a city new to me with a limited digital landscape—navigation com, https:// www.nytimes. was a matter of trial and error. I would often go to the nearest corner, board a bus heading com/2018/02/09/ toward the city center, and hope it didn’t make any unexpected turns. When I attempted to technology/facialrecognition-racepreview my route using Google Street View, I discovered it didn’t exist in Morocco. artificial-intelligence. In the United States, most cities—from New York to Baltimore to Omaha—are so html. Accessed April 15, 2019. thoroughly documented on Google Street View that the blue lines indicating represented streets become solid shapes, and it is the undocumented areas that stand in contrast to the 2 Debord, Guy. “Introduction rest. These absences are equally as important as their counterparts. In cities like Rabat, where to a Critique of Google has not mapped the terrain, Google relies on its users to publicly upload 360-degree Urban Geography.” The Library at Street View images. In these places, small blue dots on the digital map indicate user-uploaded nothingness.org, content. The result of such a practice prioritizes a city seen through an outsider’s lens, one in http://library. nothingness.org/ which tourist destinations are documented first and more frequently than the rest of the city. articles/SI/en/ This is not unlike facial recognition software that struggles to recognize facial features display/2. Accessed August 26, 2016. of people with darker skin tones1 or that cannot account for smaller eyes. The development of the internet through a western lens leaves gaping holes in both experience and understanding. Using Google Street View’s app, anyone with a smartphone can document and publicly upload a 360-degree image anywhere in the world. From a single position, the app directs users to spin in a circle, pausing on orange dots in order to capture 41 still images that are then stitched together to form a “sphere.” If the user fails to capture the entire surroundings, for example, looking overhead or underfoot, Google leaves the area undocumented. In such instances, a black circle looms. In my own publicly-uploaded image of Bab al-Had, one of the entrances to the old city in Rabat, a black circle stands in for the sky directly overhead that I failed to photograph. Mine is not the only glitched image in the sky over Morocco. Upon making this discovery, I looked through all of the other publicly-uploaded images on Google Street View in Rabat and discovered 60 others with black holes in the sky overhead. Using my smartphone, I took screenshots of every black hole, printed the collection, and arranged them from the smallest to the largest. While the Google Street View app is undoubtedly empowering—allowing users to add their own personal experiences to the collective archive—Holes in the Digital Sphere suggests an increasing absence in one’s experience online, no matter how closely that experience comes to approximate real life. In becoming more skeptical of the ways Google prioritizes information, I set out to disrupt the usual means of navigation via digital devices. In “Theory of the Dérive,” (dérive meaning “drift” in French), Guy Debord encouraged pedestrians to navigate urban terrain through observation of one’s surroundings and the resulting impulses.2 Debord’s work took visual form in non-traditional maps that spliced urban centers into disconnected pieces, strung together by meandering, roundabout arrows. Navigation and walking itself became fertile territory for investigation. Building upon this historical precedent, Views from 5 Paradise calls into question the inherent limitation Google Maps imposes upon one’s impulse Amber Eve Anderson Bab al-Had, 2015, Screen capture of publicly-uploaded 360-degree Google Street View image, 1680 x 1050 pixels. Amber Eve Anderson Holes in the Digital Sphere (detail), 2015, 60 Printed Screen Captures, 15.2 x 640 cms By traveling to the places of business in Baltimore that use the word paradise in their name, I conflate a utopian ideal with a physical reality. 6 to explore. Within the Google Maps interface, step-by-step directions from one location to another are dependent upon a handful of established variables that prioritize speed, cost, or efficiency. When used as a navigational tool, one is less likely to get lost, encounter the unexpected, or even look around. The word paradise represents a place of perfection or escape, conjuring images of sunsets and shorelines. An initial Google search of the word yields a row of these types of images, a song by Coldplay, a 2013 movie, a Wikipedia entry, and an image of Google Maps with various pins and business names: Paradise Nails, Paradise Inn, Paradise Fragrances, etc. Whereas one would typically begin with a known destination in Google Maps, here, the idea of paradise is the starting point, rather than the end result. Using language as a means of navigation within the Google Maps interface upsets the usual expectations of encounter and exploration. By traveling to the places of business in Baltimore that use the word paradise in their name, I conflate a utopian ideal with a physical reality. My starting point was Caribbean Paradise at 1818 N. Charles St, a “compact, threestory eatery with a low-key vibe offering Caribbean dishes, cocktails, and reggae.” In visiting these places, I step beyond the reach of Google Maps and Street View into the undocumented. From inside, I redirect the gaze from the street looking in, to the visitor looking out, a behavior typical of visitors to “paradise,” but a perspective otherwise absent from Google Street View. The implication of redirecting the gaze is to reach beyond the realm of that which a device can depict. By publicly-uploading the images, I am constructing a new archive of an urban paradise. The search itself and the act of documentation are performative acts of meandering, ones that anyone with an internet connection searching Google Maps for these places of business may come across, and that will outlast the places of business themselves. The “paradisiacal” reality that I discovered in Baltimore was far more dystopian than I had imagined. Shortly after I began my exploration, Caribbean Paradise closed for business, and as I continued my search, I discovered other businesses either closed, or in abandoned neighborhoods next to boarded up row houses. Baltimore is a city in which income inequality and systemic racism are prominently on display. Most of the physical locations of paradise were disheartening. After visiting only three locations—the Jamaican restaurant, a bar, and a mini mart—I abandoned my idea, feeling voyeuristic in that the discrepancy between the imagined and the reality was too great. I explored the remaining locations of paradise from afar, using Google Maps and Street View, thus upending my own intentions that this project would be a useful means for physical exploration. Instead, I purposefully used the interface of Google Maps to distance myself from those places. Holes in the Digital Sphere and Views from Paradise expose the divide between actual experience and virtual experience, creating new knowledge for navigating space in the digital era. These works call into question the effect of the digital world on everyday life by upsetting the usual means of interaction. They are a subversive means to critique contemporary methods of navigation, using poetics to navigate digital spaces and to inspire exploration beyond the linear. 7 A Thing You Could Repeat to Yourself if You Wanted Archie Barry 8 Vocab picnic in my mind. Whatever you attend to becomes safe. DSM feeling proud of declassifying people who never believed in its nomenclature. Fuzzy eavesdropping for mondegreens on public transport, “mummy likes it when daddy is a wife too.” Listening to the tone and not the words. Reading the arm movements for feelings. Being quiet doesn’t always mean going unheard, some people learn to listen. Doggo memes/language ecologies about beings who don’t use that language. Being so obsessive that I stop comprehending the definition of obsession. Violent comments on yiff compilations. To make the point of literacy become a fluency in crumpling words. I believe onomatopoeia can give us something other than metaphor and irony. I have a suspicion that portmanteau can cut us but can’t deliver us. I want deliverance. Somehow restrict the dominant hand. ~ Susceptible to bitrot and autocorrect, made from insignificant quantities of vibrating air that disperse at their very moment of becoming. Defenceless against deletion, erasure, shifts in spelling and meaning. Getting misheard, mispronounced and misspelled, I want to feel the vulnerability of words. ‘Cute’ used to mean acute and cunning, now it means endearing youthful softness. Cuteness is a fleecy way of living, not about power, no voice, no command. ~ Words get less wordy when they are sung, rhythm makes words legible to bodies. Sometimes I feel like dancing is language getting digested in my body, remembering some good digestion amid strangers in dark spaces on hard wood floors, remembering getting bashed up too and the way that it’s impossible to speak afterwards. Take the air out of the body, take the words out of the body. ~ Even with air words never seem to fully form, and a thing that is unformed is vulnerable. We are words in the way we say, “I am [proper noun]”, but it’s the body that lends that noun the classification of proper. The first time I heard someone ask to be called “it” I felt mildly anxious, and after some time it was a gift. Redesignating words to soften the object/subject divide is a simple way of questioning agency and ownership. Saying something makes it so, but only if you repeat it in a timely way to people with the prior neural training to consider it. ~ Here are some words invented within the ecology of my family, they don’t get spoken anymore because my family is dispersed. Berf, wef, snurf, birrel, caramel-sue, caramel-k, boysie. ~ I practice making excellent words, I practice making them excel. I want them to get tired. I want some words to be the moment before now? To practice making words come when I want them, they never really arrive, and they never do nothing. 9 The Missing Album Joanne Choueiri Collection of scanned sketches of interviewees as part of I did not grow up in a war: Chapter 02, 2015, presented at Piet Zwart Graduate Exhibition in Rotterdam, the Netherlands Joanne Choueiri The Missing Album is an ongoing project that attempts to gather an archive of photographs of Lebanese people living / hiding in their homes during the Beirut Civil War (1975–1990). 10 LEBANON (2015 – ) The project serves as a continuation of a larger project “I did not grow up in a war”—which has investigated memories through a series of audio testimonials of Lebanese people in their houses during the war. As part of this project, the importance of safety and survival within the domestic interior and its particular rooms (bathroom, entrance hall, kitchen…) were foregrounded. Consequently, individual memories merge into collective memory, and questions pertaining to the state of the home and its interior during the war—especially with the absence of an equipped bomb shelter—are raised. The Missing Album is a tool to shape collective memory and discuss whether any photographic archive exists showcasing the states of these families within these rooms. 1 Karl Sharro, K. (2013). Warspace: The Lebanese civil war, which spanned 15 years, had an enormous impact on Lebanon. Geographies of conflict The conflict involved different local and foreign political parties, all brutally fighting amongst in Beirut. [online] openDemocracy. each other for territorial power. Behind these scenes that took place on the streets of Beirut https://www. and extended onto its suburbs, families took shelter in their homes. Within this context, opendemocracy.net/ opensecurity/karlLebanese writer and architect Karl Sharro discusses importance of the house: “At the next sharro/warspacelevel, the smallest units of society, the family and the individual, and correspondingly, the geographies-ofconflict-in-beirut smallest spatial unit, the house, will increase in definition and clarity at the expense of the [Accessed 4 Aug. public realm”.1 In this sense, Sharro, highlighted the value of the home as a safe locale, and 2016]. the only remnant of the urban when all else—the public space, the space of battlefield—has been utterly destroyed. This project focuses on these stories of survival when the house becomes the only space of safety. The Missing Album was an idea that emerged during many hours spent looking at war photographs in the development of “I did not grow up in a war”. It soon became clear that there was a profound lack of l photographic documentation of everyday life during the conflict. Significantly, “I did not grow up in a war” arose from a need for a deeper understanding of what was occurring behind closed doors in the house. Each person shared a story about a room of the house that closely relates to the war, serving as a starting point for their plot. Taking on the role of the therapist, a series of questions were posed, followed by a drawing session that led the interviewees to delve deeper into their memories giving off more of a physical account of the story. The testimonials that were registered as audio files and drawings erase the importance of the person’s identity, and instead focus on the similarities of the stories being accounted for. The project manifested through several chapters creating different interpretations of war. The first chapter contextualized the conflict through a series of archival material from newspaper clippings and written memoirs to photographs, creating poetic associations between image and text. The second chapter introduces the audio-recorded interviews through a collection of images of rooms drawn by the interviewees alongside their accompanying written transcripts (see Fig.1). The third chapter is based solely on audio transcripts. Theses recorded narratives consisted of a grafted polyphony of individuals addressing different areas of the house that most strongly marked their memories. Individual memories thus combine and describe the state of each room during the war, especially with the absence of an equipped bomb shelter (See: https://vimeo.com/133825891 ) The interviews I conducted shed light on specific rooms of the house—such as the bathroom, the entrance hall, and the bomb shelter (given their strategic placement within the home). These safe rooms were typically placed between two walls with minimal glass facades (given ever-present danger of conflict). Through these narratives, methods of necessary adaptation became obvious. In some instances, people built walls out of concrete blocks in 11 their entrance halls to save themselves from any glass breaking. In others they used sand bags Joanne Choueiri Mother preparing to give her daughter a shower in a red tub while family watches, 1983, Photograph, Beirut, Lebanon Joanne Choueiri Group of people gathering around a column hiding in the underground parking lot, 1986, Photograph, Beirut, Lebanon The archival process began by asking 35 interviewees for photographs of their safe spaces. Of these 35 interviewees, only two were able to find photographical evidence of their spaces during the war. 12 These images help to reveal moments within the 15-year Lebanese civil war that point toward the possibility of creating an archive of memories of the home during wartime. 2 Soha Abou Taha (2015). “Ce qui s’est passé le 13 avril 1975 ? Je n’en ai aucune idée” L’Orient le Jour. p.2. Print 13 to cast themselves away from any potential danger. Some closed off an entire neighbourhood using their cars to protect their new-found home. The home and the various interior changes that occurred to it become the sole witness of each family’s survival. Locked in the memories of Lebanese people’s minds, the project seeks to uncover the main protagonists, the toilet, the entrance hall, the hallways, the kitchen, the stairs, and the bedroom. The Missing Album seeks to illuminate the role of the home during wartime. It attempts to gather and collect photographs of the spaces of survival from people within homes and associated forms of shelter. As part of the 40th anniversary of the Lebanese Civil War in 2015, journalist Soha Abou Taha’s “Ce qui s’est passé le 13 avril 1975 ? Je n’en ai aucune idée” (What happened on the 13th of April 1975? I have no idea) reflected upon the ignorance of younger Lebanese towards the war.2 Given that the Lebanese Civil War is a national taboo, and no agreed historical account exists in the national educational system, citizens clearly prefer to ignore their shared history. With this in mind, this project has sought to create a more intimate and less explicitly politicized portrait of the conflict—that is, one that shares stories of witness and survival from within the home. The collection of such photographs in The Missing Album provides an opportunity to tell stories of the house and might highlight its importance within the context of war. Moreover, it might give way to the formation of a cross-generational collective memory set within the home. The archival process began by asking 35 interviewees for photographs of their safe spaces. Of these 35 interviewees, only two were able to find photographical evidence of their spaces during the war. Figure 2 depicts an image of a child ready to take her shower in the red bucket, with her mother huddled up around her, together with other family members. Tellingly, the interviewee explained that the bedroom needed to be moved to the entrance hall, as it was considerably safer. It was quite normal for kids to be washed in these buckets in the shielded space of an entranceway. Figure 3 shows a group of smiling youngsters cramped up around a white column. What is not evident in the photograph is that the people were all grouped in an underground parking space because their houses were exposed from all directions and did not have any bomb shelter. Their only safe space was a 20-minute walk away to a nearby shopping centre’s underground parking. These examples, although few in number, reflect upon the idea of the home and questions what a home is at times of war. In the first example, the entrance hall became the place for bathing, eating, and gathering. In the second, a vast parking lot shared with strangers had become home. These images help to reveal moments within the 15-year Lebanese civil war that point toward the possibility of creating an archive of memories of the home during wartime. It is indeed likely that few would think to take photographs in a state of war, especially with the lack of digital photography at the time. This leads to a broader question: does the Lebanese population have little or no photographic evidence of their home lives between 1975 and 1990 (notwithstanding that this was the only relatively safe haven)? If that is the case, how might this affect the identity of the nation (given the role of the photograph as a tool for both individual memory and the collective archive)? In Memory of Water, Towards a Poetry of the Unimagined Now the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit moved upon the face of the waters. —Eleanor Wilner, “Reading the Bible Backwards,” in Reversing the Spell, (Port Townsend: Copper Canyon Press, 1997). I will have spent my life trying to understand the function of remembering, which is not the opposite of forgetting, but rather its lining. We do not remember, we rewrite memory much as history is rewritten. How can one remember thirst? —Chris Marker, Sans Soleil Shoufay Derz Shoufay Derz’s practice is concerned with the limits and possibilities of language and the ambiguities faced when attempting to visually articulate the edges of the known. 14 Shoufay Derz Ritual for the Death of the Reef, 2018, Photography by Shoufay Derz Documentation of UTS Pedagogical exploration at the School of Architecture: Factory of Hyper-ecologies (2018): Nathan Chan, Yvette Salmon, Stefanie Li, Kevin Chuang, Edwin Chin Fai Chon, Daniel Viglione, Nurul Farra Nadia Binti Zaed, Perry Cheang, Alice Pui Sze Ng, Roger Miranda, Tina Bao Ngoc Le, Nitika Duggal, Thi Thanh Mai Phan, Kate Harding, Rhys Collins under the supervision of Amaia Sánchez-Velasco (Grandeza Studio) and Shoufay Derz. 15 Just as the writer uses words to express the ineffable, her practice engages the intersections between known and unknown worlds. Deeply engaged with poetic potentiality her projects attempt to connect the silences in language with holes in social, structural and geological landscapes to contemplate the voids of history and also the uncertainties of future landscapes. The resultant, elegiac artworks are simultaneously a lament on the transience of life and a celebration of its mystery. Recently her performative experiments have played with Dadaesque tactics of intuition and humour to convey stories of exclusion and collectivity, while delving into the transformative possibilities, impossibilities and risks of site-specific storytelling. In darker times, expressions of joy can be a radical activity. For the project Ritual for the Death of the Reef, the Great Barrier Reef was presumed dead and the assembly of ritual participants were given the chance to imagine returning to its once living biosphere to pay respects through the creation of its memorial. Through the creation of collective rituals, the work speculated on the role of poetic imagination in the fate of the biosphere and GBR. The experimental pedological performances at UQ – Heron Island Research Station were in collaboration with Masters of Architecture Students and Amaia SanchezVelasco, lecturer at the School of Architecture from the University of Technology Sydney. Shoufay Derz Ritual for the Death of the Reef, 2018, Photography by Shoufay Derz. Documentation of UTS Pedagogical exploration at the School of Architecture: Factory of Hyper-ecologies (2018): Nathan Chan, Yvette Salmon, Stefanie Li, Kevin Chuang, Edwin Chin Fai Chon, Daniel Viglione, Nurul Farra Nadia Binti Zaed, Perry Cheang, Alice Pui Sze Ng, Roger Miranda, Tina Bao Ngoc Le, Nitika Duggal, Thi Thanh Mai Phan, Kate Harding, Rhys Collins under the supervision of Amaia Sánchez-Velasco (Grandeza Studio) and Shoufay Derz. 16 17 Shoufay Derz Expulsions, 2018, video-still (2:44 looped) Collective Intelligence | the Ecological Stewardship of Honeybees Mark Gardner Tanzania Asali & Nyuki Sanctuary, 2015. Digital Rendering Montage. © Jaklitsch/Gardner Architects Mark Gardner “Every year faced with life-or-death problems of choosing and traveling to a new home, honeybees stake everything on a process that includes collective fact finding, vigorous debate and consensus building.” —Thomas D. Seeley, Honeybee Democracy (2010) 18 1 Clementine Deliss, Manifesto for the Rights of Access to Collections, 2018, np 2 Édouard Glissant, Betsy Wing (trans.) Poetics of Relation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997) pp 5–6 19 The Honeybee plays a major role in the local ecology and the biodiversity of its habitat is directly influenced by good land use planning ⁄ management practices and transparent governance. In 1997, Tanzania adopted a National Environmental Policy. The rationale was based on a need assessment to deal with environmental issues on a national scale. Three key issues were: a) Land degradation reducing the productivity of soils in many parts of the country, b) Loss of wildlife habitats and biodiversity, threatening the national heritage and creating an uncertain future for the tourist industry, and c) Deforestation, with forest and woodland heritage being reduced year by year through clearance for agriculture, wood fuel and other demands. The Tanzania Beekeepers Asali and Nyuki Sanctuary, is a honey (asali), bee (nyuki) education and community center. It is being developed from the strategic partnership of Follow the Honey, a Boston-based non-profit, and National Beekeeping Supplies, an NGO in Tanzania with government support. The objective is to bring a collective of Cooperative & Tribal Beekeepers together, through a new apiary study center, to share information in both formal and informal ways, exchange beekeeping methods and provide a commercial exchange of honeybee products. The Sanctuary is intended to be a place to share experiences and exchange beekeeping methods, production techniques and information about weather, disease, and micro-finance; as well as provide a place for commerce exchange of local honey & bee products. The program elements include a centralized harvesting facility for honey extraction and processing, capable of meeting EU and U.S requirements; a large open-air honey market; and a study center for education and services to local villages, in support of their beekeeping activities. By teaching sustainable methods, providing resources and a market for harvested products, a supportive Tanzanian government hopes to provide a means of economic support to rural agricultural communities. By teaching sustainable methods, providing resources and a market for harvested products, a supportive Tanzanian investment community hopes to providea means of economic support to rural agricultural communities. The key relationship of people to pollinators in the global ecological system is straining to keep equilibrium. The systems in Africa are intact for now but must be managed. A key component of our design advocacy is to help foster a sense of community, collaboration and improvement through informal and formal spaces for interaction, learning and sharing an age-old tradition shared across the globe. The facility is a prototype that could be a replicated in other global locales, where local people work with stressed bee populations to maintain a biodiverse ecology. The Nyuki Sanctuary is meant to bring public awareness of the unique ecosystems on Tanzania. There is also a need to raise awareness of the relationship between development and the environment. The Nyuki Sanctuary’s mission is to promote that community participation can lead to environmental action. The members of the cooperative will find that in equitable sharing of the revenue of the nyuki production will lead to creating a population of environmental stewards. Environmental stewardship has grown in importance with the intensifying of environmental problems identified at the issuance of The National Environmental Policy. The twenty years that have followed have seen population growth around urban centers, deforestation and environmental degradation. The processing facility will be built for global distribution and all distributive profits will return to the Sanctuary to encourage and-use policy, conservation, and ecotourism. The courtyards and cellular pattern facilitates micro-groups to form in discussion and informal gatherings to exchange experiences and information regarding beekeeping methods, production techniques, weather, disease, microfinance etc. building upon social fabric that exists in villages but extending that beyond discrete villages into a larger network of shared intelligence and contact with the global community. The construction of this project signifies an important initiative that promotes economic growth that maintains and honors Tanzania’s rich beekeeping history that is in harmony with wildlife and land conservation practices. The Tanzania Beekeepers Asali & Nyuki Sanctuary builds upon the social fabric that exists in villages as the foundation for establishing a larger network of shared intelligence and contact with the global community – creating an invaluable resource of support for the agricultural communities throughout the greater region. The construction will promote the use of formed bricks or rammed earth which will form the building out of the landscape of a semi-arid landscape. The processing facility will be built for global distribution and profits will return to the Cooperative Hub to encourage land-use policy, conservation, and eco-tourism. The courtyards and cellular pattern facilitates micro-groups to form in discussion and informal gatherings to exchange experiences and information regarding beekeeping methods, production techniques, weather, disease, micro-finance etc. building upon social fabric that exists in villages but extending that beyond discrete villages into a larger network of shared intelligence and contact with the global educational & commercial community. We are pursuing through our research in Social Practice, Design Advocacy, and Pilot Program, a transformative and “actionable idealism”. REFERENCE Seeley, T. D. (2010). Honeybee Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 20 21 Mark Gardner Tanzania Asali & Nyuki Sanctuary, 2015. Digital Rendering Montage. © Jaklitsch/Gardner Architects The Essence of Fashion1 Adam Geczy Fashion 101 holds that fashion is an embodied practice. Any first-timers to the relatively new discipline of fashion theory do well to start there. 22 Fashion 101 holds that fashion is an embodied practice. Any first-timers to the relatively new discipline of fashion theory do well to start there. It is also the quality that largely distinguishes it from other practices, notably art. Conventionally—and this means outside of notable exceptions such as when clothing and dress are in a museum display—fashion is made to be worn, to partake in the lived world. Our perception of a garment, when not worn, is as potential to be worn, and therefore to be incomplete until such wearing takes place. As sociology of fashion for over a hundred years would have it, fashion is in time and already pregnant in the word itself is that it is evanescent, passing. For something to be fashionable immediately suggests that it will be surpassed sometime soon. That is, that something will no longer occupy the spaces of lived transaction. By contrast, art is a disembodied practice, and it works under the presumption that it is superior to fashion because while historical, it can continue to speak of and for that historical moment into perpetuity where past fashion exists as a relic of something lost. The perceptive reader will already begin to feel uneasy with this reasoning, which is its extrapolation becomes more and more shaky. For when viewed historically, fashion can speak as much of its time as a work of art and can be expressive of the hopes and desires of that time just as effectively. When fashion is divested of the body, especially when the garment is distinctive in one way or another, it can speak eloquently of the losses of time and ghosts of imagination. And if fashion is not entirely an embodied practice, nor is art an entirely disembodied one either. Particularly art from the twentieth century onwards, which has had its share of the body intercepting it in many ways: not only in artists like Matisse and Picasso designing costumes for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, or Rodchenko’s Constructivist or Balla’s Futurist clothing designs, but also collage itself, in which the material and literal world inflitrates the abstract realm of art. When we turn to performance art, the differences blur all the more. With performance, we can argue that in art the premium is placed on the artist and the idea, while with fashion, the emphasis in largely on the clothing. But more problems arise: with figures like Leigh Bowery or Andy Warhol, where does the role of art begin and that of fashion end? If fashion is worn and when that fashion is in fashion, what makes it so? Image. A fashion in fashion is there to project an image and for the sake of one. It exists against what was in fashion, the fashion it usurped, and in anticipation of the next thing in fashion. Each of these fashions may have family resemblances, as indeed most of them have, but each of them are accompanied by a shift in image, which is to say that what is at play and at stake is something that is not reducible to the garment, but rather what is made of it, what it projects, what effect it produces. A stark example of this interplay is when Sharon Stone wore a Gap T-shirt when she presented at the Oscars in 1996. It is notable because of Sharon Stone as celebrity wears a garment associated with non-celebrity status at a blue-chip celebrity event. It is because of the generic nature of the garment that the emphasis turns to the act. The question, then, is: “fashion, where is it?” To begin, let us turn to an example that sits outside, or alongside, what is commonly taken to be fashion. performance artist, Marina Abramovic first performed The Artist is Present at her eponymously titled retrospective at MoMA from 14 March to 31 May 2010, where she sat and stared at some 1500 people over 700 hours. The simplicity of the act isolated a number of key factors in performance art in general, and celebrity in particular. Abramovic, an art celebrity in her own right, is ratified, confirmed, benighted as celebrity once again by dint of her retrospective at MoMA in New York. It is her presence that matters and it is in asserting her presence that her presence matters more still, and it is the artwork made from the mattering of her presence that makes 23 the performance about her existence, which in turn, ostensibly at least, is linked to the 1 Some of this essay contains excerpts from Adam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas, Fashion Installation: Body, Space, and Performance, London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2019. existence of all the people who stare and her and to whom she stares back. The blogger Hari Kunzru comments that: “On the opening night, Abramovic sat at her table and began her eye-work. It was like watching the queen receive artworld courtiers. The artist’s presence was functioning (as you’d expect, given the location and the crowd) within the matrix of specular 2 Hari Kunzru, contemporary celebrity.”2 At one point in the exhibition, the actor James Franco joins in on “Marina Abramovic: the act (the incident is documented on YouTube). His presence adds yet another layer to The Artist is an already convoluted conundrum. Far from cancelling one another out, the co-presence Present”, 12 June, 2010, https://www. of an art celebrity with a film celebrity boosted the auratic power exponentially, while also harikunzru.com/ creating a self-feeding circuit of impalpable value-addedness. In short, the events isolated the marina-abramovicthe-artist-is-present/ quality of perceived quality itself. Nothing was made or achieved except to determinate this Accessed 3 June, indeterminate value, which is nothing without audience participation. Celebrity is all about 2019. consensus about something imponderable and enviable. It must be imponderable because were to be rationalised it would lose its mystique. Fashion, like celebrity, is not rooted in the garment itself but rather the garment is but a catalyst to something beyond it, physically and in time. To accept this is to find that the assertion that fashion is an embodied practice is insufficient for the signifying chain necessary for fashion to be fashionable. If the essence of fashion is not limited to the garment itself it is in the surrounding “air” around it, construed as what it evokes. If this be the case, then perhaps the essence of fashion lies neither in the body nor the garment, but in perfume. In 1922, around the time of the first production of that institution of perfume, Chanel No. 5, before its official release, Gabriel “Coco” Chanel ordered it to be sprayed at regular intervals throughout her boutique, creating a seductive haze. Ever the canny entrepreneur, the strategy also attuned the olfactory senses which would be alerted once presented with the perfume in earnest, the subliminal familiarity engendering an irresistible urge to have it. Filling the boutique full of scent was also a gesture that would turn the observing, choosing, and buying of her designs into something more of a discrete experience. But there was yet another dimension to the perfume that would influence many if not all fashion houses in its wake. With the introduction of synthetic aldehydes, the prices of original essence s could off-set substantially, creating an even greater profit margin. The profit margin for modern-day perfumes far outstrips that of the clothes they are meant to accessorise. And it is common for a brand to begin first as a fragrance, which is followed by the more costly physical goods itself—Tommy Hilfiger is one such example. Fashion begins as something indescribable, as a seductive allusion, before the garments and the bodies are brought to bear upon it. As with Schiaparelli with Shocking although on a much larger scale, it was the sales of Chanel No. 5 that kept Chanel financially solvent during the war years, when fashion markets slumped to almost nothing. (And that was only based on her 10% share.) As a result, perfume became the centrepiece when Viktor&Rolf launched their first “collection” in 1996. Simply titled Launch, the centrepiece was Viktor and Rolf Le Perfum, an empty perfume bottle that could not be opened. The launch had all the same hype and fanfare as any regular luxury perfume form a commercial house: an aggressive marketing campaign, press releases, and luxury packaging. But there was no scent. Viktor & Rolf were making an emphatic statement of the ways in which the fashion world was built around the immaterial, around desire, whim, novelty and a groundless promise of something to come, but which is never materially present. Starting with the ubiquity and finality of the name itself Le Parfum was in many respects the pure perfume, the distillation of the perfume industry 24 which rested in suggestion, as the accompanying blurb maintained: “The perfume The launch had all the same hype and fanfare as any regular luxury perfume form a commercial house: an aggressive marketing campaign, press releases, and luxury packaging. But there was no scent. can neither evaporate nor give off its scent, and will forever be a potential: pure promise.”3 Fulfilling the prophecy and in fact “completing” the work, the Ersatz perfume nonetheless 3 Cit. http://www. basenotes.net/ sold out. Unlike other commercial perfumes, the contents were cost-free, but like commercial ID26123491.html/ perfumes the costs of packaging and marketing outstripped the perfume itself. Perfume is accessed 22 May, 2019 a marketer’s dream, since the powers of evocation and association are extreme: a pleasant smell can be married to any celebrity or scenario. Because of this, Viktor & Rolf could be said to have brought the condition of modern perfume, that is, its indissolubility to the narrative experience and the commercial image, to its foregone conclusion. The void, was the ontological essence of perfume itself, the distillation of perfume per se to its basest elements of imagination and desire. It was an unforeseen, audacious, but in retrospect completely understandable intervention on the perfume industry that drew attention to the pre-existent qualities of perfume as an instrument of the commodity market, and the very proof of Marx’s gnomic statement that “all that is solid melts into air”. Fashion, then, is delivered to us in the manifold types of images which give the fashion its broader “image”. Always transient and contextual, fashion installation places the viewer in an interrogative relation, so that the consumer is made to feel like a participant in an active speculation as to where he or she fits within the particular fashion scenario. This is perhaps why perfume plays such a large part in fashion’s life. Coco Chanel’s ten percent share in No. 5 made her a rich woman, and Schiaparelli was saved financially by her own fragrance when Dior his generation dominated the postwar era. Marcel Rochas is no longer remembered for his gowns but as fragrance. When we review the roll call of famous top-end fashion designers, from Tom Ford to Oscar de la Renta to Viktor & Rolf, it is the perfume that is accessible to most people who cannot afford their garments. It is with the perfume that the designer has the most pervasive and widespread “life”. And nothing is visible except the spaces in which the wearers of these perfumes perform as fashionable wearers. While fashion will always be associated with clothing, perhaps the quintessence of fashion is perfume, the “air” that surrounds it, the blooms of seduction and desire that evoke and promise. Perfume either requires a body to wear it, or a person to smell it. It is always transient, but because the response to it is through the olfactory nerves, its effects can be the deepest, most sensorially visceral. Installation and performance are both fundamentally transient, instating an event and thus “evental”. This transience is always a tarrying with death. The relationship of fashion and death is a common, and necessary philosophical refrain, but also invoked in works by designers themselves. Yet it is this very transience that is also assurance that liveliness of life is not muted. Installations, performances and fashions pass, but it is in their passing that a living memory remains. 25 Live Stream Christine Howard Sandoval Live Stream Video Still, 2018, single channel video, TRT: 32:00 Christine Howard Sandoval The following text is an excerpt from the voice over script for Live Stream, a single channel video and audio piece filmed in the Acequia Madre, a hand dug waterway in Taos, New Mexico (2018). 26 This video is part of a larger project titled CHANNEL, which considers 500-year-old Hispanic and Indigenous agricultural communities that continue to exist in the Southwestern region of the United States. For more information please visit: http://www.chsandoval.com/livestream I acknowledge that I walk on unceded Indigenous land, land that was the home of the Tiwa. I thank the ancestors for allowing me to walk this landscape in silence. 1 Lawrence Kip, “The Indian Council at Walla Walla, May and June, 1855” Sources of the History of Oregon 1, No.2 (1897), pp. 20. I wonder if the ground has anything to say? I wonder if the ground is listening to what is said? I wonder if the ground would come alive and what is on it? Though I hear what the ground says.1 Young Chief (We-ah-Te-na-tee-ma-nay), 1855 Treaty Council A- rr- ōyō, arroyo Or rambla in Spanish, and wadi in Arabic, because this land is connected to all other desert lands and their people. In the arroyo you can hear the awkward laughter of young people, erosion did not wash away the dirt’s memories, when we were young and found ways to kill time in the sandy bottoms carved out of thousands of years of flash floods. Arroyos are otherworldly, physical manifestations of lightning events that reveal slow sedimented strata. The desert experiences water in extremes, where the overflow of rivers cut into the land along paths of least resistance. This landscape is the physical embodiment of memory, the memory of water. Canoa, or canoe in English, originally from the Arawakan language of the Taino kanowa meaning “dugout canoe.” A conduit or pipe, for the acequia a wooden channel that carries water across interferences in the landscape when the path of a water ditch cannot be rerouted. Originally canoas were made by hollowing out a wooden log and cutting off the tops, nesting one log into the neck of the other to form a pipeline, which was held by wooden girders. Today the canoa is a steel pipe covered on all sides, a new development for the Acequia Madre. Canoas adapt the least to environmental forces, and often need to be replaced, repaired, 2 https:// and emptied of silt that collects from the flow of water. They are the last option when there are en.wikipedia.org/ no alternatives to reroute a ditch. wiki/Acequia The arroyo intersects perpendicular to another water channel, one that was hand dug 3 Gerald Zarr, by Spanish colonists in the 17th century along a path that is equally determined by gravity. “How The Middle The weight is something that I carry, lands on the ground with every footstep. Eastern Irrigation Ditch Called ə-ˈsā-kē-ə , ä in Velencian, Acequia Changed séquia in Classical Arabic, The American Southwest,” “as-sāqiya, has the double entendre of ‘the water conduit’ or ‘one that bears water’”2 AramcoWorld, They arrived in a procession, like Capitan General Don Juan de Oñate who arrived with four September 2016, https://www. hundred colonists and soldiers, and several hundred Indigenous slaves from what is now aramcoworld.com/ Mexico, with 83 creaking wagons, 1,000 horses, and 7,000 head of livestock in a procession es-ES/Articles/ September-2016/ almost 4 miles long that moved as fast as the cattle walked.3 Oñate established one of the How-The-Middleearliest European settlements, on stolen land, on the backs of enslaved Indian people. Eastern-IrrigationDitch-Called-Ace. Upon arrival, the first thing the Settlers did was institute law for the ownership of water. The violence and bloodshed of manifest destiny etched a boundary between the Taos 27 Pueblo and the town of Taos, an ancient and present interface between Indigenous land, Hispanic colonialism, and the sprawl of the built environment, a confluence of culture that flows within my own veins. Did the naturally occurring arroyos provide the ditch diggers of the Acequia Madre a direction to follow? Was this ditch determined by weather patterns, surface topography, and the minerals of soil that settled long before a people? Geology is the relationship between time and water. This path is marked by forces that predate real estate, borders, water rights, tribal rights, federal land grants, and war. 5 Sylvia Rodriguez, “Procession and I walk an ecology determined by scarcity, a network that at this very moment include Sacred Landscape in the tread of my boot and the weight of my step. 300 years ago, when the ditch diggers plotted New Mexico,” New Mexico Historical the direction of the Acequia Madre, did they expect that one day water would take out an Review 77, no. 1 entire section of the land that held their earthen ditch? Has this land always been a survivor (2002). of constant erosion, a system of burying and revealing with each passing season? I walk at night in the waning moonlight, as the Earth travels away from the place where the sunlight strikes, refracting in a blue iridescent glow. I walk along a channel that was made to carry water according to the gravitational force determined by the proximity of the moon’s rotation in relation to the Earth. We are pulled towards each other. The channel is carefully cleaned, geometrically excavated, hand shoveled annually since the 18th century. The channel carries sacred water from Ma-wha-lo, or Blue Lake. Ma-wha-lo is the headwater of the Rio Pueblo, it is a sacred site for the Taos Pueblo. The water that passes through this channel is sacred water, a life form that is synonymous with the identity of Tiwa People. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 proclaimed ownership of Blue Lake and gave it to the Taos Forest Reserve, who stripped the Taos Pueblo of all access to their sacred water. “In testimony before Congress in 1969, Paul Bernal explained, ‘In all of its programs the Forest Service proclaims the supremacy of man over nature; we find this viewpoint contradictory to the realities of the natural world and to the nature of conservation. Our tradition and our religion require people to adapt their lives and activities to our natural surroundings so that men and nature mutually support the life common to both. The idea that man must subdue nature and bend its processes to his purposes is repugnant to our people.’”4 From 1848 until 1969 the Taos Pueblo fought for the right of their land and exclusive access to Ma-wha-lo. In 1970 President Richard Nixon endorsed a bill that returned Blue Lake to the Taos Pueblo. The US President who restored ownership and private access of a sacred water site to its people, would also be impeached four years later for a government scandal called Watergate. I wonder if the ground has anything to say? I wonder if the ground is listening to what is said? I wonder if the ground would come alive and what is on it? Though I hear what the ground says. The channel that I walk carries sacred water away from the Blue Lake. The water is pulled by the force of gravity, it runs towards me as I travel up stream. I walk against its flow, maybe moving from a past and into a future. “A march or a procession is a spatial practice that expresses and enacts a relationship between those who walk and the terrain or territory they pass through. A fence asserts a less ephemeral claim to space: a static, measurable, concrete boundary.”5 This land is marked by the act of walking– ceremonially, religiously, to procure water and food, as a form of labor, in the name of conquest, at night, by the light of a waxing crescent, the first phase after the New Moon, when you can see the features of its surface. Suddenly the space between the planets is smaller, eyes can see texture, surface, and topography. Gravity is a force that has multiple directions, the water that runs down this earthen channel is not disconnected from the tides of the sea, or the high-altitude waters 28 4 “Taos Blue Lake – United States,” Sacred Land, accessed August 30, 2018, http:// sacredland.org/taosblue-lake-unitedstates/. The channel that I walk carries sacred water away from the Blue Lake. The water is pulled by the force of gravity, it runs towards me as I travel up stream. Christine Howard Sandoval Live Stream Video Still, 2018, single channel video, TRT: 32:00 Christine Howard Sandoval Metal Canoa, Acequia Madre (Taos, NM), 2018, Image credit Erin Elder 6 Sylvia Rodriguez, “Over Behind Mabel’s On Indian Land: Utopia and Third Space in Taos,” Journal of The Southwest 53, no. 3 and 4 (2011). 7 “Los Hermanos Penitentes,” CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Miguel Hidalgo, accessed August 30, 2018, http://www. newadvent.org/ cathen/11635c.htm. 8 Ibid.,. 9 John T. Bodine, “The Taos Blue Lake Ceremony,” American Indian Quarterly 12, no. 2 (Spring 1988):. 29 of the Blue Lake, or the holy water at the entrance of La Morada de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe. “This morada, built between 1810 and 1834, served the town chapter of the Penitentes.”6 “The Hermanos Penitentes are a society of (all male) individuals, who, to atone for their sins, practice penances which consist principally of flagellation, carrying heavy crosses, binding the body to a cross, and tying the limbs to hinder the circulation of blood. These practices have prevailed in Colorado and New Mexico since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Up to the year 1890, they were public; at present they are secret.”7 “Flagellation, formerly practiced in the streets and in the churches, is now, since the American occupation, confined generally to the morada and performed with a short whip (la disciplina), made from the leaf of the amole weed.”8 Amole, or soap weed, is a desert plant that blooms in the middle of summer, the stalk of bulbous flowers is red or chartreuse color. The leaves are leathery and flexible. The root produces a lather that is used as soap. La disciplina is made by braiding the dried leaves into a thick handle that gives way to several thinly braided strands that serve as the whip. These smaller braided whips have thick knots and are sometimes embedded with sharp metal objects that are meant to draw blood from the backs, the chests, or the shoulders. For the Hermanos Penitente the use of the amole plant to cleanse the corporeal and spiritual body is tied to the land, the land is tied to the spirit. It has been recorded that the Tiwa once used the amole root to wash their hair in the yucca suds during the sacred pilgrimage to Blue Lake.9 How did the morada come to be situated on Indigenous land? Is the boundary between the Catholic morada and Taos Pueblo concrete, static, visible? Are the transgressions of one religion visible within the other? Cups of nun chai Alana Hunt Cups of nun chai 2010–ONGOING, a participatory memorial and media intervention Alana Hunt Cups of nun chai (2010–ongoing) is a participatory memorial produced by artist Alana Hunt that emerged in response to the death of over 118 civilians during pro-freedom protests in the Kashmir valley throughout the Summer of 2010. 30 Cups of nun chai (2010–ongoing) is a participatory memorial produced by artist Alana Hunt that emerged in response to the death of over 118 civilians during pro-freedom protests in the Kashmir valley throughout the Summer of 2010. It is an exploration of how we encounter, respond to and remember political violence across and within cultures. The work took shape through two years of tea and conversation with 118 people, across Australia, in Brussels and Bangkok, across north India and finally in Kashmir. Alana took a photo of each person holding their cup of nun chai and wrote from memory about each conversation that drew on its specific location in an attempt to relate to Kashmir, producing powerful speculations on the shared heritage of colonial violence globally, and particularly so within South Asia and Australia. The work progressively accumulated online and from mid-2016 circulated as a newspaper serial in Kashmir, appearing three times a week in Kashmir Reader over eleven months until April 2017. Almost a month after this media intervention began the death of a popular rebel commander set off a wave of violence not seen in Kashmir since 2010. Hundreds of thousands of people across Kashmir came out to mark the martyrdom of Burhan Wani and the state responded with ever greater force. Civil society was pushed to its limits and hundreds of civilians were blinded by the Indian state’s use of pellet guns. The newspaper Kashmir Reader was itself banned for three uncertain months, leaving an imprint on Kashmir’s fragile media fraternity that still lingers today. Written in part by the artist, and in part by world events, by Kashmiri journalists, by the actions of the state and civilians, and by advertisers whose very business enable the production and circulation of the newspaper itself, the 100+ newspapers containing the serialisation of Cups of nun chai paint a telling picture of Kashmir today and shed light on its relationship with the world we share. These newspapers have been scanned for archival purposes and the originals bound into three volumes that continue to circulate through readings and discussions, exhibitions, archives, lectures and publications. Through personal conversation and public media intervention Cups of nun chai engages with some of the most challenging areas of contemporary life including the failures of democracy, state and non-state violence, the power of the media, and the idea of freedom. Cups of nun chai is a search for meaning in the face of something so brutal it appears absurd and an absurd gesture when meaning itself becomes too much to bear. www.cupsofnunchai.com THE FORTY-FIRST CUP OF NUN CHAI 20.02.11 I met Amity in an inner-city park in Sydney. Large trees, very similar to the famous Chinar trees of Kashmir, surrounded us. These deciduous trees were mostly green, but some of its star-like leaves coloured in shades of yellow and orange had begun falling to the ground. I could see Kashmir in the canopy that shaded us from Sydney’s summer heat. The fact that Kashmir’s most iconic tree is most commonly referred to in Kashmir by its Persian name as opposed to the Kashmiri boonyi is testimony to the creeping, banal, encompassing nature of occupation and colonisation and how the pendulum swings as much to one side as it is pulled by the other. Chinar trees are ‘state property’ in Kashmir, as is the land on which they are growing. This discourages the planting and growth of new Chinar trees as people uproot them before they grow large enough to be noticed by government agencies, for fear of losing land to the government. As my friend Arif pointed out, this makes the most majestic and iconic of trees in Kashmir an enemy of the people, and the people are made an enemy of it. There are pressing 31 environmental issues here, but the process of registering trees and rendering them state property feels synonymous with the various kinds of control the military occupation exerts on people through mechanisms like identity cards. “How did your friends in Kashmir handle things last summer?” Amity asked. For many the violence was outside their front door. Brutality was in their face. Anxiety constant. Curfews were almost continuous. This meant the markets were closed and people lost access to even the most basic supplies. For months people couldn’t leave their homes. Families lost their income and schools sat idle. The postal service was sketchy. Phone connections and the internet were intermittently cut, whenever the state deemed it necessary. Hospitals were full, understaffed and with limited supplies. Reports circulated that Indian security forces had actually raided some hospitals. As the extent of the occupation emerged, Amity sighed, “We were so naïve when we visited Kashmir. We just jumped on a plane and had no idea.” In 2005 Amity and her friend were traveling around India. After hearing about the must-see-beauty of Kashmir they decided to visit Srinagar. “I remember, immediately after landing, the presence of the military. It was like nowhere else we had visited in India. There were a lot of guns, but no one really explained why.” Amity and her friend stayed in a house boat on Dal Lake towards the end of a Kashmiri winter. “It was beautiful, but I kept trying to imagine what it would be like in the full bloom of summer.” Amity didn’t recall an official curfew, but the houseboat owners had told them to be home before dark. “The streets felt desolate apart from the soldiers and their guns. We didn’t see any other foreigners. There was tension in the air, but no one ever explained what it was about.” Amity continued, “I remember being given a basket of hot coals while riding on a shikara on the Dal Lake. It was beautiful.” As the only foreigners, the small income Amity’s visit brought to those families reliant on tourism in Kashmir must have been significant. Most tourists are told these ‘baskets of hot coals’ are called kangri, a more palatable version of kãger, which it is called in Koshur, the Kashmiri language. Foreign palatability is not without significance in Kashmir, particularly when it comes to tourism. While being told about the beauty of Kashmir, while booking a plane ticket to Srinagar, while staying on the Dal Lake, while moving through the city’s streets, while visiting Gulmarg and then returning to North India, it speaks volumes that no one had properly discussed or even hinted at the situation in Kashmir to Amity or her friend. There was a gaping silence. Perhaps because it was an unpalatable truth. “When we were at Gulmarg an old man was pulling us up the hill on a snow sled. I felt so uncomfortable that this elderly man was puling my body up a mountain, so I got out and offered to pull him. But I just confused the whole thing more. I felt awkward about a lot of things like this.” Amity’s experience brought to mind a scene from Sanjay Kak’s documentary Jashn-e-Azadi (How We Celebrate Freedom), only in this film the tourists don’t get off the sled to help. This particular sequence in Kak’s film juxtaposes three scenes; the dead body of a young boy held by his mother while cries for azadi (freedom) echo in the background; Indian tourists sitting on a sled in the snow pulled up hill by an elderly Kashmiri man wearing a pheran; and the rich rolling green colour of a newly developed golf course. One of the Indian tourists going gung-ho about the beauty of Kashmir says “Yeh in logoun ne barbaad kar diya” (These people – Kashmiris – have wasted this place). The film’s narration states: As an enforced normality is dressed up as triumph, economic opportunism arrives – disguised as peace. THE NINETY-THIRD AND NINETY-FOURTH CUPS OF NUN CHAI 23.06.12 Nasir held the nun chai in his hands and spoke earnestly, “The symbolism of these cups of nun chai is strong.” I met Nasir and Burhan under the Chinar trees at Kashmir University. I had just described in detail how Cups of nun chai began—how the work was 32 an attempt to move against the normalisation of death in Kashmir, how it was a response to the loss of life in 2010, to the duality of what was at once horribly tangible and at the same time inconceivable, especially so for me, someone not from Kashmir. Burhan had been very quiet while I spoke, listening carefully, “I didn’t realise—I mean, your website doesn’t really convey what you’ve just said.” From that point on our conversation flowed for hours. It felt like an endless exposition detailing how two young men who yearn for azadi (freedom) negotiate their way through life in Kashmir today. 2010 was a year Nasir and Burhan’s generation would not forget. Nasir and Burhan’s understanding of the political situation that shaped their lives was nuanced; words had consequences in Kashmir, and this made them more precise with language. Kashmir was not ‘administered’ by India, but rather ‘held’ and ‘occupied’. They told me that Ikwhan is an Arabic word originally meaning ‘brother’. However, the Indian state have used this word to describe former militants-turned-Indian-loyalists, so locally an ‘Ikwhani’ was a brother to the Indian state and a traitor to Kashmir. Nasir and Burhan were conscious not only of India’s military might, but also of its coercive power. We discussed some of the government strategies they felt were aimed at shaping the way young people think. In 2010, individuals were detained in Kashmir for engaging on social networking sites in what the state perceived to be ‘anti-national activities’. Nasir and Burhan explained that because this received negative press coverage internationally the state had started to fabricate alternative reasons for detaining people who use the internet to voice political concerns in Kashmir. The mere suggestion that someone had been involved in street violence was enough to get you detained under the much abused and draconian Public Safety Act (PSA). Families whose children were booked under the PSA were often dealt hefty fines and had a black mark levelled against their name. This limited future employment opportunities and placed immense financial pressure on the family at large. It has been reported that thousands of people have been booked under the PSA in recent years. Now, in Kashmir in mid-2012, it feels as though the state is succeeding in making people quiet in very quiet ways. Like hundreds of other young boys in Kashmir, in October 2011 Wamiq, a 21-year-old commerce student, was detained under the PSA for his “involvement in anti-social activities aimed at disturbing the public tranquillity and peace in the city.” A group of anonymous people built a website to generate awareness around Wamiq’s case, which caught the attention of Amnesty International. Examples like this were important to young people like Nasir and Burhan, because they illustrate that there are alternative ways in which voices from Kashmir can be articulated in non-violent ways and heard by large audiences. “Can we pause for a moment? I want to think about the martyrs of 2010, but also those who disappeared.” Nasir requested, “In some ways this is worse than death, because our families never know. They live with uncertainty and the inability to lay their loved one’s soul to rest.” We sat quietly for a moment together. For Nasir and Burhan these cups of nun chai were therapeutic. They said it created space to reflect on what surrounded them everyday. In their mind’s revolution was real. Just as I was wondering when freedom would arrive, they told me that India had already lost, because Kashmir would never forget. For Nasir and Burhan, the resilience of azadi was fuelled by memory; memories that only became more definite, clear and certain with the events of 2010. There was much said, and due to the fact that words had consequences in Kashmir, much best left unwritten. 33 I feel like trying. I mean crying.* Excerpts from a non-existent musical. Photo from exhibition 700 Muffins in a Toyota Camry in Herðubreið, Seyðisfjörður, March 23rd 2019. Photo by Apolline Fjara LungA School (Restructuring of a text performed at Anywhere and Elsewhere, November 15–16, 2018, Parsons The New School for Design, New York NY.) 34 Narrator: One day they went to a valley in the mountains and dug a very large hole. Over the hole they put a wooden floor. The sound it made when walking on the floor was similar to the deep sounds of a large drum, the floor being the skin of the drum and the hole creating the resonance when their feet were moving on the floor. (Bom bom bom bom bom) They build walls of granite with holes for large windows. They made the roof from grass and lichen. They hung a chandelier. They moved in. OP E N I N G SC EN E (Úa and Óa are sitting outside their house in the morning sun. They have their eyes closed.) Narrator: When the sun hits the mountain, the snow hits the water, the water runs away and only comes back when it rains. When the sun hits the mountain, the snow hits the water, the water runs away and only comes back when it rains. Úa: It lasts just long enough for us not to consider that it’s ending. Óa: Geological mo(nu)ments. Úa: Perhaps a shared joke or shared poetry about what we are doing. Óa: And not doing. … SCENE 5 Narrator: There was an air of emergency around the question: What do we do!!? As in: Something else than what is happening now, must happen. Elements of despair, a bit of urgency, but mostly a sense of enthusiasm and necessity. For themselves, their wellbeing, their sanity. Óa: Do you remember when we moved here many years ago we jokingly called that decision an alternative to suicide, which is of course not funny at all. Úa: Perhaps not funny, but I still find it a beautiful thought. It’s still a true joke. A ‘yes’ from a ‘no’ while also being a ‘No to Yes’. And clearly a ‘Yes to No’. Rearranging meanings of yes’s and no’s. A decision. 35 (A short pause. Úa and Óa both looking to the sides, then looking at each other again.) Úa: The drive towards doing some things is in this case also a drive towards not doing other things. A willingness to start doing some things and an unwillingness to continue doing other things. Without necessarily knowing which is which, willingness and unwillingness found forms, I guess. For example: I would like to do the dishes. Óa: God is in the maintenance. Not in the making. It’s the forever ‘caring for’. Úa: Feel the burn, my friend. … SCEN E 14 Narrator: If a microphone had been placed in the room, it could have picked up frequencies of vibrations from Úa and Óa, from their movements and sounds. These vibrations could travel through the copper inside cables covered in PVC, enter into perhaps a mixer or a circuit board and turned into data, sent through long cables buried in the ground and underneath the sea, spread across the world and into homes and houses where they could travel invisibly through the air as electromagnetic waves and be picked up by anyone, everyone, transformed from data back into vibrations with a frequency that beings with ears can detect. But there weren’t any microphones in the room. (Úa and Óa walking in circles in the room. Fast paced drumming resounds from the movement of their feet on the floor.) (Bo-bom bo-bom bo-bom bo-bom bo-bom) Óa: What should we do? Úa: How should we.. Óa: What should we.. Úa: How.. Óa: Say something to someone. Úa: Get going. (Bo-bom bo-bom bo-bom bo-bom bo-bom) Óa: Write something down. Úa: Yes, now. Óa: Start like that. Úa: Formulate. Óa: What do we do? Úa: Why do we do? Óa: Why do they do? Úa: Keep it simple. Óa: What do we do now? Úa: What do we do!!? (Bo-bom bo-bom bo-bom bo-bom bo-bom) Óa: Nurture that which is struggling. Úa: Very banal. Very much alive. Óa: At least, I haven’t been cured. 36 (Úa and Óa start walking in an asynchronized pattern) (bom bo-bo-bom booom bom-bom bo-bobom bo-bom) Óa: We can see it like this: positions are subjected to each other to reveal, or to give the possibility at least, for a place to reveal itself to itself. Constantly seeking limits, not necessarily in its intention, but in its nature. Do you dare to stay there afterwards? I would like to be there afterwards. To take the consequences, you know. Consequences for the structure, the culture, the economy, the ecology etc. Úa: I really feel like trying. I mean crying. (Úa and Óa slow down all their movements almost to a standstill. But they keep moving.) (boom … boom … boom … boom) Óa: It’s just because it feels so random what this has become, just from the possibility of something happening somewhere. And now it is this! And then we have somehow been invited into it, invited to step in and we infect it with all that we are. And it has started growing by itself because other beings projected their passion for doubting into it and.. And in many ways it feels like it could have been about anything. But now it’s about this. It could also have been about pétanque or sailing or cooking or horse riding. Úa: But all those things that you are sceptic towards, that you don’t trust, they live in you. The reverse side of praxis. All the other things. The everyday. Constituted and reiterated everyday. Óa: Like who’s doing the dishes? Úa: We confront each other’s lives, you and I. Óa: Is that what has been happening? Is that what is happening now? Úa: We made this room in this way from the hope that it would do something, remember? To the kind of space that it becomes and the attention of the ones in it, meaning us. I was hoping it would do something to us. Like a one-way thing. A no-turning-back thing. A we’ll-never-be-the-same-again thing. And I think it works. Óa: Sometimes I have had the feeling that the unfolding of the composition resulted in the composition dissolving itself. Úa: What do you mean? 37 Óa: You acknowledge consequences.. You know we have to be here together so I better, sort of, find out how to be here because… like three weeks, anyone can stand three weeks of tolerating, but if it’s this, then you need to go into the relationships and deal with the situation. Otherwise it will be hell. … SCEN E 1 7 Narrator: All resignation has an element of relief and this text is not an exception. The composition overflows its own boundaries. People meet and things happen. And the other way around. And we return to the composition. A place revealing itself, to itself. In a more or less confrontative style. (Úa and Óa are moving in the room guided by two rules. They both want to get as close to the center as possible while also as far away from each other as possible.) Óa: A curious thing happened, and tends to happen I think, when insisting on existing for a long enough time. Organisms deploying new strategies towards each other. Endosymbiosis perhaps. And then what? When we are slowly infiltrating, in which ways are we ourselves being infiltrated. Nothing is for free. Úa: This is clearly too simple! Óa: But possibly also true. Úa: And then what? Speaking in several tongues, evading definition yet insisting on being, being someone, something. Óa: Exactly! Situated knowledge is a temporal aspect of relation. Úa: What?? I’m not sure that I.. Óa: Things take time and time takes things. Anywhere. Everywhere. Úa: We’re far away here, aren’t we? Óa: Site-specific and thereby distance-specific. Úa: Distance-specificity. Óa: Far away from something and closer to something else. Site-specific. Size-specific. And here it is like this: As a starting point we assume each other’s’ consideration and accept that one can never grasp the full consequence of one’s own actions. Úa: There are always responsibilities associated with holding each other’s hearts like that. … 38 (above and left) Photo from exhibition 700 Muffins in a Toyota Camry in Herðubreið, Seyðisfjörður, March 23rd 2019. Photo by Apolline Fjara E P I LO G U E (Úa and Óa singing in chorus while jumping up and down. Each choose the melody they wish) (bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom) Úa and Óa in chorus: I spent my last hours of light listening I spent my last hours of light listening I spent my last hours of light listening I spent my last hours of light listening I spent my last hours of light listening I spent my last hours of light listening I spent my last hours of light listening I spent my last hours of light listening 39 … New Hypothetical Continents: Experimenting With U/Dystopia Benjamin Matthews The New Hypothetical Continents form the basis to an art project that probably didn’t happen. 40 The phrase was created by a Melbourne based artist, Lucas Maddock, as a nod to Robert Smithson’s work, and appropriated from his writings on non-place.1 Here, it invites reflection on how the present is often shaped by utopian, or dystopian,2 accounts of the past. This pattern is promoted by global digital communication networks where visual media are increasingly prevalent, and aesthetic modes of representation such as those associated with art play a leading role. In the digital age, unprecedented modulation of this theme has emerged. Picture the hidden swarms of intelligent agents that navigate the Semantic Web and inhabit digital platforms, reminding you to get a skin check that prevents the spread of a growing melanoma, or inviting you to a protest rally curiously aligned with your nascent, radical politics. Similarly, what are we to make of the sudden iterative looping between nostalgia for 1 With his permission I a great past that never was and a data rich present that rushes by and virtually never is? For have used the instance, the collapsing immediacy of Tweets that presage all and none, from global war to title, and Lucas’ work is central to Pax Americana, or forest fires that prove mismanagement rather than a changing climate: the concept – as gaslighting the planet on everything from misogyny to racism, motivating violent white Maddock writes ‘In 1969 artist supremacy with the press of a tropic button. Robert Smithton Mediating this pattern motivates the New Hypothetical Continents, which are based appropriated an illustrated map around an interactive website (newhypotheticalcontinents.com) that hosts an archive of from Lewis Spence’s responses to a utopian turn in the arts and contemporary culture. Visitors will be encouraged History of Atlantis and used it to form to browse, provide commentary and respond to the archive by offering works of their own. the basis for his installation Map of Broken Glass (Atlantis)’. See Maddock, Lucas. New Hypothetical Continents. Melbourne: Blackartprojects, 2015. Print. 2 I assume utopia to be in a dyadic relationship with dystopia—not necessarily contrapuntal with it, as in the circumstances of a simple binary, though this possibility is itself a powerful, generative utopia—but at least holding in common with dystopia certain traits. For example, the condition that people “have and know their place”. This is an ancient philosophical theme: a structure one MUST know and yield to is both enabling and repressive. 41 THE RISE OF U/DYSTOPIA The figure of utopia has emerged with growing frequency in recent art and culture. Vermeulen and van den Akker (2015) go so far as to describe what they see as a “utopian turn”, where a “structure of feeling” that moves beyond the postmodern has emerged. This “turn” is realized as a (paradoxically) ubiquitous and absent presence, such that ‘there is no need to dig deep or look far and wide for the figure of utopia. It appears everywhere and nowhere across the arts and contemporary culture’.3 Indeed, the ambivalent quality of utopia—evanescent, yet all about—the authors describe coheres with cultural developments during the 2010s, which have given rise to collective aesthetic and intellectual movements that engage with the impact of global flows of digitised capital and culture, and the expanded influence of related industries such as high-tech manufacturing. Examples include “Vaporwave” (from music, but not really), “the New Aesthetic” (coined by James Bridle, and from design, but not so much), and “ruin porn” (from photography, sort of ).4 Each of these examples are only made coherent by presenting consistently ambivalent responses to the effects of technology, and very frequently these responses rely on high-tech means of creation and mediation. Each movement is emergent, in the sense that they are not intended or centrally governed, but instead are spontaneous creations of extended networks of individuals. The participants respond to a broad set of themes and conditions via aesthetic means, rather than the particular circumstances and politic that tended to define the art movements of the 1900s. Beauchamp writes, for instance, that ‘Vaporwave arose in reaction to huge economic and social forces that are still very much a part of our lives: globalization, runaway consumerism, and manufactured nostalgia chief among them’.5 Like Vaporwave, each of these movements express dissatisfaction with the utopian presentation of technology and its impacts by the agents of late capitalism that dominated the period leading up to the end of the second millennium. Digital communication and media, 3 Robin van den Akker et al., “Utopia, Sort Of: A Case Study In Metamodernism”, Studia Neophilologica 87, no. 1 (2014): 55–67, doi:10.1080/00393274. 2014.981964. 4 Less coherent practices, such as the creation of “dank memes” (from 4chan, at some point) also reflect the sensibility. 5 Beauchamp S, “How Vaporwave Was Created Then Destroyed By The Internet”, Esquire, 2017, http://www. esquire.com/ entertainment/ music/a47793/ what-happened-tovaporwave/. 6 Beauchamp S, “How Vaporwave Was Created Then Destroyed By The Internet”. 7 Beauchamp S, “How Vaporwave Was Created Then Destroyed By The Internet”. 8 Matthew Battles, “But It Moves: The New Aesthetic & Emergent Virtual Taste”, Metalab, 2012, http://metalab. harvard.edu/2012/04/ but-it-moves-thenew-aestheticemergent-virtualtaste/. 9 Mark Fisher, Ghosts Of My Life (UK: John Hunt Publishing, 2014). 10 Mark Fisher, “The Metaphysics Of Crackle: Afrofuturism And Hauntology”, Dancecult 5, no. 2 (2013): p46. high-tech manufacturing, and the computational devices and processes they rely on are the subject of direct or indirect comment. Typically, this is achieved by removing and reframing the output from the circumstances of its production in the mode of appropriation that underpinned the art movements of modernism. These aestheticising procedures are executed with goal of participation in a self-corrupting joke: one intended to fail at all but the expression of ambivalence. Vaporwave is a ‘slowdown, remixed, and appropriative music genre defined at least in part by an obsession with ‘80s and ‘90s consumer culture…. a kind of musical parody of pop consciousness, [which] never strived for mass appeal’.6 The first vaporwave album, Floral Shoppe by Ramona Xavier, AKA Vektroid, AKA Macintosh Plus: features a Diana Ross track, “It’s Your Move,” chopped and slowed to an awkwardly relentless zombie shuffle’… brought back from the dead with all of the slickness, the “product”, completely sucked out of it … the aesthetic of vaporwave is embodied on the cover of Floral Shoppe. Take a look at it: the retro computer graphics, the Roman bust, the pixilated city skyline, song titles in Japanese.7 The New Aesthetic adopts a similarly ambivalent pose, highlighting uncanny artefacts and back alleys inscribed by the collision of AI and media tech with the now. Battles writes the: New Aesthetic is a collaborative attempt to draw a circle around several species of aesthetic activity—including but not limited to drone photography, ubiquitous surveillance, glitch imagery, Streetview photography, 8-bit net nostalgia. Central to the New Aesthetic is a sense that we’re learning to “wave at machines”—and that perhaps in their glitchy, buzzy, algorithmic ways, they’re beginning to wave back in earnest.8 In a parallel, earlier engagement with these themes, Mark Fisher took up Derrida’s concept of hauntology to describe a pervasive sense that contemporary culture (electronic music in particular) is haunted by the ‘slow cancellation of the future’ — or the ‘lost futures’ of modernity, which failed to occur or were cancelled by postmodernity and neoliberalism. Hauntology is a ‘pining for a future that never arrived,’ and Fisher’s 2014 book, Ghosts of My Life, explores examples like the music of Burial and Joy Division, and the films of Kubrick and Christopher Nolan.9 Fisher argues, with Fredic Jameson, this ‘“blurs contemporaneity” with elements from the past, but, whereas postmodernism glosses over the temporal disjunctures, the hauntological artists foreground them’.10 If the “new” quality in these contemporary aesthetic engagements with history is to be distilled, it is in part as a frustration with the utopian presentation of the role technology was to play in our lives. But more than this, they are a kind of protest against the morbidity this inspires. In Fisher’s view, for instance, ‘one function of hauntology is to keep insisting that there are futures beyond postmodernity’s terminal time’.11 Intentionally paradoxical, the participants express a distaste for the very process of appropriation that underpins the movements in the first instance — the uncanny sense that the remix culture they comment on and through is generative of modernist (psychological) nostalgia, postmodern (technical) nostalgia,12 and the ineffable allure of utopia.13 If the “new” quality in these contemporary aesthetic engagements with history is to be distilled, it is in part as a frustration with the utopian presentation of the role technology was to play in our lives. 42 This is why each movement engages with themes such as control and surveillance, corruption, decline, decay and ruin via high tech means that hypothesise dystopian visions of impossible, present day coherence. There is no such thing as the New Aesthetic or Vaporwave: they are dark comedy instead, parodic of coherency, and perhaps better understood as representing a sensibility than recognisable “movements”. 11 Mark Fisher, “The Metaphysics Of Crackle: Afrofuturism And Hauntology”, p53. 12 Fisher’s (2013) hauntology is predicated on a distinction between ‘[p]ostmodernism’s nostalgia mode, which is ‘not defined by a yearning for the past. The kind of figure capable of exhibiting and expressing such longing belongs to a paradigmatically modernist moment…. [Fredic] Jameson’s nostalgia mode is better understood in terms of a formal attachment to the techniques and formulas of the past, a consequence of a retreat from the modernist challenge of innovating cultural forms adequate to contemporary experience’ (p45). 13 Along similar lines, Vermeulen and van den Akker’s (2009) “metamodernism” maps the emergence of conditions that permit a liminal mode of aesthetic representation and experience that takes the form of unresolved oscillation between modern and postmodern sensibilities. 14 Ruth Levitas, The Concept Of Utopia: Reissue With New Preface By The Author (Oxford: Peter Lang AG, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2010): p9. 43 + WTF IS UTOPIA?? This sensibility fits neatly with the contemporaneous definition of utopia offered by Ruth Levitas, who in her book on the topic conducts a thorough review of the many and varied applications of the concept, before concluding: [W]e learn a lot about the experience of living under any set of conditions by reflecting upon the desires which those conditions generate and yet leave unfulfilled. For that is the space which utopia occupies.14 The space of unfulfilled desires, and the weight of expectation it is freighted with fits the recent resurgent interest in utopia in the arts, and a broader ambivalent sensibility in contemporary culture, but also with the deeper history of utopia. It has been variously defined as preoccupied with a past that never was, a future yet to be realised, or a forcibly imagined present in the mode of fiction. The last became orthodox in early modern utopias, where fictional islands became the site of seminal works that are now considered precursors to the modern novel. Strong examples are works such as Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1627), and Henry Neville’s The Isle of Pines (1668), which distilled critique of dominant ideology by offering fictive solutions to social contradictions of the time. Each of these fictions hypothesise place, and present narrative portrayals of elements of the real world in a new, “ideal” configuration “as-if” they were real. This rhetorical as-if gesture contrasts the virtual dimension of utopia with the reality outside these imagined places, inviting reflection on each. For instance, More’s defining name for the island society – Utopia – combines the Greek prefix “ou-” (οὐ), meaning “not”, and topos (τόπος), meaning “place”. This (very likely) satiric construct describes a model society founded on slave labour in a non-place, or a place that does not exist. More’s ideal construct seems intended as a comment on the dangerous quality of assuming ideal situations are ever able to exist. However, given their proximity with the world beyond the fictional construct, utopian narratives are ever in danger of collapsing into the real, and being mistaken for reality itself. They rely on reflection, and time taken to contrast the asif with that which lies beyond it. + WTF ARE THE NEW HYPOTHETICAL CONTINENTS?? In recent history and the present, speed of information flows and mobile access mean permanent connection to large volumes of data in real time for many — and that the remainder of us are entangled with the effects of this connectivity. Lev Manovich argues that rather than engaging with databases or archives, as we once did via the Web, we now live in the “data present”, as is evident in the ubiquitous construct of social media, where feeds create a continuous flow of events he calls the “data stream”.15 Each event works to: 15 Lev Manovich, “Future Fictions”, Frieze, 2013, https://frieze.com/ article/future-fictions. push the earlier ones from the immediate view. The most important event is always the one that is about to appear next because it heightens the experience of the ‘data present’.16 Paul Virilio describes the influence of this ubiquitous digitising of experience in terms of the presence of a “sixth continent”. Under these conditions, Virilio argues, the body becomes lost, creating a: 16 Lev Manovich, “Future Fictions”. 17 Paul Virilio, The University Of Disaster (Cambridge: Polity, 2010): p86. confusion in feelings of belonging and with the drift of the five continents that make up geographical space towards the sixth continent of cyberspace, [such that] suddenly the morphological stability of reality is threatened with collapse.17 For Virilio this pattern is consistent with a history where the powerful shape narrative representations of the present, and now a ‘neocolonial conquest of this “sixth continent”, of a virtual space that replaces the real space of the other five’.18 But the sixth continent is also inhabited by the agents of resistant, radical groups. Indeed, networked individuals and collectivism are able to formulate alternate places that supplement the most visible territories and might foster and provide opportunity for the presentation of alternate continents: New Hypothetical Continents. THE GROUND Such reflexive myth generation intends to disrupt, and paradoxically stabilise bodies that intersect and become tangible via digital networks and that for instance, establish the database as a (“dank”) stronghold: an archive to anchor against and participate in the destabilising speed of the data stream, and the data present. 18 Paul Virilio and Julie Rose, The Futurism Of The Instant (repr., Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011): p77. 19 Benjamin H Bratton, The Stack – On Software and Sovereignty (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2016): pp15–16. In The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty, Bratton captures this elegantly when he argues: Geographies that were comfortable and doxic are now transient and alien, inhabited uncannily. But even as strange geographies corrugate, fracture, and smear worldly scale and tempo, the ground isn’t somehow evaporated into virtual information flux; to the contrary, we are brought to a certain end of nonplace. For this, a different kind of placefulness is reestablished, one that is not the organic inverse of artificial abstraction, but an experience of place as one resonant scale within a much larger telescoping between local and global consolidations.19 Bratton’s “placefulness” captures the reflexive essence of the New Hypothetical Continents, where an end to nonplace is celebrated through playful interactions with the consolidation of local with global phenomena. For instance, in the seminal eponymous work by Lucas Maddock, Robert Smithson’s Atlantis is mapped in vector points and rendered as 3D topoi then built as a welded steel frame that mimics joined vector points, which illuminated become a glimmering plateau, and eventually drab — if protean — once cast in bronze.20 The phases are walked back as the media blur into the relation of utopias, to recuperated models that form the immediacy of a careful reconnaissance. Inspired by blur, in The New Atlantis (2019), Maddock’s art has been appropriated again by Grace Barnes, Luke Ylias and Ben Crocker, its vectors unhinged, plunged into darkness and given a (paradoxically) neon make over. The New Hypothetical Continents are those places we imagine and create, which autonomically resist the drift toward collapse into the u/dystopia of the data present, 44 while playfully allowing moments and media to blur, one with the next. 20 This series can be viewed on the Project Anywhere website here https://www. projectanywhere. net/new-hypothetical-continents-benjamin-matthews/, and in the catalog here https://gallery.mailchimp. com/7fe1d990625362cc01 df579c0/files/ Lucas_Maddock_ New_Hypothetical_Continents_ Dome_01.pdf. 45 Benjamin Matthews Grace Barnes, Luke Ylias and Ben Crocker The New Atlantis, 2019, digital image, 20.3 x 25.4 cms, Permissions granted in conjunction with Hypothetical Continents project Technās Tranquil Submission: On Being Spoken Nancy Mauro-Flude Error-In-Time()Performance Still 11, 2016 Nancy Mauro-Flude Remember that the theatre of the world is wider than the realm of England. —Mary Queen of Scots before her execution judges, October 1586. 46 As people and places interchangeably exalt homebrewed, regional, national and international connections, the world opens up to us and closes in on itself simultaneously. Technās tranquil submission is a performative proposition for our networked machine learning age, as to how computers, as theatre machines, might be read through longing and situation, elation, chatter, retribution and serendipity. It defines the characteristics of the broader relationship between poetics and technics by constructing and revealing other ways of engaging with the ubiquitous materials in our world. While the poetic powers of code are perceptual, symbolic, social and technical, as they mutate, they are also profoundly moral and existential, they matter for how people reflect upon and act in a shared, everyday realm of finite human existence – representing our senses and connecting them to our lives. Alone with my back to the public, the artwork has concrete constraints both commonly pertinent; opening a space of awareness and sense of contradiction. I perform with command line computing, an expressive language within a shell or terminal. This is an alternative interface paradigm, alternative to the Graphical User Interface (GUI). For the ‘uninitiated’, commandline computing – text based computing was used before the invention of the MOUSE (or touch pad, instead of clicking on images) – people controlled computers by text based commands. sister0: Technās #Echo Hello World Hello World sister0: Technās #cat journal-09-03-19-02.txt Today = newDate(); To make something visible we must leave something out. On my journey to find sleep I hunted for an image that would protect me. I couldn’t find anything. Eventually the streets fell away. The horizon veiled the sun. Night loomed. I watched from the rooftop all the things I have known. All the lines passed through me. I lifted my head and it shifted like a stone. The skin of the world stood still, but my organs kept moving. 47 #TOP Processes: 536 total, 2 running, 534 sleeping, 2570 threads 08:27:14 Load Avg: 2.53, 2.29, 2.21 CPU usage: 7.95% user, 3.29% sys, 88.75% idle SharedLibs: 313M resident, 61M data, 105M linkedit. MemRegions: 312241 total, 6502M resident, 127M private, 2873M shared. PhysMem: 16G used (3329M wired), 106M unused. VM: 3353G vsize, 1319M framework vsize, 66426677(0) swapins, 70054451(0) sw Networks: packets: 13612557/12G in, 12135257/4870M out. Disks: 10239607/369G read, 6068588/379G written. PID 30923 30920 30919 30918 30916 30915 30914 30908 30907 COMMAND top bash login iTerm2 QuickLookSat quicklookd mdworker_sha mdworker MTLCompilerS %CPU 8.8 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 TIME 00:01.58 00:00.00 00:00.02 00:00.04 00:00.30 00:00.13 00:00.08 00:00.14 00:00.05 #TH 1/1 1 2 2 4 5 3 3 2 #WQ 0 0 1 1 1 2 1 1 2 #PORTS 25 21 30 33 79 98 60 60 24 MEM 8324K 704K 1160K 3084K 12M 3684K 3716K 4820K 6020K PURG 0B 0B 0B 0B 1432K 108K 0B 0B 0B CMPRS 0B 0B 0B 0B 0B 0B 0B 0B 0B With the #top command we begin to understand the processes and have an idea how to manage them. I can get information on my system and its operation. When I look inside machines. I like to touch their inner parts (demystify its senses follow the bus route to the CPU (central processing unit). Deal with the computer the hard way. With a soft soft hand. A performance lecture deploying this system of strategies forces an engagement with formal languages and embodied procedures (including an awareness of the deep structure of such systems), where the agent has an awareness of his or her own finitude in terms of being and existing through a language that is always already inscribed. When operating a computer we are obliged to interface with the machine by means of our human body, its movements, through our sensory motor perception and organs are engaged with the mechanism by way of operation. Just as Bergson reminds us “I see plainly how external images influence the image that I call my body; they transmit movement to it. They all flow together in the folds and ripples of my flesh”.1 For people who have never 1 Henri Bergson, 1911, ‘Of the worked with text based computing – those who are already conditioned to the ‘point and Selection of Images click on an image’ method – widely cultivated by the GUI, this involves sensitising For Conscious Presentation. What procedures, that one may endure embodying any new instrumental skill acquisition, for Our Body Means and instance learning to play the guitar. It is posited that regular use of a computational interface Does’. Matter and Memory. Trans Paul, has physiological effects on our body, like any discipline or ritual, just as the implementation N, M. & Palmer, W, of an executable command, a line of code, may call on a series of interrelated programmes S. George Allen and Unwin, London. inside a terminal. Utterances recorded in writing acquire a permanence separated from our embodied matrix, a perpetual and illusory aim for stability, underpinning our vaulting 2 Jonathan Sterne, 2011 ‘The Theology visions of affluence where the horizon is forever receding from view. We must recall there of Sound: may always and only be rewriting. Language is spun out of the taciturnity of our capricious A Critique of Orality’. Canadian experience. While old categories of thinking have collapsed in the deflated illusion of the Journal of binary, to candidly discard or claim that language is somehow a dubious technology, ‘in Communication, vol. 36, p. 218. part because Orality and Literacy is scrubbed of the mysticism in Presence of the Word’.2 Whereas we need to know who and what our rewriting serves. When we obscure these 48 kinds of differences, that is, when we conflate barbaric instinct with literary nuance, culture and art, and dismiss the contemplative, critical life of a pundit, in esteem of a vitalist participatory form, then artistic research as a critical strategy risks a new kind of Philistinism. The relationship of the individual to the systems and structures that seemingly comprise them, the contained individual I, that countless people have made revolutions to retrieve from that is at risk, ironically from the very ‘artifices that demand a collective, experimental art, radically denuded of any tragic connotation’.3 The abstracted, alienated subject is worth 3 Isabelle Stengers, I 2015 In Catastrophic holding on to, more fiercely than ever, in the face of contemporary ideological pressures. We times: Resisting the should not underestimate the value of abstraction – from the art object, the institution, the coming barbarism. Open Humanities multitude that has evolved in many of our cultural traditions. If they are the kinds of thing that Press. p.215. we can change, we can try to change the systems and structures, or at least know how to recode or re write them. From inside a labyrinth, I’m trying to decipher the theatrical parables transmitted by an arcane movement, with only a few twinkles of light to guide me through the edge of a communicative field. Stumbling out into a visceral abyss of jumbled sinews, cables and knots that on further inspection contained hidden meanings, multidimensional perceptions. With my bare hands I gradually pull apart the tangled webs. I suddenly find some velvet curtains and find myself walking on cold wooden boards, in a vast theatre. I discover myself sitting as a performer with my back to audience, unravelling the reader, writer, programmer, maker and user. In the act of re writing these roles, the friction causes a fire. In the obscurity of the computer shell, this den of veracity, a divination of texts is initiated, parsing through texts written previous – recoding, reinvigorating, reconfiguring, transfiguring and computing textual treasures. Transcending the realm of anecdotal, by automating the analysis of list structures, words are choreographed and transfigured into elemental constituents. The action of transparently executing code is a way of letting the ‘uninitiated’ into the magical and mutating processes of mysticism and computing. The text is incorporeality reanimated, through the organs and skin it is roused, ‘Incorporeal openness, may provide a way to conceptualize ethics and politics as well as arts and technologies as more than human (but less than other worldly), as a way of living in a vast world without mastering or properly understanding it, as creative inventions for the elaboration and increasing complexification of life in the world of coexistence with all other forms of life and with a nonliving nature’ 4 Elizabeth Grosz, Grosz.4 When we investigate the formal barriers and aspects of the medium of code it is also 2017, The Incorporeal: tempting to speculate that such theories can touch upon the profound influence and ubiquity Ontology, Ethics of the computer on contemporary culture, and hence on the performance of both human and and the Limits of Materialism, nonhuman actors. Embracing the form of active poetry, a code-based séance where Colombia University Press, New York. p.14. a computational wormhole is opened to summon transcendental power, time collapses. I moved under the wings of the stage, past the bulk of velvet curtains, and down to the mettle of the labyrinth. I found myself twisted in a mortal coil of bedsprings, sequins, beer bottle tops, and discarded components. A surveillance device, under the guise of an oil container, led me to a 16C pirate map, with this I navigated my way out through the maze, to discover myself contemplating and substantiating the power of suspending one’s disbelief. I evaluated how the objects created by our embodied thought shift in tandem with the technologies that in return engage our senses, our inner veracity. In the performance of code, technical changes and elaborations are revealed and bring with them many possibilities. Technical consideration of the apparatus as both tool and a theatrical medium is generated and the condition in which human beings are located – an open-ended, ever variable trajectory – unwraps, rather than the fixed and regulated machines often characteristic of the consumer world. 49 5 Ihab Hassan, 1987, The Postmodern Turn. Ohio State University Press, Ohio. 6 Jonathan Sterne, 2011 ‘The Theology of Sound: A Critique of Orality’. Canadian Journal of Communication, vol. 36, p. 215. Code is performative – where instead of being ‘spoken’, the execution of the text speaks itself. In active poetry, other texts unfold inside a new text in order to make it breathe and pulsate. That is, the act of executing code in the command line, in order to parse through a text and make one anew, is revealing of how polyvalent such practices can be, and how they lend themselves. When abstraction is taken to the limit and comes back as new concreteness,5 it seems akin to an alchemic process. Although the shapeshifting of text unfolds and enacts a demystification of technology, still ‘mystification’ lies in and through the performance of the machinic assemblage. In ritual and performance ‘disciplines of the body subordinated collective communication to abstract codes, even if they were not semantico-referential codes like those of writing’.6 There were technologies prior to writing that served some of its executable functions. Some of us may be reminded of Friedrich Kittler, who claimed ‘[w]e simply do not know what our writing does’. To develop further from that point, its implications are tremendous. #!/bin/bash #--> read a poem line by line with sleep #--> rl | radomise lines for n in `cat reality.txt | sed ‘s# #__#g’` do echo $n | sed ‘s#__# #g’ sleep `echo $n | sed ‘s#__# #g’ | wc -c | sed ‘s#.*#&/20#g’ | bc` done 7 Walter Benjamin, 1972, ‘A Short History of Photography’, Screen, vol. 13, no. 1, Spring, p 25. 8 Isabelle Stengers, 2015 In Catastrophic times: Resisting the coming barbarism. Open Humanities Press. p.147. At night I find the labyrinth inside myself, the walls have strange carvings. I decode them. A black cat, deadpan stare; no filter. Stage full of blue lights accented by a blurry guitarist, taken through a wine glass. Screenshot of a text message conversation – a carefully typed asterisk. Non-relevant texts blurred. Dignified turmoil, travelling in hope of finding a place to be still. Finding someone to stay still with. And as soon as this is found. The moving kicks in again. A woman dancing as if she was a spider in black and white. Each cell expanding and contracting, overflowing with the readiness to partake. The benefit of knowing how to translate and read scripted algorithmic procedures, may become a necessity but perhaps not for what we assume. Just as Benjamin once said of analogue photography, ‘The illiterate of the future will not be the man who cannot read the alphabet, but the one who cannot take a photograph’.7 Stenger reminds us of ‘Antonin Artaud, who yelled and screamed that thought is not “in the head.”…at the risk of losing himself in it, the abyss of chaos that must be kept at a distance in order to think…That the human adventure might pass via the pragmatic learning of techniques…seems quasi-indecent, a sort of deliberately infantilizing business’.8 Enacting and reframing the computer terminal in a theatrical manner – is also a way of subtly destabilising such practices and legacies away from what is a typical necrocaptialist dominated space. Steering away computation from 50 utilitarian function and formal control codes into a virtual cosmos of exuberance and (above) Nancy Mauro-Flude Error-In-Time()Performance Still 1, 2017 EastBlok Gallery Montreal (Photo: ThiénV) (opposite) Nancy Mauro-Flude Error-In-Time()Performance Still 1, 2016 51 possibility where vertigo, ivresse, euphoria instead may exist as potent and valid methodology productive anxiety of industrial surveillance complex of the fourth industrialised automation in which we are living. Aesthetically exploiting these otherwise closed systems, techné pays heed to those dimensions that are not governed by the imperatives of use and efficiency. In the future, such policies might be abandoned as an impediment to understanding. What are the ways one can instil notions of holistic soothsaying into the computational medium – typically considered a domain of pure logic and formal reason? With the creative process as mediator, the relation between poetry and technics seems to be not yet sufficiently analysed. By approaching this question from the point of view of artistic practice then it is possible to think of a productive relation between technology and poetry (distinguishing this from a mode of daily use consumption that does not touch the essence of technology at all). That is, technology and poetry’s capacity and flexibility prepare for providence, an admission to the unknown brought about by its own uncanny. We must therefore serve the communication between poetry, language and techne, and in doing so propose that the coming artists must build upon the structure of this relation and in doing so prepare for a possibility of a new type of dwelling upon the earth. Parsons X Hela X Unfpa Lifecycle Undergarment Project Members of Parsons School of Design Team Burak Cakmak, Dean of Fashion Brendan McCarthy (Alumnus), Director of School of Fashion Systems and Materiality Program Isabelle HC Webster (Alumnus), School of Fashion Faculty Member Jeannine Han, School of Fashion Faculty Member Original Student Team Members (All are now graduates) Pamela Cooper, BFA Fashion Design Isa Medina, BFA Fashion Design Virginia (Ginny) Jones, AAS Fashion Design Benedicte Wilhelmsen, AAS Fashion Design Brendan McCarthy & Isobel Webster We are collectively designing a system that is developing high absorbency underwear to replace sanitary pads. 52 WHAT’S AT STAKE: WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROJECT? Through a unique partnership structure involving refugee women and girls, Parsons School of Design students and faculty, Hela Clothing manufacturing company and the UNFPA and UNHCR, we are developing a revolutionary sustainable design and education system in equal collaboration to address women’s menstrual and reproductive health. We are collectively designing a system that is developing high absorbency underwear to replace sanitary pads. The project began 3 years ago with students in Parsons School of Fashion students and faculty working with UNFPA, Hela Clothing teams to develop initial underwear system prototypes through deep research of critical refugee conditions. The students developed incredible prototypes that were then manufactured by Hela Clothing with aim to bring the prototypes to Kenya for the next on-the-ground, first-hand co-design, user-feedback phase of the project. In July and August of 2018, our Parsons School of Fashion team led by Dean Burak Cakmak, Systems and Materiality Director Brendan McCarthy and Part-time faculty member Isabelle HC Webster travelled to Kenya and Ethiopia with the aim to implement the next phase and create a long-term development infrastructure for the of the project. Month after month, women around the world face significant challenges when addressing their menstrual cycles. Quality of life can suffer, deepening inequality among the sexes. During the trip to Kenya and Ethiopia and through our meetings with women in the Kakuma Refugee Camp and Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement and Host Communities, we learned first-hand how a lack of privacy and a means to safely and conveniently deal with their bleeding with dignity can result in women and girls missing school, preventing them from farming and living pastoral lives, being ostracized by their communities and being forced to spend beyond their financial means to obtain sanitary pads each month. Disposable sanitary pads, particularly the brand Always, dominate the market and offer little to no choice to women in Kakuma, Kalobeyei and the Host Communities, including the Turkana people. The serious negative effects on water sanitation and environmental contamination due to the disposable nature of contemporary sanitary products, which do not break down for centuries, is only just beginning to be felt and are worsening by day. Although menstruation and women’s reproductive health remains guarded by silence, shame and taboo in nearly every part of society, every woman has hard won experience and a deeply personal way in which she deals with her own cycle. Every woman knows what it is to be without the means to deal with her bleeding or have her means fail. It is in part this understanding amongst all women that has allowed co-design to be so successful. We have the opportunity to turn the typical design equation upside down, by enabling the women in the most difficult conditions in the world, with the least means to create a product for all other women in the world. The project uses an innovative, inductive, user-centered, co-design methodology that brings refugees and Parsons students and faculty together to create a sustainable, high absorbency underwear system. There is no person more apt than the specific woman herself to design for the needs of her own body and social and environmental context. Our methodology reverses deductive, unidirectional, top-down approaches that have too oft dominated both design and international aid and development historically. The collaborative methodology empowers refugee women and girls, not only ensuring that they are at the center of the design process, but ensuring that they are, in fact, equal stakeholders in the project and their own reproductive health futures. 53 Brendan McCarthy and Isabelle Webster Parsons X Hela X Unfpa Lifecycle Undergarment Project, 2018 Through this partnership, we have the ability to develop, manufacture and distribute a profoundly innovative high absorbency underwear product that is designed by refugee women and girls and that is universal. The product is not designed just for the benefit of refugees, it is being designed for all women. Sexual and reproductive health education can be difficult to provide and is particularly challenging in refugee and extremely marginalized communities. However, fashion and design provide a dynamic, different entry point to reimagine new ways to educate people on critical health issues. Fashion, in particular is an amazing, universal language that has the ability to breakdown and transcend many challenges that typically impede sexual and reproductive health education like cultural and religious differences, extreme differences in learning styles, extreme difference levels of education and more. Through this project there is massive potential to leverage design, and specifically fashion systems design to reimagine how sexual and reproductive health education and even general education can be taught. Parsons in collaboration with the UNFPA and UNHCR have the opportunity to establish a design education institution or in refugee camps that can not only teach design but can help rethink how all forms of education can be delivered in the most critical of circumstances in our world. We are extremely pleased to report that the mission was profoundly successful. Key and diverse stakeholders, (Refugee Women and Girls, Host Community Women and Girls, UNHCR, Red Cross, International Rescue Committee, Kenya Ministry of Health, AmRef), strongly agreed that the project and underwear product prototype successfully and innovatively address critical women’s menstrual needs in a superior manner to current, existing methods. The key stakeholder agreed that the underwear system we have co-designed provides an all-in-one, healthy, dignified sustainable system option to replace sanitary pads. The key stakeholders also agreed that project successfully addresses key sustainability issues, both environmentally and financially. The co-design and systems approach itself with refugees was extremely welcomed by key stakeholders reversing existing, top-down paradigms and giving true equal stake and ownership to refugees. Key stakeholders, agreed that there is an important education opportunity for Parsons to engage in refugee camps through this project. Further there is significant opportunity for sexual and reproductive health education through this project and leveraging digital technology like gaming. Through this project there is massive potential to leverage design, and specifically fashion systems design to reimagine how sexual and reproductive health education and even general education can be taught. 54 Based on the work of the Parsons team and feedback garnered from key stakeholders Hela Clothing affirmed deep, long-term commitment to the partnership and project and co-production of underwear for refugees. PROJECT SUMMARY DESCRIPTION: The primary objective of the project is to address critical women’s health needs and challenges around menstruation through the co-design and development with refugees of a sustainable system for high absorbency underwear. Through the use of a collaborative, co-design systems process with refugee women in their own contemporary contexts, the methodology empowers women refugees to be the key, central stakeholders driving the creative and design processes in order to address their needs and determine their own futures. Through a partnership and collaboration with Parsons School of Design, UNFPA and Hela Clothing, a design solution has been developed with and introduced for the refugee community living in the Kakuma Refugee Camp and Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement in Turkana County, Kenya. The high absorbency underwear offers women a new, all-in-one, dignified, sustainable alternative to costly and environmentally damaging sanitary pads. Because the sanitary pad is integrated into the underwear, it also simply provides underwear, which is an expensive commodity, that can be worn at any time, not just during menstruation. Key Objectives: 1. Develop a new system to support menstrual period needs of women using high absorbency underwear through a co-design process with refugee women and girls 2. Develop a process for distribution of high absorbency underwear to refugees through dignity kits 3. Create a feedback system for refugees to collaborate in the development of undergarments 4. Develop an education system on sexual reproductive health and rights for refugees 55 On Drawing Ana Mendes On Drawing, 2017, video, 09:53 min Image credit ©Anna Arca Ana Mendes On Drawing is a research and artistic project that establishes a connection between thinking and drawing, in the realms of arts and science. 56 It was initiated in 2014 when I met Mina Pegourie, the housemaid of an artist residence that I attended in France. Mina is originally from Morocco but has been living in France for more than 50 years. Since she is unable to read or write anything beyond numbers, her address book is composed simply of contact numbers alongside corresponding drawings. Thus, I recorded a video in which she presents the drawings in her address book together with the story behind each one. After filming this work, I initiated a research project that establishes a connection between thinking and drawing, collaborating with people from different fields, from scientists to artists, ordinary people or children. CONTEXT Drawing is a common tool used by artists, scientists, technicians, ordinary people and even children. Many people use drawing as a thinking process, in order to find a solution for everyday problems – architects, plumbers or choreographers. Nevertheless, artists are probably the only ones who use drawing as a process (i.e. a tool to think) and also as a product (i.e. art to exhibit). Thus, science has have become increasingly interested in the ways in which artists think through drawing. A good example is the case of the National Health System in the U.K. that evaluates the possibility of integrating arts into the health practice. 1 Damasio, A. In science, drawing is usually perceived as a visualization skill. Scientists convert data Descartes’ Error. into drawings in order to quantity/visualize the results of their research, as it helps to get a New York: Avon clearer picture. In the artistic field, on the contrary, drawing is a tool to get inspiration and Books, 1994, pp. 247–252. to generate new ideas. The systematic use of drawing as a professional skill may have impact on the structure and function of the brain. Therefore, the brain of artists is potentially diverse 2 ibid, pp. 34–71. from other people. 3 Gaser, C. Similar to walking, drawing has an impact on the brain, stimulating lateral thinking. & Schlaug, G ‘Brain structures Besides, when we draw the hand is connected with the brain through the nervous system, differ between contributing to the process of generating knowledge. As the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio1 musicians and nonmusicians’. Journal proved the brain isn’t the sole decision-maker, as Rene Descartes had stipulated in the precept of Neuroscience, 2003, ‘Cogito Ergo Sum’, because the body contributes to the process of decision-making. That is 23, 9240-9245. to say that the body experiences emotions that are later communicated to the brain through 4 Maguire, E. A. the nervous system. Damasio2 conducted clinical studies of brain lesions in patients whose & Gadian, D. G.& Johnsrude, I. S.& emotions were impaired due to cancer, accidents and other forms of trauma. While these Good, C. D. & patients measured well in intelligence tests, they were unable to make decisions, in spite Ashburner, J. & Frackowiak, R. S. of emotional trauma. Thus, this proved that emotions play an important role in the process J. et al. Navigationof decision-making. related structural changes in the According to neuroscience, our brain is in constant growth and its capacities can hippocampi of be improved through different activities, such as drawing, regardless of our age or genetic taxi drivers. composition. The brain’s plasticity occurs in different stages. It is believed that Neuroplasticity Proceedings of the National Academy happens as we develop, and into adulthood every time we learn something new, and as a of Sciences of the consequence of brain injury. Actually, the more we use an area of the brain, the more it United States of America, 2000, 97, develops; if we don’t use neurons, then they deplete. Moreover, different studies suggest that 4398-4403. artistic training may impact the structure of the brain – evidence on this matter was already found in different professions, such as3 musicians and taxi drivers.4 Nonetheless, only recently someone dedicated an exploratory study to the specific case of visual artists – Dr. Rebecca Chamberlain from the KU, Leuven (BEL), conducted the research ‘Drawing at the right side of the brain’, which aimed at analyzing the impact of developing a 57 visual skill in artists onto the structure of the brain. The study was developed with students 5 Chamberlain, R. & Mcmanus, I. & Brunswick, N. & Rankin, Q. & Riley, H. & Kanai, R. (2014). Drawing on the right side of the Brain: A Voxel-based Morphometry analysis of observational Drawing. NeuroImage. 96. 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.03.062, pp. 163–167 6 L. Lacerda (2016). Skype interview. 10 November 2016 7 James, K., Engelhardt, L. The effects of handwriting experience on functional brain development in pre-literate children. Trends in neuroscience and education, 2012,1. 32–42. 10.1016/j. tine.2012.08.001. 8 Wexler, B. ‘Shaping the Environments that Shape Our Brains: A Long Term Perspective’, in: Cognitive Architecture Designing Respond Environment. New York: Routledge, 2014, pp. 142–167. 9 Damasio, A. Descartes’ Error. New York: Avon Books, 1994, pp. 247–252. 10 Damasio, A. Ao encontro de Espinosa. Emocoes sociais e a neurologia do sentir. Mem Martins: Publicacoes EuropaAmerica, 2003, pp.235–244. from Swansea Metropolitan University, Wales, and Royal College of Arts, London, between 2008 and 2011. The results of the study point to the same conclusions already found in other communities: ‘observational drawing ability relates to changes in structures pertaining to fine motor control and procedural memory, and that artistic training in addition is associated with enhancement of structures pertaining to visual imagery’.5 Thus, drawing may influence the composition of the brain, as well as increasing longterm memory. As Antonio Lacerda, neuroscientist of the Natbrainlab and institute of Child Health (UK) clarifies: It is proved that there is reorganisation in the brain. Depending on the stimulus – be it visual or audio – there is a transformation – neuroplasticity. This change happens daily in each of us, but on a small scale. The long-term change that affects the structure of the brain depends on genetic factors, ambient, but usually takes more time to verify.6 Yet, today, we live in a world that is increasingly digital and visual; we perform less and less physical activities, such as drawing or writing. Thus, this change will affect the structure of the brain, as well as our ability to assimilate and process information. Several studies made with resonance magnetic imaging (MRI) suggest that handwriting may contribute to a better fine-motor skill development. For instance, in 2014, Karin Harman James, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Indiana University, conducted the study ‘The effects of handwriting experience on functional brain development in pre-literate children’.7 The results indicate that the neural activity of children who practice handwriting is far more developed than those who don’t. Thus, computers are commonly blamed by diminishing children’s learning ability and memory. Although some people also point out the role that iPads play in learning languages, the skills are different, as selecting a letter is different from manually drawing it. Nevertheless, the role played by electronic devices in the cognitive process has changed over the recent decades, as a consequence of the digital culture in which we live. Yet, we know, from different studies undertaken over time that the human brain evolves accordingly to the context in which we live. That is how, in broad terms, human evolution has been processed, since pre-history. As Bruce Wexler explains:‘ The most fundamental difference between the human brain and those of other mammals is the greater extent to which the development of its structure and function is influenced by sensory input’.8 Thus, perhaps the first distinction that needs to be made deals with the concept of the mind. Hence, and although most people commonly associate the brain with the skull, thinking is an integrated activity, which involves the body, and some argue that external objects are actively used during the thinking process and even the environment. As was already explained through the studies of Damasio,9 the brain is not the sole decision-maker, as the body plays a role in the cognitive process, in the sense that it experiences emotions that are communicated to the brain through the nervous system. In his book ‘Looking for Spinoza’,10 Damasio goes even further to suggest that the brain may be a slave of the body, in that it produces emotions/ necessities that the brain has to fulfill. What is more, Clarke and Chalmers (1998) took the concept of the mind further, in their seminal paper ‘The Extended Mind’,11 in which they claim that external objects might be part of the mind, in that they can be part of the thought process. They give as an example the case of two friends who want to arrive at the museum. The first one relies on his memory 58 to find the place. The second one, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, has the help of his In his book ‘Looking for Spinoza’,10 Damasio goes even further to suggest that the brain may be a slave of the body, in that it produces emotions/necessities that the brain has to fulfill. notebook, where he stores the address. Hence, the notebook can be seen as a hard drive, that accomplishes the same role of the biological memory. Hence, it should be perceived as being part of the mind. Besides, not only patients who suffer from neurological diseases might think through/with artefacts, as also ordinary people might follow the same procedure. Clark and Chalmers give the example of the scrabble game, in which a player can complete words by mentally rotating the pieces of the game; working on the computer, pressing keys; or physically rotating the parts of the game. Thus, if the first gesture is perceived as intellectual, so should the other ones, as the artefacts are actively part of the thinking process. The Parity Principle coined by the duo establishes that if one object performs an activity that is perceived as being mental, it should be part of the mind of the user. Withal, one might intuitively oppose this idea, because if the objects are part of the mind, the brain is the centre of it, thus, it does not play an equal role. Obviously, objects are not able to generate knowledge by themselves. Moreover, visualization skills are part of what we perceive to be intelligence, and well-known geniuses are recognized for having enhanced abstraction skills, which did not depend on external factors. On the other hand, it is also common knowledge that external factors play an increasing role in all aspects of contemporary societies, which seem to be more and more volatile, and permeable to change. Thus, perhaps, one needs to change the criteria through which we look at events. American researcher Katherine Hayles considers that not only is the mind composed of the brain-body and external objects, as a coupled system, it also extends itself in the environment. As she pictures it: 11 Chalmers, D., and Clarke. The Extended Mind. [Internet]. New York: David Chalmers, [no date], available from: http://www. consc.net/ [Accessed 18/04/2019]. 12 Hayles, K. How do We Think. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2012, p 3. 13 Wittgenstein, L. Philosophical Investigations. West Sussex: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2009. 59 The more one works with digital technologies, the more one comes to appreciate the capacity of networked and programmable machines to carry out sophisticated cognitive tasks, the more the keyboard comes to seem one extension of one’s thoughts rather than an external device on which one types. Embodiment then takes the form of extended cognition, in which human agency and thought are enmeshed within larger networks that extend beyond the desktop computer into environment12 Finally, digital culture also raises philosophical questions in regard to the connection between image and words in contemporary society. Ludwig Wittgenstein has suggested in his book ‘Philosophical Investigations’13 that images are somehow subservient of words, in the sense that we only know the meaning of an image because we have learnt it before through words. For instance, if someone shows a picture of a bird, we know what it stands for, because we learned the word bird, in written or oral speech. Nevertheless, in online communication, the images are used as unique signifiers, alienated from the words. They become somehow online symbols or voids, without any reference to the real world. Hence, the question arises: What happens to human communication in this world of alienated images? How does it impact our thinking process? Obviously, there is no right answer to this question, as the effects of the digital culture are not seen on a deep level in human nature. But, if the brain is always shifting its functions, it is perhaps arguable that it will reconfigure itself, incorporating the needs of the digital culture. As Lacerda states, the consequences of the digital culture ‘is something that we probably won’t be able to see in this generation, but for sure, the habits that we have today will change our species.’6 #exstrange: A Curatorial Intervention on eBay Marialaura Ghidini and Rebekah Modrak #exstrange map of transactions, 2017. Digital illustration by Kelsi Franzino, Dimensions variable. This map shows the location of participants—both artists posting to #exstrange and strangers engaging—and the trail of their transactions/ interactions Rebekah Modrak & Marialaura Ghidini #exstrange was a live exhibition project using the online marketplace eBay as a site of artistic production and cultural exchange. 60 61 Artists created artworks-as-auctions for #exstrange using eBay’s interface and listing template —the title, descriptive text, images, and pricing—as material for the work. The interface of the e-commerce site and the chosen sale category– from Business & Industry to Consumer Electronics to Tickets & Experiences, for example–became the space in which artworks resided and were interpreted according to the specificities determined by their design: notably the seven-day auction, the one-to-one user engagement, and socio-linguistic conventions pertaining to online commerce. #exstrange grew into the largest artistic intervention ever enacted on eBay, spanning four months of daily auction launches by over eighty artists from South America, the United States, Canada, Europe, Africa, and Asia. As example, Bangalore, India-based artist Tara Kelton choose to place her memory for sale within eBay’s Computers and Networking category—rather than contextualizing her consciousness within a medical or biological classification. Though she sold a service—access to her brain—that is intimate (a sharing of memory), her text is pointedly transactional and treats memory as data. eBay, in kind, responded to her auction by proposing other “you may also be interested in” data-based storage systems at the bottom of the listing. Launched on 15 January 2017, #exstrange presented an artwork-as-auction a day until 8 April 2017. We connected all auctions using the tag #exstrange in listing titles. Viewers could come upon the works while browsing the vast archive of commodities that is eBay, could search purposefully for #exstrange within eBay’s search engine, or could enter the project through our website #exstrange.com, which now serves as an archive for the project. These diverse types of interactions asked users (artists and public) to negotiate various interpretative contexts from the field of commerce, to the personal, the public sphere, and the art world. We started the project by inviting 21 artists from nine countries to post an auction on a particular day in a sequence of 21 days. Then we invited 12 guest curators to each invite three artists according to their own interpretation of our curatorial invitation. And, finally, we took advantage of eBay’s open access (no gatekeeping here) to circulate an open call. The project led to over 100 artworks-as-auctions during the course of three months, spanning the inauguration of a new United States president, the Women’s March, and North Korea’s tests of a ballistic missile. We saw eBay as an opportunity to explore the politics of e-commerce space as defined by the global market without being a regulatory system ourselves. For example, eBay targets its audiences according to nationally defined governmental policies and social codes and does not offer service in many countries. Artist Joana Moll, Google trackers in North Korea official webpage (2017)–commissioned by guest curator Bani Brusadin—offered proof of U.S. colonization over North Korea because “Google trackers” are embedded in North Korea’s official webpage. Her artwork/auction read: “A tracker is a piece of data stored in a particular website that allows monitoring and data collection of user behaviour. … Regardless of disagreements [between the U.S. and North Korea], the developers of the official website of The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea decided to add a few Google trackers in the site, thus allowing the most powerful American IT corporation to colonize their online presentation to the world.” Moll’s ‘item’ was interpreted by eBay as “an embargoed good” because the artist wanted to sell, as a souvenir, the Google tracker codes embedded in the official website of The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. eBay blocked the listing. When Moll tried to sell the work from a range of other eBay national sites to circumvent the ban, the service kept (above) Marialaura Ghidini and Rebekah Modrak #exstrange home page, 2017, exstrange.com (opposite) Marialaura Ghidini and Rebekah Modrak Tara Kelton, “Human Internal Memory Storage #exstrange,” 2017, eBay auction originating in Bangalore, India, Courtesy of Tara Kelton. Curators: Marialaura Ghidini & Rebekah Modrak Using the platform of eBay for our curatorial work differentiated our approach from that of curating in the gallery, the museum, or in public space. 62 ‘reading’ it as a North Korean (embargoed) good. The ways in which web services are regulated, specifically the enduring problems of digital access and the rights to privacy and freedom of speech that underlie such regulations, were revealed by the algorithmic inaccuracy of eBay’s ‘reading’ of the item up for auction. When conceiving the #exstrange project, we asked “While browsing for items within eBay categories, what types of encounters can happen between an artist and a buyer or ‘collector’ beyond the typical exchanges of commercial web-space?” We wanted to explore the possibility of chance encounters in a space where people of different backgrounds and interests could easily “meet.” The collective LEXX Exhibitor Space, based in Cholula, Mexico, auctioned a street vendor’s tricycle normally used to sell corn, but with an enigmatic listing that suggested being open to artistic intervention. The LEXX Exhibitor space and the potential bidder, who was from New York, Skyped to talk about flea markets and shared interests in encountering art on the street where people don’t intend to have an art experience. The buyer proposed keeping the cart in Cholula and using it as a site for collaborative projects. They created a collaborative team called In the Air and the concession cart lives on as an exhibition platform; invited guest artists create flags that are flown on the cart while the vendor sells corn. One of the first flags was printed with text reading (in Spanish) “What do you really want?” One vendor especially loved flying this flag because people usually buy the corn and leave but, with this flag flying, people wanted to talk philosophically. First, they’d say: “What I really want is free corn.” Then, “What I really want is a happier life.” Another group that used the opportunity of eBay as a means of global interaction was the collective IOCOSE, who sold street protests. The buyer chose what the protest signs would say. IOCOSE outsourced their message through crowdsourcing platforms to workers all over the world. IOCOSE’s Instant Protest responded to the failure of online participation, such as political petitions that generate thousands of signatures but yield little impact. Instead, IOCOSE used a web service to protest in real time and space. The ten winning bidders from all over the world each paid $10 to publicize political and social campaigns. Using the platform of eBay for our curatorial work differentiated our approach from that of curating in the gallery, the museum, or in public space. The artists of #exstrange became actively involved in the process of creating the exhibition, and, essentially, built the exhibition through their choice of categories and audiences. Silvio Lorusso sold Programmed Leisure (2017) under the category Tickets & Experiences, auctioning a bot-generated programme of self-care that would allow the winning bidder to ‘receive’ scheduled time off. Geraldine Juárez’s Press Release (2017), listed under Collectibles, looked at how editorializing not only reframes and adds value to an artwork, but it is also a sine qua non of the condition of the contemporary artist. Juárez asked writer Andy Sarafan to write a press release for her work for #exstrange that she then sold as a unique piece; thereby auctioning, in the artist’s words, “the clerical work required by curators, venues, publications, funding applications, etcetera”. Juárez and other #exstrange artists frequently used the context of e-commerce to test and critique the economic infrastructure that dominates the art world, where labor is very often valued according to unquantifiable terms—a practice that is alien to other fields of work. Using the dynamic platform of eBay for our curatorial work allowed us the site-specificity of working with real locations and objects and the advantages of transgressing space through the virtual. By “exchanging with strangers,” #exstrange operated in an expanded field strongly embedded in daily life. 63 The Grid Annie Morrad & Ian McArthur Our research proposes methods for how artists in diverse global cities could co-create new online performance spaces. 64 Morrad (London) plays improvised alto, tenor, and soprano saxophone. McArthur (Sydney) broadcasts electronics, guitars, and field-recordings. The connected, emergent qualities of our collaboration situate it within telematic (Rofe, Reuben 2017) and technoetic art practices (Ascott 2008). Online platforms1 augment our live performances through latency, creating unpredictable, ‘defective’ sonic artifacts. We embrace this uniquely digital palette of additional textural information. 1 https://www.skype. ‘The Grid’ documents our engagement with urban grids, improvised music, com/en/ and http:// participatory processes, and radio-art throughout 2018. We composed and performed material mixlr.com/ derived or inspired from our activities in London, Sydney, and Chongqing and deployed 2 https://wavefarm. them in broadcasts, video, and installation works. The cities represent specific personal, and org/ta/artists/x8grjs professional links to us as practitioners. Our methods interposed real and conceptual grid structures on: (1) London: via ordinance survey maps and overlaid hand drawn staves creating ‘music’ scores based on intersections in the boroughs of Hackney, Camden, and Islington; (2) Sydney: via sound drones rendered in open source software where underpinning time-based grids influence modes of composition; and (3) Chongqing: via field-recordings where elaborate, broken city grids were distributed via China’s Smart Grid infrastructure – a communication conduit largely ignored by the West. Wave Farm2 radio provided a regular program for publishing our sound-art from New York. LON DON how do you map a city that is hundreds of years old. how do you map a city that has hundreds of years of history each layer piled on top of each other, each meandering road leading to another meandering road that leads you in the wrong direction when you think you’re going in the right direction. how do you map a city that is constantly changing, consciously echoing bits of itself in different directions, how do you map a city like that. maybe you think about a sound, maybe you think about a rhythm, maybe you think about putting a music stave on top of this, placing music notes where intersections cross over people’s lives and using people’s stories at those intersections. this was the process that I decided to use when looking at london and thinking about how to map a city through a grid. using these intersections I found various people who wanted to tell a story about the city that they lived in and you could say the city that they loved, these various people took me to these places that they loved and spoke about how the city related to them in a special way, these people weren’t necessarily born in london these people weren’t necessarily londoners, what these people were was not known, what these people became was londoners. london is a most diverse place. london has avenues that turn into small streets that turn into tiny mew’s that turn into corridors, dark and mysterious, london has all of this, london has different smells, london has different tastes, london has something that no other city has. what it does share with other cities is a system by which you can get through london, so using these systems, this project works with journeys, this project worked with journeys upon journeys sometimes these journeys were on a bus, sometimes these journeys were by train by underground by overground, sometimes these journeys were by accident, sometimes these journeys were by foot, sometimes these journeys led to falling in love with a stranger, sometimes these journeys were in the rain, sometimes these journeys were by torchlight, sometimes these journeys were a mistake. these journeys had rhythm interspaced with chat. 65 WHAT HAPPENED IN LONDON AND THE PROCESS BY WHICH THIS OCCURRED. My question was, what is this space? what is this London? THE FIRST ACTION: I made the decision to have an ordnance survey map of different parts of London as the starting foundation, this was to enable a sense of institution in the project, from this I used another institution in the form of a music stave, which I placed on the ordnance survey map. I used these, as a dressmaker would use a dress pattern, as a known quantity from which to produce an outcome. THE SECOND ACTION: I then randomly chose intersections on the ordnance survey map on which to place the music notes, on the music staves. The reasoning for my choices was somewhat arbitrary, but I decided that the music key signature was ‘C major’ and the rhythm would echo West African polyrhythms, using the four beats as us walking through life and the three beats what life throws at us. (I was once told this break down of polyrhythms in a pub somewhere, by a very knowledgeable man, whose name I have forgotten!). THE THIRD ACTION: To take journeys using the arteries of London through using public transport, not black cabs, Ubers or such like, but transport that situated whole groups of people in one place with the intention of going from somewhere to somewhere. My ‘intention’ was to gather data through sound recordings via my iPhone, thereby not bringing attention to the fact that I was eavesdropping in public. This data was in the form of the conversations people had with each other, sometimes face-to-face, sometimes on their mobile phone of choice. THE FOURTH ACTION: This was to interview people I knew, or bumped into at parties, or friends of friends. Their stories were of certain places in London. These places were based on their engagement with London and situated within or at particular locations. The interviews told of their deep connection and physical connectivity to London and how this formed and informed their life. THE FIFTH ACTION: To revisit the original music stave that had been placed on the ordnance survey map. To discover how or if the journeys and the interviews matched up with the arbitrarily placed music notes on what was now a music score. To now, also place the locations that the interviewees had spoken about onto the music score. To now, also place the journeys as a flow/rhythm across the music score. THE SIXTH ACTION: To use the music score (A music score should be a guide or a literal document? – for another discussion) as a ‘rough’ guide in the placing of journey sounds, interview sounds, general sounds. To form a sound file of all the material/data. The journeys were the four polyrhythm beats, the interviews the three polyrhythm beats? Or visa-versa? The journeys were the flow, the interviews were the music notes? Or visa-versa? THE SEVENTH ACTION: Me, where did I come into this, was I the conduit for the artwork? Not unlike public transport is a conduit taking people from one place to another, not unlike stories from the interviewees are conduits, telling of one place time in another place/time. Here, now enters the saxophone, my tenor saxophone to be precise (I have others). I wanted my playing to be a shadow in the corner, a shadow from the darkened alleyway, a shadow form the past/present/ I wanted my playing to be ‘London’, to be the essence of what London is, to be this constant that is in each person who chooses to be called a Londoner, mysterious, dark, light, happy, odd, other... 66 Annie Morrad and Ian McArthur Figure 1: Theoretical Framework (Morrad, McArthur, 2018), Author’s Diagram 3 https://wavefarm. org/archive/x18nrv future, I wanted my playing to be a constant background (not literally, but in the memory), I wanted my playing to be ‘London’, to be the essence of what London is, to be this constant that is in each person who chooses to be called a Londoner, mysterious, dark, light, happy, odd, other... The Grid forges a triangulated dialogic space where the potential of telematic improvisation to generate “newness” impacting performers, performance, and audience occurs, through ongoing disruptions (Campbell 2017) and uncanny atmospheres otherwise unavailable. Where possible we collaborated with others. Morrad conducted interviews with people in London and incorporated them into field-recordings. Facilitating an urban mapping lab at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in Chongqing, McArthur implemented a soundwalking process with Chinese, Australian, Singaporean, Argentinian, and American participants that was documented and broadcast on Wave Farm.3 Sound-walking Instructions: Form self-organised groups Each group will be randomly allocated destinations across Chongqing. Deliverables: 1. A sound map. Don’t look at your environment (a blindfold is a good idea) Notate and/or draw the soundscape (minimum of 45 minutes) 2. A sound recording (10 minutes duration) 3. Photographs documenting the site 4. A ‘selfie’ photograph at the location On site: 1. Wander and find somewhere to sit. 2. Be patient and quiet. Give yourself and your ears time to open up. It’s important to privilege your sense of hearing over sight. Try to listen deeply into the environment. 3. Begin to note or draw a response to the sounds you hear. Note as much information as you can. 4. Try a combination of sketches and words 5. Give yourself 45 minutes for this. 6. Alternatively, blindfold yourself and have a partner guide you through the space noting sounds you encounter. Create a map of your route and the sounds heard. 7. During your encounter make a recording of 10 minutes of sound. Photograph your environment and take a selfie as evidence of your visit. 67 The theoretical framework (Figure 1) draws on ideas about society and rhythm (Lefebvre 2004), deep listening (Oliveros 2005), and understandings of ‘time’ as instantaneous moments (Bachelard 2000). We test the parameters of performative ‘live-ness’ and the documenting of live-ness (Ausländer 2008, Bailey 1993). Like Ausländer, we engage the telematic in proposing new spaces where emergent forms of presence and co-presence can be established. Our response seeks ‘new-ness’ – a “digital unique” referencing the improvised, ‘instantaneous’ inherent to our oeuvre. The significance of this is in how new-ness emerges within listeners witnessing and experiencing the relationship between object and player, including our response as artists to the unknown and unforeseen nuances that arise where live-ness includes contributions of the non-human collaborator – the Internet itself. Our collaboration rethinks improvisation as an emergent networked art practice, simultaneously leveraging traditions of instrumentation (e.g. saxophones) but embracing generative and digital networks to forge a new globally dispersed affect. In doing so, we explore the impact of mediated encounters with performers and audience, and challenge expectations of performance spaces mediated by online environments and their accompanying distributed space-time configurations. 4 The Wire, 422 (April 2019) SYDNEY REFLECTIONS… It’s after 2:00am when I get offline – around 5:00pm UK time, and 12:00pm the previous day in New York. I feel disconnected. Not much I had planned meticulously over the previous days had played out as expected. The samples and MIDI files I had programmed responding to the agreed improvisational concept hadn’t felt or sounded how I intended in the disrupted swirl of the broadcast. Bells manifested as string-like; pianos shrill, not jazzy (“brittle” they’d said in a recent WIRE4 review); field-recordings I used as textures seemed drowned out. The screeching feedback and delay inherent in our live work dominated much of the performance. Space left for the other performers was replaced with ambiguous noise. After, Annie had said it was one of our best performances. She liked how we’d “listened to each other”. As we played I felt relaxed, then anxious as things unfolded unexpectedly, then focused as we struggled to reach some kind of sonic consensus as we progressed through two hours online – then finally I let go – whatever transpired was ok … normal for improvisers I tell myself… but what is ‘normal’ about this always unfamiliar space, this tangled engagement? … Listening back afterwards I heard it too. … the sound of artists 16,846 kilometres apart improvising through a wire. REFERENCES Ascott, Roy. Cybernetic, technoetic, syncretic: The prospect for art. (2008): 204–204. Ausländer, Philip. Liveness: Performance in a mediatized culture. Routledge, 2008. Bachelard, G., (2000). The Instant. Clinamen Press, Manchester. Bailey, Derek. Improvisation: Its nature and practice in music. Hachette Books, 1993. De Capo Press. Campbell, Lee. (2016). Lee Campbell’s Tactics of Interruption. Toynbee Studios, London. Lefebvre, Henri. Rhythmanalysis: Space, time and everyday life. A&C Black, 2004. Oliveros, Pauline. Deep listening: A composer’s sound practice. IUniverse, 2005. Rofe, Michael, and Federico Reuben. Telematic performance and the challenge of latency. Journal of Music, Technology & Education 10, no. 2–3 (2017): 167–183. 68 And The World Will Be As One (opposite) Jacob Olmedo Series of Explorations 2018, Wool and silk-hydroponic textile in Knit, and tufting, Series of mismatch samples. Jacob Olmedo And The World Will Be As One explores collaboration and community care and knowledge, hybrid textile techniques and a twenty-first century way of thinking about spaces, fashion, and farming. While using sustainability as a practice in consideration that is driven by empathy. When making with empathy for people, practice, our environment, we start designing for a positive, progressive future. 70 71 72 (opposite) Jacob Olmedo And The World Will Be As One 2017, Hydroponic Textile, 20” X 33” Image by Teagan West, Model: Valerie Grapek (above) The Studio Cohort (Redding Connecticut), 2018 73 In the Wake of Museul Whiteness Macushla Robinson Dancers on the Daru Staircase, The Louvre. The Carters. 2018. Apeshit [film still]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=kbMqWXnpXcA, accessed April 24, 2019. Macushla Robinson There is a ghost ship haunting The Carters’ filmclip for Apeshit. Although the ship is by no means the most overt theme of the video, we shouldn’t ignore its persistent presence. 74 The ship appears explicitly in two sites: The Winged Victory of Samothrace in front of which The Carters and a troupe of dancers perform, and Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa in front of which Jay-Z performs solo. The museum’s collection is inseparable from, indeed contingent upon, colonial violence and slavery; it was the ship—the technology of European naval power—that brought much of the museum’s collection to France; it was often the very same ships that brought enslaved bodies to plantations. This film clip is not staged anywhere or indeed elsewhere, not in the periphery but in the very heart of the colonial French metropole. Yet the Louvre holds the elsewhere of European empire within it. Museal whiteness is not an omission of people of color, but a wholesale consumption of them, an act of swallowing up and metabolizing. The colonized world may not be visible, but it is constitutive. 1 Clementine Deliss, Manifesto for the Rights of Access to Collections, 2018, np Under the Seine in Paris, where sleep, in the holdings of ships built for slavery, these muted bodies, these human remains.1 The Louvre’s galleries extend the slave ship’s hold. Beyoncé sits at the base of The Winged Victory of Samothrace at the top of the Daru staircase. The statue represents the Greek goddess Victory—also called Nike—alighting atop the prow of a ship. Taken from the island of Samothrace in 1863, The Winged Victory has been the subject of an as-yet unsuccessful repatriation claim. The statue commemorates a Roman naval triumph (though we don’t know exactly which one). In a way, its prominent display in the Louvre marks the ‘victory’ of the French colonial empire over its dominions, from colonies in Africa and Asia to the Caribbean sugar islands. But in The Carters’ use of it, the figure becomes a marker of something else: the victory of the oppressed, the survival and flourishing of the descendants of the enslaved. Two minutes and six seconds into Apeshit, the music comes to a sudden halt. It isn’t silent, exactly—it resonates with the ringing of a church bell while panning over dancers, paintings and vignettes. We feel the weight of this pause. Everyone in the museum is still, as though collectively holding their breath. The camera pans across a scene of dancers laying on the Daru staircase beneath The Winged Victory. In this suspended moment, these women suddenly bear an uncanny resemblance to the infamous Stowage of the British Slave Ship ‘Brookes’ which was published in 1788 and circulated as an abolitionist image. This schematic shows enslaved Africans packed into the ship’s hold. 2 Édouard Glissant, The steps on which they lay echo the interior of the ship’s hold, shown in cross-section Betsy Wing (trans.) on the diagram. The ship itself has a stepped quality to it and describes how the enslaved were Poetics of Relation (Ann Arbor: ‘stored’ “by means of platforms or shelves in the manner of galleries in a church.” Let’s not let University of the linguistic resonance escape us. The diagram demonstrated that these human beings were Michigan Press, 1997) pp 5-6 treated as things, but it does not capture the experience of the hold. 75 Imagine 200 human beings crammed into a space barely capable of containing a third of them. Imagine vomit, naked flesh, swarming lice, the dead slumped, the dying crouched. Imagine, if you can, the swirling red of mounting to the deck, the ramp they climbed, the black sun on the horizon, vertigo, this dizzying sky plastered to the waves. Over the course of more than two centuries, twenty, thirty million people deported. Worn down, in a debasement more eternal than apocalypse. But that was nothing yet.2 To fill this gap, the film gestures toward the violence of the hold with its repeated turn to Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa. The painting represents a wreckage off the coast of modernday Mauritania. Six life boats did not hold all 400 on board: 146 piled onto a makeshift raft that was to be towed behind the boats, but was jettisoned after only a few miles, already half submerged. Of those abandoned on the raft only 15 were rescued, and only 10 survived. The painting depicts the moment when a ship appeared in the distance, the possibility of survival animating the bodies of those reaching skyward. Three of the fifteen figures in the painting are black men. Although the painting does not depict a slave ship, it is thought that Gericault was sympathetic to the abolitionist cause. Here, this disaster at sea stands in for the disaster of deportation and enslavement—the violent rupture of the middle passage. Laying prone beneath a stone ship’s prow, the dancers on the Daru staircase recall the inert, thingified bodies shown in the Brooke’s diagram. We might imagine them as the ghosts of ancestral slaves, those who did not make it through the middle passage to centuries of plantation slavery, the ones whom Christina Sharpe reminds are still present in the oceans in a ghostly molecular form. But they do not hold still for long; soon they begin to rise—lifting their heads, hands and feet, reaching upwards in rhythmic motions. For this is not death, though it passes through its terrain. This is a triumphal dance celebrating generational survival. In Poetics of Relation, Edouard Glissant proclaims the victory of spoken over written language, of creole, of the coming together that is enacted in the voice. Reminding us that the archives of slave societies cannot ever define the enslaved, he embraces liquid becoming and fluid black being. 3 Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 1997, p 8 For though this experience made you, original victim floating toward the sea’s abysses, an exception, it became something shared and made us, the descendants, one people among others. Peoples do not live on exception. Relation is not made up of things that are foreign but of shared knowledge. This experience of the abyss can now be said to be the best element of exchange. This is why we stay with poetry.3 Likewise, Apeshit asserts the inability of the museum to define those colonized and traded people sacrificed for its riches. Beyoncé performs in front of several iconic images that set the benchmark of female beauty to white femininity and, as has been widely pointed out, she reclaims this space and counter-asserts the black female body as beautiful and strong. Apeshit gives us glimpses of non-white bodies scattered throughout the museum’s holdings. As Kimberly Drew, who tweets as MuseumMammy, points out in her comments on the video – Black people have always been there. I can’t believe we made it, Beyonce sings, but she can – she has been here all along. The film clip features Benoiste’s Portrait of a Negress, a painting that is rare because it was made by a woman (one of the few who made it into the annals of art history) and because it centers a black woman. She is not a maid or a servant in the background of the painting, but its subject. About her, we know very little. She does not meet our gaze but looks over our shoulder to the middle distance. We can never know what she is looking at, what she sees. But she is joined by these beautiful black women who bend and sway in a lively, fleshly retort to the museum’s stone holdings. 76 We can never know what she is looking at, what she sees. But she is joined by these beautiful black women who bend and sway in a lively, fleshly retort to the museum’s stone holdings. Macushla Robinson Stowage of the British Slave Ship ‘Brookes’ under the Regulated Slave Trade, Act of 1788 ca. 1788. 4 MC Master P in Solange, A Seat at the Table (New York: Columbia Records, 2016) 5 Christina Sharpe, In The Wake: On Blackness and Being (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016). P 105 77 This piece is profoundly celebratory. But it is celebratory in the wake, and it takes joy in the survival without forgetting what it took to survive. The film claims the space of royalty – this is clearly marked by the scenes in front of David’s Coronation of Napoleon but also in the regal affect of these two performers. As New Orleans MC Master P says at the close of Solange’s last album, “We come here as slaves, but we goin’ out as royalty.”4 While the Louvre is an instantiation of the slave ship’s hold, and The Carters’ occupation of it a triumph over the hold. This is precisely because of the painful history that it rests upon. The Carters occupy this site both because-of and in spite-of the brutality of the hold. The film says both ‘we were here all along’ and ‘I can’t believe we made it’. In the wake, the river, and the drowning are death, disaster and possibility. These are some of the impossible possibilities faced by those Black people who appear in the door and dwell in the wake.5 Matsushima Bunko Museum Ryota Sato Matsushima Planted Grass, 2018, © Matsushima Bunko Museum Ryota Sato Matsushima Bunko Museum is located on the smallest inhabited island in Setouchi sea called Matsushima in Okayama prefecture, Japan. 78 The building is a repurposed old elementary school that was closed in 1989 due to a lack of students and reopening as a museum in spring 2019. The project is commissioned by Kurashiki city for the development and operation of cultural programs in this building and the area around the site. The group, including myself who started this new project consists of artists, designers, architects, and musicians. We started to organize exhibitions and music events in 2010 out of necessity. We felt the need as commercial galleries, non-profit art organizations, and rental galleries were closing down rapidly in the city and there were fewer opportunities. Our goal was simple. We wanted to create a network of local creative members through various events. In 2013, we were permitted to use a museum which had been closed since 2006 due to financial difficulties. After discussions with experts and local residents, we decided to start it as a museum again. We thought it will be interesting and challenging to replace the museum’s contents from scratch. The museum was built by the wealthy family who made their fortune on warehousing business since the Edo period and they had some important collections of traditional Japanese paintings and artifacts but after the bankrupt, all of the works had been auctioned off to unknown collectors. The loss of their collection coincided with a decline of population and local businesses around the area that filled the local community with a feeling of failure and nostalgia. The demand for the new museum was high from the local community, ranging from bringing more visitors and new residents, creating jobs, repairing their abandoned houses, opening a cafe and to have somebody around to talk to. With these expectations from the community as well as what we wanted to achieve, we named the museum Fukiage museum and it started in the spring of 2015. Our mission remained the same. To provide support for artists and local members through exhibitions and events. At the beginning of this new project, we never felt the need for directors or curators or any of those positions because we all worked together equally and thought we could operate a museum without any titles. Of course, this decision had created many problems for us but we never changed our minds about it even now. One of the problems with this decision is that we never really knew how to present ourselves without titles and people never knew who is responsible for what. It became messy when it comes to decision making. We had to talk to each other all the time and we constantly had a communication problem. None of us had any experience in operating a museum before. We had a goal to create a network of artists but when it came to programming, we had little idea about how to brand our museum through programs. Few advisers had ideas and suggestions, but we couldn’t decide. So, in the end, we vaguely decided to do things that other real museums can’t do. One different thing that happened compared to conventional institution around the area was giving up responsibility to brand ourselves internally. This happened naturally as we started the museum without knowing what to do and hoping that we will have more fixed ideas later. Also, we wanted to invite participants to decide how they want us to become rather than finding a neutral benefit for both artists and the museum. Although there were problems in defining what we are, we liked the fact that it was a collective effort to operate the museum and running a museum became more like a collaborative artwork. One of the interesting outcomes of this attitude was a program led by one of our architect member Shinsaku Yamaguchi who started a walking program around the museum 79 to record and study the condition of narrow passages of this small town. After one year of workshops, he made a hypothesis that some of the passages could have existed for more than 15,000 years. As they accumulate more information, the work takes ever-evolving forms of maps, data, the walks, conversations, and the discovery. During two years of operating the Fukiage museum, we were fortunate with artists and local members to come up with programs. However, we faced a crucial problem. We didn’t make any money and the funding had dried out. Unfortunately, we had to close the museum in 2017 due to a similar problem as the previous museum. Before we started the Fukiage museum, I have predicted that financially, running this museum will be impossible and strongly reacted against taking up this opportunity to restart a museum. My prediction was right, and we failed to accomplish local members wishes but I have changed my mind about doing this project. We all saw the potential of collaboratively working together to shape and manipulate the museum. In the end, we didn’t feel having exhibitions and talks provided the network that we hoped for. The relationship between the museum and the audience was too static. We provided something and people came and saw stuff. We became more interested in doing something dynamic like Shinsaku Yamaguchi’s project where project shifts according to participants and the environment. We wanted to operate similarly to our museum and now we had a new opportunity. In 2016, our group was approached by Kurashiki city to develop and operate new programs for a museum on Matsushima island. Despite the fact we failed, Kurashiki city has given us a new chance. The location of the museum is not ideal. There are no regular ferries that go to the island. You have to take a private boat. Many were surprised we even took this new opportunity. People thought this project will be tougher than the Fukiage museum. I think they are right. When I heard about this opportunity, I thought we will fail again and felt it is a stupid idea. But this was a good sign. At that time, we considered failure as a part of natural development. After the Fukiage museum, we all realized it was worth pursuing the museum project even though it seemed unfeasible and unrealistic. Without doing the Fukiage museum project, we would have never given a new opportunity. So, we decided to move to Matsushima island. We called it Matsushima Bunko Museum. Just before I joined the museum member in 2018, I was told that we cannot call the building Matsushima Bunko Museum, but we can call our activity Matsushima Bunko Museum. I was shocked because we already made our name public. I was struck by how open Kurashiki city cultural development department was in calling our activity a museum rather than a fixed building. After a while, I find it an opportunity for us to play with the notion of what museum can be. It meant that they were willing to experiment with new methodologies for developing a cultural institution together. In the spring of 2019, I started to work on the Matsushima island. Maintaining the island and the operation of the museum as well as working with two residents on the island. We need permission to do anything from the residents at all the time. To cut grass, chop down bamboo trees and planning events and everything. It seems like they have permission to do anything even on the land which they do not belong to. I have started to regard them as king and queen on the island. The true ruler of the island. One day, my queen had started to plant grass on the edge of our museum garden. We have strict rules on how to maintain the garden, planned by our garden designer but we decided not to interfere with her work. Her work seems different from other gardener’s jobs. She picked particular grass from the field next to our garden and plant them neatly with few bits of seaweed beautiful arranged near the plants. I regard them as artists, but we 80 need to build a framework so that we can represent their work at the museum without It seems like they have permission to do anything even on the land which they do not belong to. I have started to regard them as king and queen on the island. The true ruler of the island. Ryota Sato Matsushima Bunko Museum, 2018, © Matsushima Bunko Museum 81 objectifying them as artists or commodifying their work on the island. I don’t know how we will achieve this, but I am hoping to build this framework with residents, community members as well as artists in residents in the future. Everything seems so good but again we have the same problem. We still don’t know what to do. There were discussions but we can’t decide what to do, so we ended up abandoning out the responsibility of coming up with a goal entirely and leaving it up to the participants to decide with us. We decided that the only thing the museum offer is an invitation. An invitation to build programs, platforms and the museum itself. The exploration of what museums can be became our central conversation and we all agreed that one of the main functions of any museum is to provide education and our museum will attempt to provide the same. By actively engaging in the development of the museum together, Matsushima Bunko Museum hopes to provide education through participation, not by offering lessons. Textiles as Art, Culture, and Science: Discovery of the Ephemeral and Perennial Imprints Through Modeled Ecosystems (opposite) Luciana Scrutchen Gathering the Coveted, 2017, digital photo of Lichen from Juneau, Alaska, print and Kaledo textile design, 11.4 x 25.4 cms Luciana Scrutchen As a textile artist the level of engagement in all of my research begins with the necessary creative stimulus of every textile making process; whether spinning fiber, weaving cloth, hand-dyeing, or printing, all manner of making draws me ever deeper into an understanding of this ancient art form. 82 My personal history underpins my desire as a maker of textiles, textile arts, and educator. My need to understand why I always felt drawn to textiles and regarded them as something to be revered can be found in my ancestry, which has records tracing back six generations to the late 1700’s—early 1800’s, with vague terminology, purposefully obfuscating the word slavery with forced labor. Although it’s impossible to get a clear view of an individual’s specialties or tasks from that period, slaves were considered property so records do not list titles or positions. Although it is safe to say slavery most certainly fostered a subsistence existence which didn’t end when slavery did. My grandmother was a well-respected seamstress in her community. She was not allowed to try on clothes or shoes when shopping in a clothing store, therefore she’d buy a garment blindly in the hopes it would fit properly, and make alterations and tailor as needed. She learned patternmaking and created her own patterns which she’d reuse. But quality materials and textiles were difficult to come by and were prohibitively expensive. Her materials, patterns, and garments, were precious. They required skills that were not common knowledge and materials that were exceptional to their subsistence culture. This is why I’ve always felt the need to preserve and respect textile materials and patterns. They are precious to me because they were precious to my family. Working in the fashion industry and as an educator allows me a wide breadth in which to produce patterns, textures, and dyes for cloth, leathers, or skins but I find fresh inspiration with practices that fall outside of industry standards of mass production, existing in that intersection between bio-science and micro-agrarian cultures. My research and art have been informed by the philosophies and practices of subsistence cultures and sustainable systems in the Americas. By seeking knowledge from and with these communities I aim to find context for ecological thinking born out of necessity. Understanding the history and current practices of cultures that exist on the fringe of existence who remain mindful and conserve their precious resources provides a baseline for necessary sustainable practices. This led me to take my research to Alaska, whose harsh climate and isolation from the contiguous states maintains numerous subsistence cultures. The Alaskan natural resources are often non-traditional and its people still live off the land with few modern conveniences. My process of research is empirical observation, collaborations with native artisans or resource managers, collecting oral histories, gathering and exploring source materials, and personal artistic experimentation and creation. In this manner, I can have first-hand knowledge free of influence by others who may be doing similar study or research. My collaboration with indigenous artisans allows me to learn traditional techniques necessary to process raw materials or create textiles unique to a particular system. From indigenous people who have mastered ancient practices of natural dyeing and tanning to farmers and conservationists expanding into new fields of Muskox qiviut gathering and aquaponic farming, all ideas are rooted in some form of sustainability and each has merits and drawbacks. In a culture and area of the country that relies on subsistence living nothing is wasted and everything must find a use that sustains not only the population but also the resource. Every collaboration, every new exploration, every new material can produce surprising and beautiful results in my making process. 83 GATHERING THE COVETED The most immediate form of visual stimulation can be pulled from natural materials that drive and inspire fractal patterns or color variations. The delicate tendrils of lichen or the subtle natural striped ombre of whale baleen can be translated through digital textile design and make its way into fabric production, which is a way of honoring rather than appropriating indigenous culture. Although subtle and obscure, the mere suggestion of nature can trigger an emotional response in a viewer even if they don’t recognize the visual reference or source of the design. I gathered lichen from the Arctic and Rainforest regions, interested in creating natural colorants and dyeing techniques with these composite organisms that are both an algae and fungi species. I sought out the coveted resource in Juneau at Tongass National Forest, with the permission of the Park Rangers I gathered several different genus samples, including Usnea, Ramalina, Cladonia, and Shield lichen. The fragile ecosystem relies on the important role that lichen plays as food for reindeer during lean winter months and a decomposing agent for wood and rocks. Lichen grows in some of the most inhospitable environments, requiring very little water, and has explosive growth spurts in the continuous daylight hours during Arctic summers. It is necessary to create topsoil in an area where few leafy plants grow that would otherwise provide organic material. Lichen, however, has a fragility to air pollutants. While it’s able to gather nitrogen from the air for its use and deposit necessary nitrates into the soil, it will perish in a polluted environment. Because of its crucial place in the ecosystem naturally grown lichen cannot be harvested in sufficient quantity to supply mass production. The small amounts of specimens I gathered for research would be enough to produce only the meagerest amount of natural dye but the results were wonderfully surprising. A future sustainable practice for harvesting lichen for industrial dye purposes could only be considered within a controlled hydroponic environment. I found inspiration in lichens fragile beauty juxtaposed with the strength of this plant that could decompose rocks, which in my mind created a beautiful symmetry for digital exploration. I created a black and white pattern for a woven textile that encompasses both properties of lichen; that of soil creator as indicated by the vertical strata of the design, and as an environmental indicator of negative changes created by man represented by the harsh black horizontal bands that interrupt 84 the natural flow. Lichen, however, has a fragility to air pollutants. While it’s able to gather nitrogen from the air for its use and deposit necessary nitrates into the soil, it will perish in a polluted environment. (opposite) Luciana Scrutchen Scrimshaw and Baleen, 2017, digital photo from Iñupiat Heritage Center, Barrow, Alaska, 25.4 x 11.43 cms 85 (above) Luciana Scrutchen Instinct of Ethereal, 2016, painting with live microbes on silk, 18.2 x 25.4 cms IMPRINTS OF SUBSISTENCE CULTURE My preconceived assumptions of native culture and regional environments were shattered during my investigations. Historical garments, housed in the Heritage Museum, changed my idea of a singular Arctic climate. Alaska contains several different climates and ecosystems and each area requires different methods and materials for useful clothing and textiles, while local natural resources dictate a vast array of dye techniques, ornamentation, and aesthetics. But always, function necessitates form. Alaska’s diverse ecosystems, from the Hyper-maritime rainforests to Boreal Forests, and Arctic Tundra, supports aboriginal cultures dependent on the flora and fauna sustained within the varied climate conditions. Barrow, Alaska, on the northernmost tip of the state, in the Arctic Tundra is such a place where subsistence is not dependent on plant life. Historically the populous relied upon whaling, fishing, trapping, and hunting as the only means of survival. Evidence of Barrow’s history of subsistence was displayed in a small curio shop/museum, in the form of a pair of polar bear pelt pants and hand-stitched sealskin mukluk boots. While such precious pelts evoke emotional triggers in a world teetering on extinction events, it should be remembered that these items were created for survival, not novelty, and no element of any hunt was ever wasted. Whale hunting continues to be important to Barrow denizens and are still used for meat, fuel, and their tanned skins used for boat hulls. I found the Baleen filter, from the whales, very interesting. The keratin filter is made of a very coarse, fibrous material, much tougher than hair but a bit softer than fingernails. Although I did not find any evidence of it currently being used in textiles or weaving, I couldn’t help but wonder at the possibility. While there was a practical use for almost every part of a whale, the parts that might be discarded in modern industrial fishing are used as source material for a local Barrow artisan. The craftsman utilized the two long teeth of the Baleen Whales to create storytelling scrimshaws depicting indigenous people ice fishing amongst walruses, polar bears, and breaching whales. Full platters of fish celebrate the bounty of what is provided by nature. Historically scrimshaw storytelling may have been an old form of communication, but in today’s society, one has to wonder if it isn’t more of a luxury item. FARMING SCIENCE The crux of my research in Alaska was to investigate and understand the cultures and resources, from the indigenous past to the present, to come to an understanding of the issues of sustenance, commerce, and politics that shape the community and individual lives. When a culture lives so closely tied to natural resources to survive, are their methods of process and production ecologically viable, sustainable, and possibly scalable? Sustainable cultural practices can be found in the outskirts of Anchorage in the Subarctic Tundra regions, where grasslands plains are abundant. Farming cultures of reindeer and muskoxen, are abundant. The muskox is not native to Alaska but its hearty nature is a natural fit in a brutally cold environment. Muskox wool is in keeping with all ideals of sustainable practices and Alaskan farmers are poised to scale up as demand requires, adding to the local economies. The qiviut wool is warmer and more durable than sheep’s wool, softer than cashmere, and doesn’t shrink in the wash. Aside from its textile quality, it is very sustainable and completely humanely as it’s gathered from trees and bushes in the spring after they molt. Salmon fisheries of the Bristol Bay and Aleutian Peninsula sustain local culture 86 and economy but are fraught with problems of overcrowding and excessive waste Luciana Scrutchen Subtle Conglomerate, 2018, Digital print prototype of woven pattern for Alaskan plied fibers including bacterial dyed fiber, baleen, fish leather, pelts and qiviut, 25.4 x 15.2 cms 87 material. I am inspired to find a purpose for waste products to create sustainable practices. Salmon skins are already being reclaimed for supple yet strong leathers as demand dictates. I have been experimenting with the fish waste material for bacteria-produced dye pigments with beautiful results. While I have been approaching bacterial dyeing from a purely aesthetic and artistic point of view, the intersection of dyeing science coupled with the recycling of unexpected source materials can be scaled up and creates more sustainable practices for mass production. I am inspired by all the new materials I’ve discovered in Alaska and digitally prototyped my next weaving project, Subtle Conglomerate, to include the fibrous whale baleen, Qiviut, salmon leather, and pelts, as a visual homage to all Alaska has to offer. Aesthetic versus utility will be examined from the viewpoint of the wearer and textile practitioner. From a perspective of systems, I am continually discovering that fashion has a natural comradery with textile mechanisms for production that creates more sustainable outcomes. Solutions will be found by pursuing dynamic natural occurring source materials that encompass minimal water use and/or land cultivation that will help us design within the scope of renewability to both the ephemeral and perennial. The Common Ground of Light and Dark Leela Shanker, The Common Ground of Light and Dark, 2019 Leela Shanker The unexpected, encountered in public, creates a new public. 88 This living proposal is an evolving response to the question of how a city laced with newfound registers of darkness and light may provoke or enhance relationships between its inhabitants and their surroundings. The prompt is to create an alternate composition of photonic and social relativities from those of incumbent site conditions. Moving from the status quo, we set in motion a series of consequential, circumstantial relationships that begin in the material and spatial, continue to modify the experiential and have ultimate impact in the interpersonal. LOCUS OF THE GROUNDS Light and dark are expressions that enounce the vocabulary of the impossible; being phenomena of the ephemeral, the paradoxical, the often inexplicable. As a universal language learnt before the mother tongue, light literacy is innate to all a city’s inhabitants. The potence of light and dark as mediums of connection and communication are deepened by their powerfully emotive nature; stirring the subconscious; speaking to our instincts before the conditioned logics of acquired, rational knowledge intervene. Though intangible, light and dark are also inhabitable, spatial conditions. Their qualities are understood by the body despite being formless and possessing no physicality themselves. Without perceptible mass, they yet hold certain weight of presence. The “grounds” of shadow to luminosity are untied to a footprint. The continuum of light’s scale and impact are instead plotted on axes of psychological and physiological parameters. The bounds are unfixed and in constant flux as interactions between light, the body’s adapting photoceptors and surrounding geometries and materials. Departing from the sharp shapes of strong light, darkness plays a leading role in blurring edge and form, thereby leaving fertile space for our own imagined narratives to be overlaid. Encountered along the concrete and cobblestones of the city, the vitality of these projected grounds bring light to our step. Creating site specific work in public space may commence with relatively defined physical location and conventional, physical, spatial dimensions. By contrast, working with light as a found “object” involves sculpting the path of the invisible and casting the field of void as opposed to its material extents. Choreographing its performance transposes process to another locus: an exercise in mapping experiential territory. 89 THE COMMONS SHARED The rhythm of a city is felt in the void of its open spaces. The speed with which its people navigate its textured bounds, and where and when they pause to spend time in proximity with strangers, cumulatively generate an energy. The textures of light and dark that amplify that collective source of energy are a reflection of societal perspectives on social goods, crime prevention, security and leisure, as much as demographics and economics. An alternate light culture is the product of a new set of shared values. For example, the quality of darkness embraced by a city is a litmus of the prevailing sense of trust between the members of its community. A spatial and experiential commons defined by qualities of delight, awe and curiosity transforms the way people relate in the immediate moment and the nature of communities and cities that manifest ongoing. Happening upon that commons - a place of unanticipated wonder - in the terrain of the city has an augmented impact on the spirit, more than any planned spectacle or performance. The discovery becomes a catalyst for the untethering of ideas and liberation of previously held assumptions. That same discovery, when shared between strangers, seeds common ground created in one moment that becomes transformative in the next. There lies humanity within anonymity. There too lie beginnings through unfinishings of previously prescriptive program and path. And there lies romance with the city, caught by its unforeseen allure. Countering shrinking and stagnant perspectives, the impossible writes itself into the language with which we form the narrative of our Everyday; opening doors, grates and hatches to Elsewhere and Elsewhen. DARKNESS AND LIGHT: THE PROTAGONISTS Darkness and light are fitting media with which to explore and convey relationships. Shadow is a relationship with the mass of an object - obstructing the passage of light. Light is a relationship with a material - travelling unseen in perpetuity until touching a surface. Together, they are relative terms of each other; both coexisting in degrees. Disrupting and reconstructing the path and quality of light as it makes passage between people, calls for a framework of richer degrees of contact and potential interdependencies between individuals and their environments. The palette of dark to light offers a spectrum of conditions that accentuate the drama of urban scapes. The spectacle of light catches the consciousness; a wink from the city that inflames curiosity to stray from path. As the primary mode of reveal, light unveils the patterns of the city and its moving parts. Inversely, darkness comforts us in its heavy quiet, immersing us in the grace of stillness. Darkness draws a space in, and those within it, subtly closer. The polarities hold evidently distinct experiential conditions and sense of proximity. We move in light. We wear the darkness. If darkness is the medium of intimacy, may it also be a medium of empathy? There is a strange calming, an affirmation of humanity, to share stillness, in low light, with those we are yet to meet. For those we have known, darkness aids carriage of sentiments from one to another; the percussion of pronunciation and intensity of meaning amplified as the words sail through deep dusk. Quietening the visual palette with a layer of darkness provides for critical contrast when the brush of light is applied. It allows notes of saturation to sound in celebration; full colour given life with light. Contrast then becomes the guide to perceptual procession and rhythm of reveal as light and dark become agents of anticipation. POTENTIAL OF THE UNCOMMON COMMON GROUND The street is a path to the new commons. Lit by compositions of darkness, our steps lead us to other worlds. We taste the sweet recalibration of the Ordinary. Recognising our commonality in delight, awe and curiosity we revel in the script of an uncommonly moving, common ground. This is the scope of the Kinetics of the Unexpected. And the metric of time most valued is viscosity; measuring the thickness of time shared, of engagement and heightened experience, more than duration of contact. Here, the most concentrated and visceral of memories take shape, played out by characters our imagination led into the space darkness and light left open. 90 If darkness is the medium of intimacy, may it also be a medium of empathy? There is a strange calming, an affirmation of humanity, to share stillness, in low light, with those we are yet to meet. 91 Leela Shanker 5 Strangers, 2019 What Happens if Tommy Lee Jones Doesn’t Write Back? Mark Shorter 92 93 Mark Shorter What Happens if Tommy Lee Jones Doesn’t Write Back? Lecture Performance Documentation, 2019 Mark Shorter What Happens if Tommy Lee Jones Doesn’t Write Back? Lecture Performance Documentation, 2019 94 95 Filming A Quasi-Fictional Cartographic Landscape And Other Absurd Methods: Typographic Landscape Ecologies, Alameda, Ca, USA Joshua Singer Detail of filtered view of semiotic legacy projection megastructure, 2017 Joshua Singer Typographic Landscape Ecologies is an ongoing critical design research project conducting various investigations in various geographic regions. It examines typographic artefacts in the urban landscape, the silent but potent language that surrounds us. 96 1 Christian Bök, C. (2002) ’Pataphysics: The Poetics of an Imaginary Science. Avant-Garde & Modernism Studies. Northwestern University Press. 97 As an instrumental methodological design research project, it creates geosemiotic conceptual frameworks and develops procedures for their visualization to test simple hypotheses of the semiotic nature of typography in the human-made landscape. As a meta-practice of design research, it operates as a stratagem to examine the assumptions we live by modeling simulations of ephemeral cultural forces created by graphic design and making conjectures about their role in the construction of a reality not readily apparent. These ephemeral semiotic structures are conceived as concrete dimensional objects in virtual digital landscapes. These structures are speculative at best, and, more often than not, quite intentionally far removed from reality (but not much more so than anything else) being arrived at through attenuated conclusions from equivocal relationships between semblant variables. It follows methodologies of ‘Patadesign research, a subset of the pataphysical sciences. A science of imaginary solutions, ‘Pataphysics sits as far out from metaphysics as metaphysics stands from physics. Just as standard physics expands, or maybe contracts, to quantum physics and concedes other seemingly impossible behaviors to occur, practicing design research beyond the metaphysical and into the pataphysical can extend our conceptual framing to the outer limits of potentiality, and to the vastitude of exceptions possible within semiotic urban landscapes. As a method of Patadesign, Typographic Landscape Ecologies does not create representations of geosemiotic space but rather generates pataphysical hypotheses of geosemiotic space assuming that geosemiotic space is constructed by metered poetic syntaxes of sequences and codes and that these sequences of codes can be hacked to create new metered poetic syntaxes thus constructing new geosemiotic spaces and hypotheses. Christian Bök sums up the efficacy of such a method when he says that “If poetry has failed to oppose science by being its antonymic extreme, then perhaps poetry can attempt to oppose science by being its hyperbolic extreme.”1 As a method of hyperbolic poetry, Typographic Landscape Ecologies creates syntaxes for these hypotheses to visualize existent latent liminal prospective semiotic ecological megastructures revealed through various filters illuminating invisible yet ever-present timespace structures generating in real time the typographic geosemiotic elements we observe normally in the physical landscape. In Figure 4, for example, we see a Semiospheric Particle Tunnel rising kilometers into the sky projecting to (and from) the quotidian artefacts in a prescribed typographic semiotic biome. This projection is segmented into sequences of indexical determinations each comprised of specific catalytic modifiers in the creation of the semiotic biome in question. This speculative composition of semiotic space and the others within the research project are nothing more than the research’s entry point into a yet larger typographic timespace structure and framework networked with greater interrelations and entanglements with other typographic artefacts across space and time. (top to bottom) Joshua Singer Examples of typographic artefacts, 2017, digital photos Joshua Singer Screenshots from Typographic Landscape Ecologies, Alameda CA USA, 2017, video 10:59 Joshua Singer Detail of digital interactive map indicating font style of relevant historic periods, 2017 98 99 Joshua Singer Letter Cone Space-Time Diagram, 2017, illustration Three Conversations Bird Closet is distinguished by its playful, prankish nature. Members of the collective have each assumed a bird alter ego and fashioned an accompanying mask. By conjuring an alternate universe steeped in a rich self-mythology, Bird Closet creates a parallel space in which the artists are free to pursue creative and social projects that may seem otherwise untenable in the world as it exists. Far from escapist, the works of Bird Closet are meant to intervene on material reality and inspire similar explorations by other residents of the area and beyond. Bird Closet’s public interventions have included a series of three billboards installed at the entrance to the village of Bethel on a major state highway, and the zine Fraxinus, issues of which have been covertly disseminated in public areas around the village. At the heart of Bird Closet’s public interventions are collages, which reconfigure language and imagery extracted from relevant literature and the publicly available archives of the Bethel Historical Society and Museum. By reappropriating fragments of Bethel’s history, Bird Closet invents a brand-new idiom through which to voice new forms of community and new modes of social imagination. As Bird Closet continues to evolve, one constant has been the use of Snapchat group chats as a strategy for organizing and communicating. Bird Closet’s group chats ensure an ongoing conversation in which members can share their daily lived experience, support one another, voice their frustrations and concerns, discuss difficult topics, and continue imagining new possible futures for the collective, their community, and the world at large. The following are excerpts from three recent conversations in a Bird Closet group chat. (opposite 124–125) Francesca Fiore and Hillary Wagner SOIL SERIES: A Social Drawing 2018 Bird Closet (SOIL SERIES: A Social Drawing) In Bird Closet, teens who have played integral roles in the evolution of SOIL SERIES become artists in their own right, working in horizontal collaboration with one another and with SOIL SERIES’s founding artists to create works that excavate Bethel’s past and use this history as material for the creation of a new future. 100 I. 101 II. 102 103 III. 104 105 Elsewhere / Tomorrow Since ever the mosaic has been the medium for identity representation, storing a spirit in time for eternity. On the contrary, the screen shows live images based on light. By combining the durability of the mosaic and the ‘transient moment’ of the screen, we can make a mosaic of the present. The oldest and most contemporary mosaic is the sky, visible from every place on earth. It remains recognizable as the sky, while never being the same. Over decades, it served as a canvas for the representation of society, its structures and its dreams. To create a mosaic of the present, we calculate an image, showing the prediction of the sky in 24 hours. This prediction of the future is the stage for the negotiation of the topics of today, such as: power, dreams, territory, ephemeral, Anthropocene, big data, surveillance and spirituality. This live image is supposed to be shown on a large screen, contrasting with the real sky and being updated constantly. Kaspar Stöbe + Nicolò Krättli How can Identity be represented? Identity is located in the present, positioned between the past and the future. Since the past is given by history, we need to oppose reality with a projection of the future, to drag identity into the present. 106 TWO SKIES A proposal for an artwork placed as an LCD screen on the front facade of a childrens’ hospital. Parallel to the progress of time, the sky image moves and shows 24 hours in advance. The real sky contrasts with the future sky. It is a dialogue between the present and the future. The image is calculated from a range of data collected worldwide. It is intended to captivate with its affinity with the natural model. This simple idea is the distillate of a conceptual analysis of the identity of the hospital. It stems from the desire to redefine the identity of the entire institution by means of a contemporary work of art, a dialogue of technology with poetry and a study of placing anticipated reality within reality. HERE AND ELSEWHERE The project Sky Of Tomorrow is a study commissioned by the hospital organization in Datteln, Germany. Our aim is to liberate the idea of the artwork from a specific location. The Sky of Tomorrow can be installed anywhere on the planet. A change of the coordinates takes this screen from one place to any other. 1 Friedrich Nietzsche — Ecce Homo, Werde der du bist, (How One Becomes What One Is) MOSAIC OF THE CONTEMPORARY A mosaic stores a picture for eternity. Such an eternal image can depict an ephemeral subject and keep it for the future. We equally strive to create an image of an ephemeral entity that of the eternally changing sky, as a symbol of a constantly changing world. In a similar sense, the identity of a person adapts continually to the world: new clues are found, and old ones are repelled. The identity of a human being is conceived as something ever-nascent and not as something static as Nietzsche pointed out.¹ Thus the mosaic of the present also becomes a symbol of the nature of man. WEATHER IN CONSERVATION What is the weather going to be like tomorrow? This question is asked by everyone, everywhere, all the time. This simple question is the starting point for long intense discussions among artists, doctors, patients, engineers, physicists, meteorologists, IT-specialists, interaction and game designers. FASCINATION The screen shows a picture that is older than any rock on this planet. The sky has existed since the earth has had an atmosphere. And since then, the sun’s rays have broken into the atmosphere’s water drops, which have absorbed the blue light. The heat of the sun, beating down on the world’s oceans and the humid continents, makes the water evaporate, and rise, and turn into clouds. This spectacle has accompanied life on earth since the first hour. 107 SCIENTIFIC LOGARITHM The project is a calculated “painting” from the large source of big data available from the global worldwide network: meteorological data, aircraft movements, mathematical calculations of the movement of the orb, data of migratory birds, which are collected to protect them from flying into wind parks. Everything is joined together to form a digital vision of the future. This simple idea — a humble statement — is an invitation for the observer to raise questions about today’s reality. SYMBOL The aspect of the sky is unique at any place at any time. And yet everyone is familiar with it and can see it from every place on earth. The complexity of today’s global information network, the Internet, is reflected in the complex genesis of this celestial image. It is a portrait of our digital era. When asked how to create the digital “painting”, people have suggested to simply record the existing weather over a year and replay a recorded segment of it according to the weather forecast of the following day. This technique would show the future with playbacks from the past. But since we want to make a mosaic of the contemporary, we want to stay connected to the present as closely as possible. Records from the past are not acceptable. 2 Hannah Arendt, in the prologue of “The Human Condition” 1958 3 Jean Jacques Rousseau (1754), On the Origin of the Inequality of Mankind FUTURE OUTLOOK Hannah Arendt stated in 1958 after the astronauts had flown out into space, that whatever they explored out there, the most important discovery was the planet earth itself.2 The globe as an object, with a finite expansion. The look up into the sky is a different one than the one down to the earth. This elevation to the sky is the perspective of the human. The human condition on earth. This is unlike the perspective of the world maps, the baroque divine perspective, the perspective of the satellites, the perspective of surveillance. With this artwork we require people to think about what our time and our networking is all about. We take the perspective of a child in a meadow, who looks high up into the sky, a child that asks the questions, what do I want to do with my contemporary possibilities? What is my potential and what do I have to heed? WEATHER FORECAST – A NATIONAL INSTITUTION The search for the best data-source for weather modelling always led to national institutes which provide the weather forecast. The reason for this is: In order to provide the most precise forecast, one needs a super computer to calculate the forecast from a less precise, world-spanning model into a more precise national model, (ICON [World, grid 13 km] -> COSMO EU [Europe, grid 7 km]-> COSMO DE [Germany, grid 2.7 km]). In the end it’s a matter of national wealth if a country is able to run its own institute of meteorology. TERRITORY VS. BORDERLESS Unlike a map, the sky cannot be divided by borders. The weather map shows the weather within borders. The maps can be divided into very small pieces. And on each of these pieces you will find at least one person, who demands the right of property. Jean Jaques Rousseau stated once that “the fruit of the earth belong to all of us, and the earth itself to nobody.”3 The earth, as we know it, is still a divided place. The sky is unified. We do not want to propose a future identity based upon territorial or national divisions. Free and boundless must be the gaze of a child when it looks into the sky, like the one in the painting of Franz von Lembach, The Shepherd Boy. It represents the wish of liberation in thinking and speech in the time of Biedermeier. Back then, revolutionary people had to flee into privacy to escape the constrictions of the nobility who relaunched the old system in the Age of Restoration after Napoleon’s banishment. This boy, looking up into the sky, sees no divine assembly of angels and popes ruling the world. He can simply follow his dreams and hopes. 108 The human condition on earth. This is unlike the perspective of the world maps, the baroque divine perspective, the perspective of the satellites, the perspective of surveillance. 109 Kaspar Stöbe and Nicolò Krättli STREAM I - 13th/14th of April on the 12th/13th of April 2019, Installation with LED-Screen at Fiktiva Festival 2019, Düsseldorf / Germany 4 Hans Haacke – “Der Bevölkerung” (to the people) 5 Yves Klein about the sky: “Alors que j’étais encore un adolescent, en 1946, j’allais signer mon nom de l’autre côté du ciel durant une fantastique voyage “réalisticoimaginaire”. Ce jour-là, alors que j’étais étendu sur la plage de Nice, je me mis à éprouver de la haine pour les oiseaux qui volaient de-ci de-là dans mon beau ciel bleu sans nuage, parce qu’ils essayaient de faire des trous dans la plus belle et la plus grande de mes œuvres.” 6 Yves Klein, exhibition “Le Vide”, in Iris Clert Gallery, 1958 7 Vilém Flusser, Informationsgesellschaft als Regenwurm, (edited in “Kultur und Technik im 21. Jahrhundert”), 1991, p.77 TO EVERYONE Hans Haacke’s work of art, DER BEVÖLKERUNG, in a courtyard of the German Reichstag building is an homage to all the people who live in this country⁴, regardless of where they were born or what passport they possess. Today, identity can no longer be understood in the collective, it is neither homogeneous nor national. The children in the hospital near Dortmund, Germany, are both: children of Germany and Europe, but they might also be rooted in Africa, Asia or America. Our artwork suggests identity as something boundless and omnipresent. THE MONOCHROME Yves Klein was the artist who sat under the bright blue sky and willfully put his signature on the lower edge.⁵ He did not invent the sky, but he established monochrome blue as art, as his art. In this respect, the void space seems to be a consequence of his thinking. At a later date, he exhibited the empty space of a gallery: “Le Vide,” the void space.⁶ He placed himself in the room and told the people: “First there is nothing, then there is a deep nothing, then a blue depth.” Here Yves Klein uses the void space — so to say the blank canvas — to evoke his imaginary and immaterial and even invisible blue sky in the visitor’s head. The sky becomes a deep nothing while it is being contemplated. In fact, it mirrors endless potentiality. VANISHING The artwork will not produce any deposits in the future. There will be no digital sedimentation of past states. This work of art will not contribute to the collection of big data. We want to prevent a digital Anthropocene. Showing the present without digital storage is a manifesto against the trend of our digital age. NOTION OF TIME As Vilém Flusser put it: “We have a different concept of time than our parents. For our parents, time was a stream that flowed from the past into the future, did not stay in the present and tore everything with it. Of course, this dramatic term is insane. First of all, time does not come from the past, but from the future, and secondly, the present is what matters. If we leave the historical picture of time and resort to the new concept of time, according to which time arrives from all directions, from the future, and the things that come from the future realize themselves in the present, according to which the present in these things is then transformed into two kinds of past, that are transformed, processed, on the one hand into retrievable, that is to say in memory, and on the other hand into non-retrievable, that is to say oblivion.“⁷ 110 111 High Island Circumambulation Andrew Stooke only imagination diagrams without stilling emotional responses, worn smooth as they are exchanged within the long duration of the live act 112 Andrew Stooke Chat – felt and stone, 2016, Digital print on Neoprene, 83 x 110 cm 113 Andrew Stooke Moon (detail), 2018, Lambda print light box, 32 x 57 cm 114 Andrew Stooke High Island, New York, November 13, 2018, personal photograph by Andre Stooke 115 The Cubby Cave; the Raft; the Return Threshold; and Sun, Moon, Walk The Cubby Cave was begun in 2014 and is built on my family land in regional NSW Australia, where I have lived since the age of two. The Cubby Cave was built in the canopy of a fallen tree, which my father had cut down for firewood two winters before the project started. The initial idea for the work was to spend time with my father and reconnect with my cousin. This would soon develop into a body of work that explored rite of passage and archetypal journeys. Also included in this photographic essay are The Raft, The Return Threshold and Sun, Moon, Walk—which followed the sun and moon with a mirror through the streets of New York City on a 24-hour personal pilgrimage. They began at sunrise on the roof of my apartment in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn. I welcomed the sun by catching its rays, reflecting them back with a circular mirror. I walked for the next ten hours following the sun, reflecting its light onto the grey concrete, onto glass and steel buildings and onto the people that passed me. I walked over the Brooklyn Bridge, through Manhattan, to the west side of the island. There I watched the sun as it set and I turned, reflecting the almost full waxing moon. With mirror and moon in hand, I walked back through the night for the next 12 hours, through the city and in the early hours of the morning back to the roof of my apartment. The piece would end when for the second time the golden rays of the sun touched the silver surface of the mirror… I had carried the sun and moon in my hands. Shan Turner- Carroll The Cubby Cave; The Raft; The Return Threshold; and Sun, Moon, Walk, 2014 – 2019, photographic essay Shan Turner- Carroll The Cubby Cave was begun in 2014 and is built on Turner- Carroll’s family land in regional NSW Australia, where he has lived here since the age of two. 116 117 118 119 Ris Publica Jessica Winton Domestic Cleansing, 2016, Mixed media, dimensions variable. Image credit © Katherine Knight 2016 Jessica Winton Ris Publica (trans: public laughter) proposes the site of the civic parade as a unique possibility – as an event that carries forward a history and infrastructure of civic culture, while containing potential for the enactment of a diverse civic identity. 120 In a humorous form of open, generous and joyful participation, the project ensconces itself in the event of the parade by creating a semblance of conventional float entries. To date, this project includes eight, large-scale situation-specific installations with an aspect of public participatory practice. These multi-disciplinary projects have been sited in the Halifax Natal Day Parades of 2016, 2017, in 2018 at Charlottetown PEI’s Art in the Open, and an upcoming work in 2019 in the Apple Blossom Parade in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley, all situated in Canada. METHODOLOGY Ris Publica employs an approach that engages at the intersection of art, civics and everyday life. The ensconcing methodology employed attempts to position audience participation and response to an artwork into the format of civic festivity, thus hybridizing and expanding the realms of aesthetic literacy. This approach has dual objectives – providing both visual examples of participation to the audience and instruction to annual participants in tandem. Ris Publica envisions expanded aesthetic literacy and fosters the use of this vocabulary through additional participation promotion in upcoming years. Delving into the complex interactions of agents involved in the public spheres, this project limits its direction towards consideration of participation in the parade, rather than a specific platform outside of the event. By using indeterminacy (of authorship and meaning) as a possible point of accessibility for the audience, Ris Publica draws from the many strategies and concerns of the Fluxus movement, though distinctively, the intention of the Ris Publica project is to politicize the annual civic festivity through an accessible and symbiotic form, rather than contend the event itself has an “agency for action”.1 2 Rancière, Jacques. This endeavor seeks to jointly engage members of civic society for the parade, which (Gabriel Rockhill, provides the opportunity for the Ris Publica artworks to be recognized as having ‘exclusive transl.) The Politics characteristics and yet simultaneously shared experience’.2 The postulation is that through of Aesthetics: The Distribution of the both the visual example provided by Ris Publica and participants’ experiences of each event, Sensible. London aesthetic literacy will improve, and the public will regard the arts with increased value and New York: Continuum, 2006. will thus increase heterogeneous participation. The results of this practice will be borne out as Ris Publica continues over several years and events. 3 Beuys’ concept of expanding The creation of this work as sculptural/performative objects stems from an interest in sculpture socially as what Joseph Beuys described as social sculpture3 a methodology that elevates the importance of a gesamtkunstwerk, (a total artwork) for the connection of the work to its audience over its form. Unlike Beuys, this practice eschews which he claimed a creative, participatory the celebrity status of the individual artist, thereby landing in the dialogical framework of role in shaping participatory practice. To the Project Anywhere audience, the explication of contextual politics society and politics. will remain vague, though assuredly the inaugural forms engaged deliberative environmental and 4 Hirschhorn, time specificity to inform the content. Articulation of future versions will result in unique floats Thomas, et al. Critical laboratory the writings and performances being created, again derived from context specificity at time of creation. of Thomas Hirschhorn. The process of situating the first version in Halifax, Nova Scotia’s Natal Day Parade Cambridge, resulted in (estimated) 40,000+ in public attendance. This is equivalent to the estimated Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2013. number of annual visitors to the two provincial art institutions of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. This outcome is significant, in terms of reception to the expanded field of public art, in that it reaches those whom Thomas Hirschhorn would describe as a non-exclusive audience.4 The participants, who are drawn to the project through various public media appeals and word of mouth, encompass many from this non-exclusive group. This smaller group, 121 somewhat diverse in age, gender, sexuality, socio-economic status, education, family position 1 Meyer-Hermann, Eva, Andrew Perchuk, Stephanie Rosenthal, and Allan Kaprow. Allan Kaprow – Art As Life. London: Thames & Hudson, 2008, p.82 Jessica Winton Lorem Ipsum, 2016, Mixed media, dimensions variable. Image credit © Katherine Knight 2016 and heritage, experience the work as a socially engaged art project – co-creating choreographic movement for each entry and contributing to the work’s own community through participation in rehearsals and convening before and after the parade for discussions. A unique consideration of this work is a typically unrecognized participatory audience – the 20+ members of the municipal civic events administration and parade volunteers as well as local businesses that contribute material and supplies. These instrumental participants’ involvement in authorization of this work thereby supports its occurrence and recognizes its importance. Through this civic process, the Ris Publica project has officially becomes a matter of public record, archived by the parade organizers. 5 Habermas, Jürgen. Thomas Burger, and Frederick Lawrence. The structural transformation of the public sphere: an inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992. Print. 6 Butler, Judith. Notes toward a performative theory of assembly. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2015, p.52. CONTEXT Ris Publica intentionally chooses the forum of the public parade believing it resists the logic, values and power of financialization, as it occurs in an event largely unrecognized by typical institutions of art. As such, the parade functions as a “public sphere”5 as Jürgen Habermas proposed, and could be the method by which the civic structure is shaped and altered to suit the dynamic needs of the people it ostensibly supports. In its ideal form, the civic parade has the opportunity to graft the social identity of [non-partisan] registrants onto the viewers and allow for a safe and welcoming arena for the multiplicity of issues at hand for the citizenry. As Judith Butler puts it: “To be a political actor is a function, a feature of acting on terms of equality with other humans…The exercise of freedom is something that does not come from you or from me, but what is between us, from the bond we make at the moment in which we exercise freedom together, a bond without which there is no freedom at all.”6 122 7 Léger, Marc J. Brave new avant garde: essays on contemporary art and politics. Winchester, UK Washington, USA: Zero Books, 2012, p.3. 8 Lacy, Suzanne. Leaving Art: Writings on Performance, Politics and Publics, 1974–2007. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010, p.30. 123 The critical difference in the structure of a civic parade rather than a protest or demonstration (what Butler’s earlier writing refers to) is that the purpose of participation is simply [re]presentation, under the auspices of a civic structure. This methodology of ensconcing the work within the civic parade (as opposed to a novel performance) not only allows for a widening of possible viewership and participation, but also corresponds to what Marc James Léger terms the “…sinthomeopathetic, which proposes a transformation of the mediating functions of institutions through occupation and radicalization”7. In the case of the Ris Publica project, the institution occupied being the civic event of the regional Municipal Councils, transforming their function towards a more creative and representational venue. Registrants have the potential to engage in this ‘public sphere’ via their own floats or entries – which are the visible elements of the reflected community – allowing for the recognition of one’s individual values, and the issues at hand in one’s social circles, amongst a plethora of other concerns. This is what Suzanne Lacy designates the “activated value system”8 of the audience with which art has the ability to connect. This activation could be seen as blurring the distinction between ‘high art’ and social practice taking place on the tableau of society. Ris Publica pursues the performance of humor-based critique within the civic event, created for, and enacted by citizenry on public streets where strangers interact, with the ambition of the existence of emancipated public spheres. These interests will be bolstered when carried out in multiple locations, with engagement and participation strategies effectively researched, by critiquing locally supported issues within local contexts and ultimately disseminated via platforms anywhere. The following practical descriptions, present the seven entries created thus far: Domestic Cleansing: performers sweep around and under a 10’ x 16.5’ carpet, rolling two inches off the ground and maneuvering with brooms that are attached to the rolling chassis by cables. Additional performers glean the leftover debris. Lorem Ipsum: a group of performers carry a banner with an intentional “placeholder” text as the group name. Group member performers interact in a manner similar to a “wave” in the crowd at an arena, passing movement through and across themselves, initiated from within or from the audience themselves. Sweet Nothings: oversized “candy” barricade with wheels. Three performers roll the futile barricade slowly forward while a repeated soundscape of various global resistance movements emanate from speakers hidden within the structure. Good Intentions: performers work with the machinery and hand tools of a paving crew; things go awry as they attempt to maintain the civic infrastructure – taking measurements and flattening the pavement – despite their best efforts to do a good job. Moving Mountains: participants carry or drag self-created mountains together, using improvised moving methods towards their goals to change the scene, as the crowd applauds. The Vision: participants display a visual representation of A. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs wearing sashes indicating their own perceived level of attainment as they cross the harbour bridge. –waterline–: Participants perform as waves crashing forward, as others discuss the ramifications of indicated of sea level rise over the next century in Victoria Park, Prince Edward Island. Walking With Satellites Christopher Wood Walking With Satellites, 2016, Publicity Shot, Ermoupoli, Greece Christopher Wood Walking with Satellites is an ongoing project to explore the meanings held within the GPS satellite network. 124 1 Salter, Burri and Dumit 2017: 140 POETIC RESEARCH It is situated within the wider use of what I call ‘poetic research’. This approach frames and analyses research work using techniques borrowed from critical art practices. It builds understandings of an infrastructure’s actions, or the “texture” of those actions by leveraging symbol and metaphor. Salter, Burri and Dumit propose several uses for art practice in research work including its ability “to question and critique the political formations of existing practices”.1 I take this as the starting point for ‘poetic research’. GLOBAL POSITIONING SYSTEM GPS technology emerged from a Pentagon-funded research project in the 1970s and spent much of its early life facilitating military operations, most famously in the 1990s when a discourse around targeted ‘surgical strikes’ emerged. Here, missiles fitted with a GPS sensor could be targeted and directed with a greater degree of accuracy than what was previously available. Civilian uses of the GPS network were operated with deliberately low accuracy until the year 2000 when it was decided to allow civilian users up to 5 metres accuracy. In the period since, civilian uses of GPS have increased dramatically, especially since smartphones began to incorporate the technology in the late 2000s. Now ‘location services’, commonly driven by GPS are used in many smartphone apps. While we are likely most familiar with these applications, GPS is also used to sync financial trades, predict the weather and track pets, children and criminals. It has, in short, become a key infrastructure in the present socio-economic order. In technical terms, the GPS system is a collection of satellites, ground antennas and control centres, operated by the US military. A constellation of satellites circles the earth in a series of orbits designed to provide maximum coverage at any given moment. The satellites each contain an atomic clock and constantly emit electromagnetic signals containing a timestamp and satellite ID. A GPS sensor matches these timestamps with an almanac of information about the positions each satellite is supposed to be in. The device then uses these pieces of information to triangulate position. GPS therefore relies on a clear line of sight with multiple satellites to establish a location fix. The ability to provide a fix is also a profoundly temporal operation, for the timestamp system to work, the speed of the signal from satellite to device must be predictable. Environmental factors such as air humidity and reflections as signals strike buildings may slow down signals and throw off a location fix.These technical elements are typically hidden from the user. As a result, GPS technology can seem light and odourless when reduced to a flashing, blue, ‘you-are-here’ dot on a map. Walking With Satellites seeks to bring attention back to the infrastructure by leveraging architecture to create an experience where GPS fails, thereby inspiring reflection on the ways in which meaning emerges across the entire network, rather than being concentrated in the hands of the user. 2 Ibid. 36. 125 FINDING TEXTURE Bowker and Star argue that, in order to recognise “the depths of interdependence of technical networks and standards, on one hand, and the real work of politics and knowledge production on the other” (Bowker and Star 1999: 34), we can use a technique called “infrastructural inversion”. This alienates us from our established uses of an infrastructure and offers alternative histories and understandings. The way an infrastructure ‘acts’ to influence our behavior and sociotechnical practices can be indirect and difficult to catch. This is because it may not act directly but through the technologies which it supports. One way to explore infrastructural action is through “texture”. According to Bowker and Star, texture is the ways in which the actions of an infrastructure are understood by those who use it. In exploring texture, the use of metaphor can be especially useful in forming understandings.2 METHOD In order to make GPS infrastructure visible I organised walks in architectural sites which have the potential to disrupt its smooth operation. This is usually done by picking spaces which have limited lines of sight with the sky. These include narrow streets or building complexes with covered walkways and underpasses. The walks often take place in collaboration with existing arts programmes and the participants are unpaid volunteers. During the walk, each person is given an android smartphone running an app which reverse-engineers the process of location fixing, instead showing where the satellites are in relation to the device. I use a commercially available app, GPS Test. After walking around the site individually for some time, the attendees reconvene and draw and write responses to the experience. We then conduct an open-ended discussion. I use what is written, drawn and discussed to establish themes around perceptions of the infrastructure. The participants gain knowledge of how a hidden but essential technology operates and are able to reflect back on that technology’s implications. The emergent themes included a growing awareness of an electromagnetic realm which was, at once, both profoundly physical and symbolic. This “field of signals” took in GPS signals, Wi-Fi networks, reflective architecture and the human body. Another strongly held theme was privacy and surveillance, particularly, a re-evaluation of the costs and benefits of the user agreements through which we are able to use locative services. In the words of one participant. “Even though I’m using a service, the service is using me just as, probably more than, it’s used by me. When you actually see just how many of them [satellites] there are, I started thinking a lot more about the information flow the other way.” MYTHOLOGY Alongside this more traditional research work, I developed my own speculative project. This was motivated by a desire to work more within a symbolic realm, offering an alternative understanding of the infrastructure. In this project, GPS Tarot, I give tarot readings where I arrange cards in a pattern to match the positions of satellites overhead. I then read lines in the chart of cards in response to a question. The practice is not an attempt to tell the future, but rather to provide space for participants to reflect on the present. The collective name for an array of satellites is a constellation. This project echoes the storytelling and divination potential people have long ascribed to the stars, rethinking the role GPS satellites play in telling us where we are and where we are going. To date I have given several hundred readings in person at galleries and over text message via the business card pictured here. 126 Christopher Wood GPS Tarot Business Card, 2016 Christopher Wood Walking With Satellites, 2016, Workshop, London 127 Christopher Wood Walking With Satellites, 2016, Visual Workshop Data, London Bios 128 AMbER EvE ANdERsON is a multidisciplinary artist and writer whose work is rooted in ideas of home and the experience of displacement. She is a graduate of the Mount Royal School of Art MFA program at the Maryland Institute College of Art and is currently a resident artist at School 33 in Baltimore and a regularly contributing writer at BaltimoreArt. Her first self-published book, Free to a Good Home, was purchased by the New York Public Library and is sold at Printed Matter. She founded Ctrl+P, an independent publishing project dedicated ARchiE bARRy is an interdisciplinary visual artist based in Melbourne, Australia. Their work embeds language (spoken, sung or written) into gestures, serving to de-form and re-form words as embodied experiences. Their work has been exhibited at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, The State Library of Victoria, The Centre for Contemporary Photography, Neon Parc, Artspace Sydney and ALASKA Projects among other spaces. They are currently undertaking a three-month residency at Phasmid Studio in Berlin supported by the Fiona Myer Travelling Residency Award. Barry completed a Masters of Contemporary Art at Victorian College of the Arts in 2017. biRd clOsET is a collective of young people that developed organically from the relationships established as part of SOIL SERIES: A Social Drawing, a socially engaged artwork and ongoing collaboration between artists Francesca Fiore and Hillary Wagner and the rural Appalachian community of Bethel, Ohio. jOANNE chOuEiRi is an architect/interior architect/ and researcher from Lebanon. Her trans-disciplinary training allowed her to work at the cross section between art, architecture, and research. Her research focuses on possible speculative narratives of space, interiors, and the city. With her work, she has participated in several exhibitions in Milan, London, and Rotterdam. Before moving to Australia, Joanne was a lecturer at the Lebanese American University 129 of Beirut. Currently, she is a PhD candidate and lecturer of architecture and interior design at Griffith University, Australia. shOuFAy dERz is an Australian artist and educator of German and Taiwanese heritages. She works across a range of media including photography, video and installation. She was awarded the 2019 Australia Council International Residency at the Künstlerhaus Bethanien, selected by an international jury and granted annually to one artist across Australia. Derz has exhibited her works in China, Taiwan, Singapore, Korea and New Zealand. Solo exhibitions include ‘The Face of the Deep‘ at GAG projects, Adelaide, ‘In Memory of water’ at Manly Art Gallery and Museum (2018) and ‘The wish’ at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (2016). Group shows include the Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art at Art Gallery of South Australia. Interdisciplinary collaborations include the Australian Pavilion for the XXII Triennale di Milano “Broken Nature” commissioned by UTS with Architect teams Grandeza and Bajeza. The pavilion received the highest award of the Golden Bee. In 2017 she was visiting scholar at The New school – Parsons, New York. Derz is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney and holds a MFA by research at the University of New South Wales. She is represented by Artereal Gallery Sydney. www.shoufay.com MARk l. GARdNER is a Principal at Jaklitsch / Gardner Architects. He is Director of the Graduate Program in Architecture and the Assistant Professor of Architectural Practice and Society at the School of the Constructed Environments, Parsons the New School. Mr. Gardner is on the Board of Overseers for the University of Pennsylvania School of Design tackling issues of inclusion. He currently serves on the Board of Made in Brownsville. Mr. Gardner serves on the Van Alen Institute’s Board of Trustees and is a Fellow of the Urban Design Forum. AdAM GEczy is an artist and writer who teaches at the University of Sydney. His Art: Histories, Theories and Exceptions (Berg, 2008) won the Choice Award for best academic title in art in 2009. Having published over 14 books, recent titles include Fashion and Orientalism (Bloomsbury, 2013) and Artificial Bodies in Fashion and Art (Bloomsbury, 2017). With Vicki Karaminas his titles include Fashion’s Double: Representations of Fashion in Painting, Photography and Film (2016) and Critical Fashion Practice, and (edited) The End of Fashion: Clothing and Dress in the Age of Globalization. He is editor of the Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture and ab-Original (both Penn State University Press). MARiAlAuRA GhidiNi is a curator and researcher. She founded the web-based curatorial platform or-bits.com (2009–2015), organizing online and gallery exhibitions and site-specific interventions in public spaces, radio broadcasts and AiR programmes. With a background in the humanities and a PhD in Curating After New Media (CRUMB, University of Sunderland, UK), Marialaura is currently faculty and course leader for the Bachelor in Creative Arts in Experimental Media Arts at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore, India. chRisTiNE hOwARd sANdOvAl is a Chumash and Hispanic artist based in New York City. Her work challenges the boundaries of representation, access, and habitation through the use of performance, video, and sculpture. Sandoval makes work about contested places such as the historic Native and Hispanic waterways of northern New Mexico; the Gowanus Canal, a Superfund site in New York; and an interfacing suburban-wildland in Colorado. Sandoval has exhibited nationally and internationally at The Museum of Capitalism; Designtransfer; Universität der Künste Berlin; El Museo Del Barrio; and Socrates Sculpture Park. Her first solo museum exhibition will debut at The Colorado Springs Fine Art Center in 2019 during which time she will be the Mellon Artist in Residence at Colorado College. Sandoval has been awarded residencies at the Santa Fe Art Institute, Triangle Arts, and The Vermont Studio Center. She holds a BFA from Pratt Institute and an MFA from Parsons The New School for Design. She teaches at Parsons. AlANA huNT makes art, writes, and produces culture through a variety of media across public, gallery and online spaces. She lives on Miriwoong country in the north-west of Australia and has a long-standing engagement with South Asia. The politics of nation making and the colonial past and present of Australia and South Asia are central to her practice. Her work is invested in the capacity of art and ideas to shape the social space between people and the public sphere. NicOlò kRäTTli lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland. He studied architecture at the ETH in Zurich, and completed his Masters with Prof. Christian Kerez in 2015. Together they collaborated for the swiss contribution ‘Incidental Space’ at the Venice Biennale in 2016. Amongst others, Krättli has worked at the atelier of Peter Zumthor. More recently, Not Vital brought him to Agadez in Niger, where heattempted to build a minaret sculpture. Since 2016 Krättli works as an artist. In a recent project, he aimed to preserve and materialize virtual data such as film in a so-called Video-Solid sculpture. For this project, he received a prize for digital sculpture 2016 at Art Museum Ulm, Germany. Since 2018 he teamed up with Jonthan Banz. This collaboration enables a profound research into the digital fabrication of these kind of printed sculptures. They were exhibited in various places, such as Benzeholz, CH-Meggen 2019; Case Studio Vogt, Zurich 2019; Kleine Humboldt Galerie, Berlin 2019; 8 Salon, Hamburg 2018 bENjAMiN MATThEws is a consultant and Adjunct Fellow at Western Sydney University in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts, researching in the areas of digital practices and literacies, postindustrial media work, media art, globalization and networked collectives. He collaborates with artists, and frequently appears as a guest lecturer. His areas of interest are inspired by a decade of experience in media work, and academic background that 130 cuts across anthropology, digital media studies and literary studies. He is co-author of the forthcoming Understanding Journalism (Sage, 2018). NANcy MAuRO -FludE is an artist who specializes in artisanal networked systems; she is interested in the demystification of technology, and the ‘mystification’ that lies in and through the performance of the machinic assemblage. Mauro-Flude has devised and curated extensively within the field of experimental art forms. She has contributed to publications such as: FLOSS+Art London: Mute; Intersecting Art and Technology in Practice: Techne/Technique/Technology, Routledge; Unlikely: Transdisciplinary Journal for Creative Arts; Live Interfaces, Leonardo MIT Press. Formerly, Assistant Professor Communications and New Media, National University Singapore, Nancy now runs the Post Digital Culture studio in the Digital Media Programme, School of Design, RMIT Melbourne. http://sister0.tv bRENdAN MccARThy and isAbEllE wEbsTER have interdisciplinary academic and professional practices that combines their expertise in conceptual art, performance, installation, filmmaking and quantitative analytical methods with fashion design systems. Their current research and pedagogy focus on ways that fashion can address critical social issues facing specific communities by employing user-centric design and conceptual art strategies in combination with ethical and sustainable sourcing and production systems. McCarthy has a BA in mathematics from Columbia University and an MFA in Fine Art from Parsons. He also studied architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Webster has an MFA in Fine Art from Parsons Prior. They won the BrotherWin Gobi Desert International Art and Design Competition and have held numerous artist residency fellowships. They are both faculty at, and McCarthy is the Program Director, BFA Fashion Design: Systems and Materiality at Parsons. ANA MENdEs is a writer and visual artist who develops projects using video, performance, text, 131 photography, drawing and sound, to address issues such as memory, language and identity. Recent solo shows include the Natural History Museum, Vienna, Austria (2017), the Universalmuseum Joanneum/ Natural History Museum, Graz/Austria (2017). Recent group exhibitions: Jerwood Space, London, UK (2017) and the MAC, Belfast, UK (2016). She has been the recipient of several awards in literature, photography, performance and drawing throughout Europe and North America – recently the Jerwood Drawing Prize 2017, second prize winner, Jerwood Charitable Foundation, London, UK. www.anamendes.com REbEkAh MOdRAk is an artist and writer working at intersections of design and creative resistance to consumer culture. She creates Internet-based interventions, such as Re Made Co., an artwork posing as an online “company.” Re Made recreates actual company Best Made Co. (specializing in $350 designer axes) to satirize their appropriation of manual labor for leisure consumption and revitalization of traditional male roles. Her work Rethink Shinola exposes the company Shinola’s co-option of Detroit’s image and its promotion of the white savior myth. Modrak is Professor of Art in the Stamps School at the University of Michigan. ANNiE MORRAd is a London-based artist and musician who plays saxophone, produces ‘unheard music’ prints, makes music for films and develops live improvisations with art and music practitioners. iAN McARThuR is a Sydney-based hybrid practitioner, working in the domains of interdisciplinary design, and sound art. These two musicians work together in a telematic digital structure formed from open source and proprietary software platforms. jAcOb OlMEdO holds a BFA in Fashion Design and is in the inaugural class for his MFA in Textiles at Parson School of Design. He is a designer who focuses on sustainability and the future of textiles and garments. He is the first Liz Claiborne Scholar in 2018 awarded by the Council of Fashion Designers of America, while also winning the Designer of the Year: Future Textiles Award in 2017. Jacob practices in-depth research, systematic analysis, experimental material development, user testing, and garment construction, all as a part of his continuing design work And The World Will Be As One. MAcushlA RObiNsON is a writer and curator. She is currently the General Sir John Monash Cultural Scholar completing graduate study at the New School for Social Research in New York. She is also Assistant Curator to the New School Art Collection. Prior to this she was Curator of Contemporary International Art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. She has worked on a wide range of projects at the AGNSW including curating the exhibition See You at the Barricades (2015); managing the contemporary project series for 2014 and working on projects including Tino Sehgal: This is So Contemporary (2014); Francis Bacon: Five Decades (2012) and the John Kaldor Family Gallery (2011). Publications include a chapter in the Kaldor catalogue and articles for Art & Australia, Art Monthly Australia and Art Asia Pacific, dealing with a range of topics from the devotional text in contemporary art through to empathy in contemporary Indian video art. RyOTA sATO (b. Okayama, Japan) is an artist currently based in New York. His practice spans digital media, video installation, painting, photography, and sculpture. His work explores the relationship between human bodies, landscapes, information media, slippage of nature-culture and the circulation of imagery particularly in relation to image capturing devices. He will be joining Matsushima Bunko Museum in 2019, working as a collaborator and a liaison between the museum and participants. luciANA scRuTchEN, Asst. Prof. of Fashion, Parsons School of Design, received her BFA in Weaving and Textile Design from Rochester Institute of Technology and her MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons School of Design. Her textile and digital work embodies an exploration of plant, insect, and earth colorants with the visceral materiality of new and experimental fibers and leathers gathered from Alaska’s sustainable and subsistence cultures. Her research integrates intersections of biology and textiles, developed into constructed and printed materials, investigating the relationship to fashion, ecological systems, as well as the impact of smallscale and large-scale textile production practices. lEElA shANkER is an artist and designer working with the medium of light. Founding the Flint Collective NYC with peers from art, architecture, lighting design, interactive design, product design and film, Shanker approaches the city as a platform for provocations of alternate realities and collective experience. Having collaborated and curated with art and design collectives in Berlin, Shanghai, New York and Sydney, Shanker completed a Master of Architecture and Master of Fine Arts – Lighting Design at Parsons School of Design. Based in New York, she continues to incorporate light, film, performative art and interactive media into site specific interventions. MARk shORTER is an artist and academic who completed a PhD in Visual Arts at the Sydney College of the Arts, Australia. Significant exhibitions and performances include: Hello Stranger, Campbelltown Art Centre, Sydney 2018; 6m of Plinth, Artspace, Sydney 2016; Mapping La Mancha, The Physics Room, New Zealand 2015; The Groker, Plato’s Cave, EIDIA House 2015, New York. From 2010 to 2012 he was the host of “The Renny Kodgers Quiz Hour” on Sydney radio station FBi 94.5FM. Shorter currently Head of Sculpture and Spatial Practice at Victorian College of Arts, University of Melbourne. jOshuA siNGER is a designer, teacher, and writer. He is Associate Professor and Coordinator of Visual Communication Design at San Francisco State University, and Director of the San Francisco State University DESIGNSPACE gallery. His work sits at the busy intersection of design research, design theory, geography, and experimental and critical 132 methodologies. He has a BA from Hampshire College, MFA in Fine Art from the City University of New York / Hunter College, and MFA in Design from California College of the Arts. You can see some of his work at adhocatlas.com. jONATAN spEjlbORG and lAssE høGENhOF, both based in Seyðisfjörður, are artists, teachers, janitors, carpenters, friends and more depending on the situation. They are living and working in and through the experimental art school, LungA School, founded in 2014. Their collaboration and praxis is founded on enthusiasm and centred around creating and exposing interesting situations through more or less civilised structures, actions and complete engagement as well as fostering environments for conscious, social praxis of generating culture. kAspAR sTöbE is an architect and artist based in Düsseldorf, Germany. He runs a studio that serves as platform for multidisciplinary collaborative projects in different scales and in the field of architecture, art and beyond. Kaspar is interested in the way, our daily life is constituted by invisible structures. These structures serve as a pool of inspiration for the development of work in between political, spacial, conceptional and virtual logic. ANdREw sTOOkE is an artist and writer based in London and Shanghai. His work combines of new and traditional media. Recent projects include; ‘Impossible Bands’ at Shanghai Power Station of Art, testing empathy via fallible Internet messaging; and ‘Pigeon’, commissioned to mark the anniversary of the UK’s legalization of private homosexual acts, concerning the love of birds nesting on the roof of a former home of British modernist composer Benjamin Britten. Previously he was director of the Oliver Holt Gallery in Dorset UK; a space for artists’ residencies and commissions based in the context of heritage, education and science. 133 shAN TuRNER- cARROll is a regionally based Australian artist of Anglo Burmese descent. His practice questions current modes of living and explores alternative methodologies and modes of education. Turner- Carroll has exhibited throughout Australia, as well as in New York. New Zealand, Iceland, Hong Kong and Myanmar. His work is in The Macquarie Group Collection, University of Newcastle Art Collection, Curve Gallery Collection, and private collections in New York, Newcastle, Sydney, Perth and Burma. jEssicA wiNTON is an advocate for art in the public realm who creates performative / sculptural installations to provoke civic engagement on sociopolitical issues. Her experiences as a prop builder in the film & television industry have influenced her atypical approach to material usage. Having recently attained an MFA from NSCAD University, she continues to investigate the role of the artist in the public spheres we occupy. Her art projects aim to unwind public ambivalence through common metaphor and intriguing illusion. Her home and studio are based in Halifax, though her projects often carry her off into the streets, woodland and open fields. chRis wOOd is an artist and researcher interested in imaginaries around technology, especially the ways emerging technology define our experiences of space and time. His practice is based around collaborative workshops, conversations and interactions. He uses these to develop interactive installations and encounters. His work also draws on his background as a sound recordist, engineer and radio producer, through a strong use of speech and narrative. He had exhibited across Europe and in North America and recently completed a PhD in Media & Arts Technology at Queen Mary University of London. Examples of work can be found at http://chriswood.art Editorsthe Editors About 134 sEAN lOwRy is a Melbourne-based artist, writer, curator and musician. He holds a PhD in Visual Arts from the University of Sydney and is currently Head of Critical and Theoretical Studies in Art at Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Lowry has exhibited and performed extensively both nationally and internationally, and his writing appears in numerous journals and edited volumes. He is also Founder and Executive Director of global blind peer reviewed exhibition program Project Anywhere (www.projectanywhere.net)—which is currently supported as part of a partnership between the Centre of Visual Art (University of Melbourne) and Parsons Fine Art (Parsons School of Design, The New School). Lowry is also one half (with Ilmar Taimre) of The Ghosts of Nothing (www.ghostsofnothing.com). For more information, please visit www.seanlowry.com siMONE dOuGlAs is a NYC-based artist, curator and writer. She is currently the director of the MFA Fine Arts Program at Parsons School of Design, The New School. Douglas’ works have been exhibited at, and are held in Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Photographers Gallery, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney; and Month of the Photo, Paris. Douglas has curated for the Auckland Festival, The Pingyao International Festival of Photography and on behalf of the Getty Conservation Institute and the Australian Museum. She is co-editor of Anywhere and co-curator of Anywhere & Elsewhere. 135 Proudly supported as part of a partnership between Project Anywhere, Centre of Visual Art (University of Melbourne) and Parsons Fine Art (Parsons School of Design, The New School). Editors Sean Lowry and Simone Douglas Proofreader Robyn Adler Editorial Assistant Kellie Wells Design Ella Egidy Contact projectanywhere@gmail.com ISBN 978-0-6487354-0-3 Published by Project Anywhere; Centre of Visual Art (University of Melbourne) and Parsons Fine Art (Parsons School of Design, The New School). All Included Images © 2019 the Artists Unless Otherwise Noted All supplementary images courtesy National Institute of General Medical Sciences from the Life: Magnified collection. Cover & p. vi: Bryan William Jones and Robert E. Marc 1C top Metabolomics eye p. iv: National Institute of General Medical Sciences from the Life: Magnified collection p. 1: B. Joseph Hinnebusch, Elizabeth Fischer, and Austin Athman Bubonic plague bacteria (yellow) on part of the digestive system in a rat flea (purple) pp. 2–3: Thomas Deerinck Cerebellum (the brain’s locomotion control center) up close pp. 129: Philipp Keller, Bill Lemon, Yinan Wan, and Kristin Branson Zebrafish embryo p. 134: Daniela Malide Fat cells (red) and blood vessels (green) Art at the Outermost Limits of LocationSpecificity 978-0-6487354-0-3