Drawing Ambiguity

We have contributed a chapter to the book Drawing Ambiguity: Beside the Lines of Contemporary Art, which has just come out with I.B.Tauris. The chapter, entitled 'Particles of Moisture and other Substance Suspended in Air and Visible as Clouds: Approaching Ambiguity through Site-Related Creative Practice' outlines a history, theory and practice of site-related creative practices across poetry, art and architecture. In setting this out, we argue for the importance of ambiguity in such practices, including our own. Alongside this written component, we engage with an expanded drawing technique to delineate the specific narrative of one of our site-related projects, Video Shakkei.

Drawing Ambiguity: Beside the Lines of Contemporary Art, edited by Phil Sawdon and Russ Marshell, is the third book in the innovative TRACEY series on contemporary drawing. Drawing Ambiguity builds upon its predecessors, Drawing Now: Between the Lines of Contemporary Art, 2007 and Hyperdrawing: Beyond the Lines of Contemporary Art, 2012, by proposing that a position of ambiguity, a lack of definition, is not only desirable within fine art drawing but also necessary - having the capacity to enable and sustain drawing practices. What happens if we are ambivalent to what is a drawing, or what drawing is? 

See our Publications page for more information.

I'M Ten

We are exhibiting work as part of I'M Ten to celebrate IMT Gallery's tenth anniversary.

Preview: Thursday 3 September 6 – 9pm
Auction launch: Thursday 17 September from 6pm GMT
Auction Ends: Friday 2 October at 9pm
Auction closing party: Friday 2 October 6 – 9pm

I’M Ten is a benefit auction and exhibition of over 150 emerging and established artists, brought together to celebrate IMT Gallery’s 10 year anniversary. All artworks will be auctioned off on Paddle8 at a starting price of £50 from the 17th of September – 2nd October 2015. 

I’M Ten selections were nominated by artists including: Oreet Ashery (Artist), Stuart Brisley (Artist), Mark Doyle (Independent Art Consultant), Elisabetta Fabrizi (Curator, Tyneside Cinema), Kenneth Goldsmith (Poet and Founding Editor of UbuWeb), Sean Griffiths (Architect and Founder of FAT), Kelly Large (Public Programme Curator, Zabludowicz Collection), Ana Ventura Miranda (Director, Arte Institute) and Aura Satz (Artist).

Since its opening as a non-profit gallery, IMT Gallery has built a reputation for its innovative site-specific installations as well as its championing of sound art and of artists working across media. The sale of works in I’M Ten, all of which have been kindly donated by participating artists, raises funds to continue to support IMT Gallery’s ambitious public and curatorial programming, as well as towards building new resources for supporting artists.

Follow the exhibition and auction on #IMTen2015

Production Sites

We are presenting work on Open City for the conference Production Sites at the Bartlett School of Architecture on 28029th July.

PRODUCTION SITES is a conference that scrutinises new cultures of architectural knowledge by examining the sites where knowledge is produced as a discipline. Architecture has largely framed knowledge through the idea of building types, formal styles or sites for design action. Yet participatory design modes, digital technologies and event-based models present alternatives that probe the divisions between real and imaginary sites, experiential and ideatic encounters, aesthetics and technology. 

What are the emerging alternative sites, where knowledge is generated or from which it is also drawn? How do these relate to traditional sites and well-established typologies such as the architect’s office, the university, the museum, the exhibition, or the library? How do new scenarios present an adaption or substitution of these frameworks? What are the modes of pro¬duction that are related to these sites, and the associated tools and methods? And, apart from architects themselves, are there other producers of knowledge relevant to the architectural discipline, such as users, curators, theoreticians, activists or ‘cross-benchers’ (Markus Miessen)? 

Conference organisers are Sophia Psarra (s.psarra@ucl.ac.uk) and Sandra Löschke (sandra.löschke@sydney.edu.au).

Visual and Verbal Research Symposium

We will be presenting work at a research symposium entitled The Visual and the Verbal at the University of Brighton on Wednesday 17 June, 2015. The symposium is organised by Catalina Mejia Moreno and Dr Emma Cheatle, Architecture Programme. Keynote Speakers include Professor Jonathan Hill (Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL) and Professor Julieanna Preston (College of Creative Arts, Massey University, New Zealand)

‘It is not the voice that commands the story but the ear’
- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

Lectures and presentations in architectural theory and design settings are almost always constructed through combinations of the visual and the verbal. The lecture is spoken against or around a backdrop of visual images, usually slides; the design presentation consists of verbal explanations to a set of drawings. Ensuing discussions evolve through visual and textual relations.

Many practitioners from various fields use or have used ‘voiced’ forms: Luce Irigaray looks closely at the voice as a haptic presence; Laura Mulvey at the politics of the image; Jane Rendell the positioning of the author; Roland Barthes at the rhetoric of the image; Peggy Phelan at the ontology of performance; Julia Kristeva at the use of oral language Shoshana Felman at the nature of speech; and Walter Benjamin used radio broadcast as a dissemination tactic.

We are architectural academics and teachers who both use and analyse relationships between the visual and the verbal in our writing, practice and teaching. From ideas and discussions around the intersections between visual, spoken and written media, we propose this symposium as a generator of new questions and forms. We will examine both the format of the spoken – whether lecture, conversation or presentation – and the integration or status of the visual within it, drawing out their particularity, structure, politics and poetics. Although expressly interested in the role of drawing, we will also consider the relations of other complementary media such as photography and film.

Speakers: Anne Hultzsch (OCCAS, Oslo) / Ben Sweeting (University of Brighton) / George Themistocleous (Leeds Beckett) / Rosa Ainley (Royal College of Arts) / Sophie Read (Bartlett School of Architecture) /Tom Wilkinson (Architectural Review, UCL) / Kristen Kreider (Royal Holloway) / Duncan Bullen (University of Brighton) / Claire Hoskin (University of Brighton) / Adriana Cobo (Central Saint Martins)

In collaboration with: Drawing Research Interest Group (DRIG), University of Brighton and the Word & Image Interest Group, European Architectural History Network (EAHN)

Title picture: Photograph composite by Julieanna Preston

ICA Salon: Ethics of the Other

'What is this figure of the other in me?', Photographic Scene, Brigid McLeer 2014.

On Friday, 17th April, Kristen will be chairing the ICA Friday Salon on the 'Ethics of the Other' as part of the Royal College of Art Research Biennale 'Why Would I Lie?'

Cinema 2, Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London, SW1Y 5AH, 15.00

Tickets are available through the ICA website.

This ICA Friday Salon explores ethical questions related to working with notions of the other in art and design research and practice. It is hosted by doctoral researchers from the Royal College of Art.

Drawing from themes emerging from ethics discussion groups held by RCA researchers, and also following the recent Dor Guez exhibition at the ICA, the Friday Salon will explore what is at stake in making work and research in which a notional other is implicated, whether that other is conscribed in terms of politics, geography, history, material, the institution, ecology or indeed the other of art and design research itself.

By drawing on a range of theory on this subject from psychoanalysis, feminism, new materialism, postcolonial and posthuman studies, as well as the writings of philosophers such as Jane Bennett , Jean-Luc Nancy, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-François Lyotard and Jacques Rancière, the discussion will investigate the ethical challenges facing contemporary practice when it comes to consider the other as its subject.

Ethics of the Other precedes the opening of the RCA Research Biennial Why Would I Lie?, which is exploring ethics and aesthetics in contemporary art and design research and practice and runs from 18–25 April with a major conference on 18–19 April.

The form of the Friday Salon will be relatively informal. It will begin with a number of short presentations by the RCA researchers and will be followed by questions from the audience.

Presentations will be given by Manca Bajec, Helena Bonett, Susannah Haslam, Peter Le Couteur, Carol Mancke, Brigid McLeer, Peter Wareing and Mercedes Vincente.
Dr Kristen Kreider will chair the salon.

A Celebration of Falling

On Thursday, 19th March from 6.00pm-8.00pm at The Island Queen in London, Copy Press will be hosting an evening to celebrate the publication of Falling. The evening will entail a short reading from the book along with contributions of '60 seconds of movement, visual or verbal, in celebration of Falling' from other Copy Pressers.

RSVP@copypress.co.uk

Falling Fugue at Plexus 17: Vibrations

In collaboration with sound artist and architect Paul Bavister of Audialsense, we will be presenting 'Falling Fugue' at Plexus 17: Vibrations on 26th February at the Bartlett School of Architecture.

FALLING FUGUE
A Sound, Live Video and Spoken Word performance collaboration by 
Paul Bavister of Audialsense and Kreider + O’Leary

This event is a taxonomy of a trajectory…from the surface of the moon to the skin of the earth.  Tumbling through historical time and infinite space, we intersect with historical events and figures in motion.  We tune in to their frequencies.  As figures are falling we encounter something about philosophy, laughter, architecture and war. 

Plexus 17: Vibrations
26th February @ 6.30pm
The Bartlett School of Architecture
140 Hampstead Road
London NW1 2BX

http://www.audialsense.com/index.html
http://www.kreider-oleary.net

Falling published by Copy Press

We are delighted that our book Falling has just been published by Copy Press, an independent publishing company based in London, dedicated to extending ideas of writing, pictures and readability.

This book begins in zero gravity and ends with everything flowers. In between, figures are falling as we hear something about philosophy, laughter, architecture and war. With writing and drawing coursing through its pages, Falling gathers momentum and, through this, a picture emerges: it looks something like today.

'Falling is a work of natural philosophy, about wire-walkers and moonwalkers, elevators, angels, slapstick, skyscrapers, swerves, and the dynamic figure that links them. Here Kreider + O'Leary describe 'the beautiful mess we're in' with a speculative precision. Their description of falling, in its uncoupling of the tyranny of cause and effect, displaces the now-prevalent despondency of end-thinking with a prolific joyousness.'
- Lisa Robertson

The books' editor is Yve Lomax, reader is Vit Hopley and designer is Ivor Williams.

Available to order:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Falling-Kristen-Kreider/dp/190957001X

Open City artists pages in Performance Research

Reflecting on our recent trip to Open City in Ritoque, Chile, we have just published a series of artists pages in the latest edition of Performance Research: On Poetics & Performance (Volume 20:1).

In this series of word-and-image pages, the collaborative pair Kreider + O'Leary reflect on their site visit to the Open City in Valparaiso, Chile. Situated in the sand dunes just off coast of the Pacific ocean, this radical pedagogical experiment was founded in 1971 by the Chilean architect Alberto Cruz and Argentinean poet Godofredo Iommi. Open City is as much a school as it is an urban laboratory and the embodiment of a utopian ideal. Here architecture is constructed on a foundation of poetry and shifting sand and, as students of the Open City, Kreider + O'Leary examine the place in detail. In this series of word-and-image pages they present these findings in a loose taxonomy: a configuration of words and lines; a cifra reflective of their study of site and that marks the beginning of their story of Open City.

The front cover of the journal shows an image from our performance / installation at Open City, entitled Cifra.

Performance Research: On Poetics & Performance 2015 (Volume 20:1): 70-76.

Modes of Aberrant Research at the Whitechapel Gallery

We will be presenting a live rendition of Edge City employing spoken word and video mixing for 'Modes of Aberrant Research' at the Whitechapel Gallery, curated by Holly Pester.

An evening of deviant anecdotes, radical storytelling and narrative segues through archives, collections and institutions. New work by SJ Fowler, Patrick Coyle, Holly Pester and Kreider + O’Leary.

The Whitechapel Gallery
Thursday 7 August, 7pm – 9pm
Booking essential.
£8.50/£6.50 concession (£4.25 Whitechapel Gallery Members).

Ways to Cut the Earth Open at University of Westminster

On 17th January, 2014, we will present 'Ways to Cut the Earth Open', the second in a series of lectures entitled 'Print Screen: Writing and the Moving Image' run the by the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture at the University of Westminster.

Ways to Cut the Earth Open’ is a cross-platform survey that examines a number of sites recently explored by Kreider + O’Leary in their nomadic practice. Using the sectional cut and the filmic splice as starting points they explore strands from their recent site-based works to thread together narratives of place and displacement. Predicated on an aesthetics of response while engaging with the complexity inherent in a given site, their work is both a form and act of communication: therefore, and necessarily, clouded by ambiguity. This prompts a critical investigation into the role of ambiguity for creative practices that relate to site, including writing and the moving image.

17th January, 6.00-8.00pm
The Old Cinema, University of Westminster
309 Regent Street
London W1B 2UW

Poetics & Place published by IB Tauris

The book Poetics & Place: The Architecture of Sign, Subjects and Site has now been release for publication by I.B. Taurus.

How do artworks 'speak', and how do we 'listen' and respond? These questions underlie the investigation here of Roni Horn's Pair Object III: For Two Rooms, Emily Dickinson's later manuscripts, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Passages Paysages, Fiona Templeton's Cells of Release and Jenny Holzer's Lustmord. The tenets of critical performance, art-writing and site-writing inform the critical method used in Poetics and Place. Each chapter is dedicated to one of these five artworks, and is arranged in order to fulfill three main objectives: to understand how the artworks generate meaning through a material poetics in relation to place; to develop a critical methodology for engaging with them; and to investigate their ethical potential and political imperative. All of this, ultimately, facilitates the development of a triadic relation between theoretical concepts of sign, subjects and site at the crossover between poetry, art and spatial practices. This extends each artwork beyond the dyad of a critical encounter in order to offer - and allow others to grasp - an appreciation of how the artwork figures meaningfully, as well as configures meaning, in the wider world of objects and things. The book concludes with a discussion of the ethics of reading from the second person, opening up a debate concerning the role of empathy within contemporary, politically-engaged practices in art and poetry.

Now available to order on Amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Poetics-Place-Architecture-Subjects-International/dp/1780763379

Drive Derivative at Reading as Art event

Working with sound artist Paul Banister of Audialsense, we will be performing a work entitled ‘Drive Derivative’ as part of the Reading as Art event curated by Sharon Kivland in collaboration with Mura Ghosh for the Bloomsbury Festival.

Evoking a wind that blows through a library, opening books, prompting unexpected stories, this evening of readings, art and performances engages with Victorian psychology from the library’s collections. Expect the unexpected! Artist and writer Sharon Kivland collaborates with psychology librarian Mura Ghosh to stage this special Senate House Library event.

http://bloomsburyfestival.org.uk/ai1ec_event/reading-as-art-turning-the-pages-of-psychology/?instance_id=

October 15, 2013 @ 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Senate House Library
University of London
Senate House,Malet Street,London,Greater London WC1E 7HU, UK

Edge City at the Lisbon Architecture Triennale

We will be presenting a new work entitled Edge City at the Lisbon Architecture Triennale, which runs from 13 September-19 December 2014. The work is part of the 'Close...Closer' associated projects selected by Triennale chief curater Beatrice Galilee.

Edge City consists of a performance, video installation and mediated city walk each exploring the maritime edges of Lisbon from the Ponte Vasco da Gama to the Ponte 25 de April near the Alcántara Docks. Operating at a crossover between cultural geography, video documentary and fiction, Kreider + O'Leary interweave spatial, historical, social and political narratives to create an immaterial overlay to the city’s urban fabric. Through this, they tell a story of discovery, encounter and overwhelm.

The work has three major strands:

1. Live Performance 
On the opening weekend of the Triennale, we will conduct a mediated guided tour of the maritime edges of the city for small groups of people. Starting at Cais do Sodré on the river's edge and working ‘en-promenade’, we will explore specific details of the city fabric, focussing on its maritime history. With archaeological levels of detail, they will use performance, props, images, texts and architectural elements to explore the site as the fulcrum for a number of inter-related systems.
- Date: 14th Sept 2013, departing at 19.00
- Location: Outside the Terminal Fluvial at Cais do Sodré Station 
- Tickets: http://edgecity.eventbrite.co.uk/

2. Video Installation 
For the duration of the Triennale, we will exhibit the work in the form of a video installation at Lisbon's Lx Factory. Here we work with time-based media and text to inter-weave spatial, historical, social and political narratives of the city of Lisbon. 
- Dates: 14th Sept – 15th Dec 2013
- Location: Lx Factory, Rua Rodrigues Faria, 103 / 1300 - 501 Lisboa 
- LxFactory Exhibitions: http://www.lxfactory.com/EN/agenda/exposicoes/2013/09/

3. Self-guided Walk 
A self-guided walking tour will be made available on the Kreider + O'Leary website for the duration of the Triennale. Leading participants along the maritime edges of Lisbon between Cais do Sodré to Alcántara Mar cultivate, the tour works with digitally augmented spatial practice to cultivate an enriched, multi-layered cultural experience of the urban environment. Prior to departure, participants in the walk can log on to the webpage and follow the directions provided.
- Dates: 14th Sept – 15th Dec 2013
- Location: Start outside the Terminal Fluvial at Cais do Sodré Station at any time.
- Map and details: http://www.kreider-oleary.net/edge-city/map.htm

See the following related links:
Trienal de Lisboa: http://www.trienaldelisboa.com/en/#/ 
Close… Closer: http://www.close-closer.com/en/#

Blitzkrieg Sonata at Daniel Blau Gallery

The glare of many fires and sweeping clouds of smoke kept hiding the shape.  Then a wind sprang up.  Suddenly, the shining cross, dome and towers stood out like a symbol in the inferno.  The scene was unbelievable.  In that moment or two, I released my shutter.'
- Herbert Mason on his iconic 1940 photograph of St.  Paul's Cathedral.

On 18th June we will be performing 'Blitzkrieg Sonata' at the Daniel Blau Gallery in London. Taking its cue from the the vintage 1940's photographs comprising BLITZ: WWII in LONDON (Daniel Blau Gallery, London), Blitzkrieg Sonata combines spoken word with live video and a collaborative sound work with Paul Bavister from Audialsense to capture the progressive degeneration of an imaged ideality; evoking a dreamworld in catastrophe. More prosaically, this piece explores -- as it embodies -- an enmeshment of image, architecture and ideology within the condition of continual and ongoing contemporary warfare.

The performance is part of a reading series entitled 'Amid the Ruins' that runs monthly at the Daniel Blau Gallery, and is organised by Professor Robert Hampson as part of the RHUL Poetics Research Centre with performances by:

+ Kreider + O'Leary with Audialsense
+ Allen Fisher
+ Stephen Willey
+ Becky Cremin

Daniel Blau Gallery, 51 Hoxton Sq, London N1 6BP, 7pm.

Of Insects & Ash at Copy Press Launch

We will present 'Of Insects & Ash', a live performance involving moving image, spoken word and props, as part of the launch for Copy Press held on 25th May, 2013, at Conway Hall.

Copy Press is an independent publishing company based in London, dedicated to extending ideas of writing, pictures and readability. Currently publishing 100-page paperbacks under the series name Common Intellectual, each title provides a proposition for living, thinking and enjoyment. Copy Press publishes authors whose work endeavours to bring writers and readers into a space where common voices can come together and gather mass.

This extraordinary day of demonstrations and propositions will include Barbara Campbell-Lange / Julia Calver / Neil Chapman / Maria Fusco / Vit Hopley / Jaki Irvine / Jaspar Joseph-Lester / Yve Lomax / Sharon Morris / Hayley Newman / Francette Pacteau / David Roberts / Michael Schwab / Francis Summers / Anne Tallentire / Caroline Woodley / Kreider + O’Leary

We will be publishing a book entitled Falling as part of the Common Intellectual series for Copy Press.

'Time, Place & Empathy' published in Visual Studies

Our essay 'Time, place and empathy: the poetics and phenomenology of Andrei Tarkovsky’s film image' has now been published in Visual Studies (Vol. 28, No. 1): 1–16. Engaging modes of creative critical writing and expanded drawing techniques, with one of these drawings appearing on the front cover of the journal, the essay forms part of our research into the theory and practice of Tarkovsky's film image, also pursued through the project Gorchakov's Wish. The following is an abstract of the journal article:

Acclaimed Russian film-maker Andrei Tarkovksy’s specific understanding of what constitutes the ‘film image’ is outlined in his collection of writings, Sculpting in Time (1986), and evidenced by his body of film work. Our aim in this article is to identify the specificity of Tarkovsky’s theory and practice of the film image and to argue that the film image is a meaningful composite of poetic, spatial and material properties. We unpack this complexity through a close, careful and attenuated reading of a single scene from Tarkovsky’s film Nostalghia (1983).

In this scene, the film’s protagonist – the poet, Gorchakov – carries a lit candle across the expanse of the Santa Catarina pool. The pool, a geothermal bath in the Tuscan hillside town of Bagno Vignoni, Italy, is emptied for this shot, but still steaming. This infuses the film image with atmospheric qualities ofplace. We read these qualities in relation to Tarkovsky’s use of symbol, the relationship of this scene to others in the context of the filmic narrative, and the filmic syntax of the long take and tracking shot. We also examine how the film image is received, as a projection, by an embodied recipient, and to what effect. Through this discussion, we defend Tarkovsky’s work against charges that it embodies a naïve realism, exposing the critical potential inherent in Tarkovsky’s nostalgic impulse.

+ click here to access publication through Taylor & Francis

Fieldwork: København at the Danish Academy of Fine Arts

"Architecture is always the ultimate achievement of intellectual and artistic evolution, the materialization of an economic stage. Architecture is the final point in the achievement of any artistic endeavor because the creation of architecture implies the construction of an environment and the establishment of a way of life." - Asgur JORN, Architecture for Life, Potlatch #15, 1954

From 2 April - 9 April 2013 we will run a workshop for students at the Danish Academy of Fine Art in Copenhagen. Entitled 'Fieldwork: København', this workshop will encourage architects to think like ethnographers, poets and critics. We will take as our starting point a triadic relationship between three texts including:

• Life in Denmark (1972), directed by Jørgen Leth. 
• The Five Obstructions (2003), directed by Lars Von Trier. 
• Fin de Copehhagen (1957) by Asgur Jorn and Guy Debord. 

With these in mind, we will students a number of tasks that, together, will document Copenhagen as a system of interconnected spatial relationships: a series of relationships documented through subjective and critical  acts of site-study / mapping / ethnography.

Light Vessel Automatic at Tate Britain

We will be presenting a new work entitled LIGHT VESSEL AUTOMATIC at 'Performing Architecture' at TATE Britain. The event will be on Friday, 1st February 2013 from 6.00pm-10.pm.

For ‘Performing Architecture’ Kreider & O’Leary present LIGHT VESSEL AUTOMATIC, guided tour ‘en-promenade’ exploring specific details of the building fabric. With archaeological levels of detail, they use images, video and architectural elements to explore the site as the fulcrum for a number of inter-related systems, whether spatial, historical, social or artistic. These systems reveal a series of interlocking narrative threads that coalesce around the site, entangling its history and forming a foundational mesh for its future potential.

With thanks to Caruso St John Architects

Curated by Marianne Mulvey. 
Kreider + O'Leary - Alex Sweder - Lamis Bayer - Emptyset - Film Programme by the Architecture Foundation

Curators Blog - http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/blogs/performing-architecture-late-tate-kreider-oleary

Rock Video performance at Tate Britain

'Performance burns up in its very performing and is gone. Its legacy may rely on the act of remembering. For Bodies of Memory, Tate Britain is inhabited by the collective recollections of many past performances, performed and spoken in passing fragments, rising and disappearing like memory itself. Its participants are an intergenerational group of performers, artists, writers, curators: people who witnessed something being done.' - Fiona Templeton

On 5th October we will take part of a Late at Tate programme entitled Acts of Legacy, having been invited by the artist and poet Fiona Templeton to devise a component for her piece Bodies of Memory.  

For Templeton’s Bodies of Memory, Tate Britain will be inhabited by a collective memory of many past performances, performed and spoken in passing fragments, rising and disappearing like memory itself. Participants include performers, artists, writers, curators, and people who have watched something being done.  Currently to include: Heather Ackroyd, Gina Birch, David Gale, Helena Goldwater, Dave Goulding, Anthony Howell, Yoko Ishiguro, Glenys Johnson, Lois Keidan, Joe Kelleher, Kristen Kreider, Paulina Lara, Claire MacDonald, Angeliki Margeti, Brigid McLeer, Kate Meynell, Hannah Millest, Lucy Neal, Redell Olsen, Miranda Payne, Lorena Peña, Donna Rutherford, Graeme Shaw, Steve Slater, Gary Stevens, Minna Stevens, Peter Stickland, Fiona Templeton, Howard Tong, Amikam Toren, Caroline Wilkinson, Simon Vincenzi, Sylvia Ziranek .

For the event, will perform a new work entitled 'Rock Video'.

Tate Britain 
Friday 5 October 2012, 18.00 – 22.00