The other day I came across an interesting chapter called the Virtual House in the John Rajchman’s book Constructions (1998).  Rajchman explores the theme of virtuality in relation to space as an area of un-measurable opportunity, a space which possibilities and activities are open-ended and specificity reduced. I thought it would be an interesting addition to the blog and as another way of thinking about our practice in this area.

“… the virtual is not another unreal realm that only doubles or “simulates” the nature we already know or see. Rather it supposes something singular yet to be constructed in the arrangements that determine our nature. To virtualize nature is thus not to double it but, on the contrary, to multiply it, complicate it, release other forms and paths in it.”

If any of this sounds familiar it’s because much of Rajchman’s work examines the theories of Deleuze in particular, and there is a strong relationship between this idea of virtuality and ‘smooth’ and ‘striated’ space.

According to Rajchman, “Virtual construction is one that frees forms, figures, and activities from prior determination or grounding, of the sort they have, for example, in classical Albertian perspective, allowing them to function or operate in unanticipated ways…” and thus “…virtual construction departs from organizations that try to set out all possibilities in advance.”

I think the qualities of the virtual he describes are apparent in our work, and it is this opportunism to play with and distort spaces, that seems to characterise much of our practice. This exploration of possibility within the spatial realm relies on a reduction of specificity, Rajchman notes, “The usual way to increase possibility is to abstract specificity…”

Thus the title “Sites of no specificity” melts nicely into all of this.

Update:

I have scanned in Chapter 8 – The Virtual House, and they are attached as PDFs below.

The Virtual House pg115 – Constructions – John Rajchman 1998

The Virtual House pg116-117 – Constructions – John Rajchman 1998

The Virtual House pg118-119 – Constructions – John Rajchman 1998

The Virtual House pg120-121 – Constructions – John Rajchman 1998

I thought I’d take the liberty of actually being on the front foot for once. I wrote up what we discussed last week and embellished a few bits, tried to make sense of a few bits that in hindsight didn’t etc etc. It’s a backbone for sure, but it could do with some added calcium. I’ll email it to you also.

Sites of no specificity
A proposal for an exhibition by Craig Barnes and Francis Mason.

‘Sites of no specificity’ will bring together individual works by Craig Barnes and Francis Mason that explore notions of our built environment and spatiality in relation to the everyday (NOTE: am stuck on how to put this)

Barnes and Mason will looks at the subject from a framework of Cartesian possibilities inherent in relation to the subject/object relationship of prescribed systems of present architectural engagement.

Draw together by recognising shared themes in each other’s work, they set about discussing how this might manifest itself as a joint exhibition using a communal blog as a medium and repository of research.

Deciding upon a starting point of exploring Deleuze & Guattari’s theory of smooth & striated space (in A Thousand Plateaus), Barnes will look at horizontal interpretations, and Mason vertical ones.

Barnes will be doing a dance whilst stroking a cat. Voids/Rupturing/turning the negativity of voids into positives/nomadic/alternative urban migratory possibilities/urban sprawl/jazz spraw/shawl spraw/owl calls/weaving.

Mason will be pre fabricating some concrete panels and inserting them surreptitiously into the goods yard of Berkley Home’s material supplier and cackling loudly.

Craig Barnes and Francis Mason both studied Fine Art at Central St Martins and Chelsea College of Art respectively, graduating in 2009. Barnes was selected for that years FutureMap show, Mason for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries. Both featured in the Catlin Guide 2010 and live and work in London.

Craig Barnes – selected works

Notification station (2010), mixed media, dimensions variable.

Everything is repairable / Everything is broken (FAC2) (2009)

Le Caban-non (2009) Douglas fir ply, spruce battoning, nails, screws, found objects; 2.9m x 2.4m x 2.4m.

I feel this post could be a thesis for me, but I tried to keep it short.

I was going to write two seperate posts originally, but in many ways purity cannot exist without a form of erasure. To achieve pureness, the blemishes must be removed, made sterile.

This is a wide topic to cover, so to narrow it down a bit this post is related more to the context and ideas surrounding our project. I’m thinking about the notion of purity in urban space, in the planning, architecture, and branding, and how this is achieved by erasing certain values (both physical and psychic).

This purification of urban space can be seen in the striation (to link back) of home, leisure, and work spaces, where human action is limited to a set of defined boundaries and borders. Restrictions are achieved through the erasure of possibility and flexibility, maintained by the architecture and governed by its owners. This is most visible in the cultural infill spaces you were talking about, where human interactions have spaces designed for them before being allowed to develop naturally.

It is the commoditisation of space through capitalism that creates this drive for purity.

David Sibley writes in Geographies of Exclusion,

“…the urge to make separations, between clean and dirty, ordered and disordered, ‘us’ and ‘them’, that is, to expel the abject, is encouraged in western cultures, creating feelings of anxiety because such separations can never be finally achieved (in the way that the smooth and striated cannot be separated). This anxiety, …is reinforced by the culture of consumption in western societies. The success of capitalism depends on it.“

By taking this example of abjection, in the same way that products are sold by advertising, new as clean, and old as dirty, architecture can also be marketed as a pure product. The branded hoardings that surround new purpose built quasi-luxury flats, offices, shopping centres, etc, all show perfect lifestyles being played out. The 3d digital drawings show pristine buildings and bright sunlit streets, with all notions of a polluted environment and lifestyle erased.

But before these buildings exist, there must first be an erasure of place (as opposed to space). Tabula rasa construction to create a pure spatial beginning. It is often this negation of history and place-making, which makes these new builds feel so sterile.

I think we both address these ideas of purity and erasure in our practices, and provide critical reflections that act as a form of ‘smoothing’ within these ‘striated’ spatial environments.

As an interesting polarity, in some of your drawings you have blacked out parts of what might be a picturesque scene, and there is a different type of erasure and purification going on. Removing the pleasing picture postcard, and reducing it down to the ignored border and foreground elements, the result seems to be a deviant type of censorship, leaving a dirty semi-obscured image that suggests we do not, or should not be looking at it.

I think you would like the Rachel Whiteread show at Tate Britain right now. Her sketches fit into this dialogue of purity and erasure, and your drawing work shares similarities with hers (which is good!).

In terms of the project proposal, I am yet to write anything, but I think a lot of the above is part of it, so let me know what you think, and where you are up to in this seemingly busy start to Autumn.

Francis

Why is August so busy?

The interplay of smooth & striated (or dependency? what do you call it when one can’t exist without the other?) I feel is key to so many decisions I make in my work. Phyllida Barlow talks about something similar in a text ‘the hatred of the studio’. As I recall, she describes one extreme of being “hot objects” – something overwrought, too heavily carrying the scars and history of its making, and “cool objects” which are things thought then made by the hand of others. For me, an awareness of those two extremes means I work between them, and that to me seems important, but also something to play with. I have in my mind the Tom Friedman piece which is large white square of paper called something like “Piece of paper stared at by artist for 1,000 hours”. To look at, beautifully framed and all, its pure cod minimalism. Of its creation, it’s a piece we’re told has been laboured over. What it actually is, is something else altogether. Its a great joke to open up with, but it goes further than that somehow.

Anyhow, I wanted to ask you about aggression in your work. In your previous post you talk of ‘small actions and disruptions’ to striated space, and it strikes me you offer a certain respect to the striated spaces by neatly removing (by the striated space) rectilinear voids from them, and as I understand, the smooth you fill them with (the gouged cement, if indeed it is cement) it’s creation is bounded by this ‘allowable’ area – it doesn’t bleed off out of sight as I understand. Therefore to me they read almost as machetes for possible actual interventions in the sort of identikit developments that the photos are of.

However contrary to that, a couple earlier piece of yours, the ‘extrusion’ pieces with the splintered wood stuck into the cement, seem to voice more discontent with that which they spear. There is an aggression to them that is now either being managed in later works, or has diminished. I guess I’m interested particularly as the building developments you photograph are quite politically charged on a personal level.

Ta mr,

Craig

The ‘smooth’ is often seen as different and dangerous as it encompasses what cannot be controlled / limited / or planned for, and we end up with very limited spatial design and architecture. But then ‘smooth’ living is only really possible when you don’t build using rigid construction. Living ‘smoothly’ would be the nomadic nature, which Deleuze and Guattari talk about, not being rooted or defined in space or time.

But I also think its possible to add ‘smoothness’ to ‘striated’ space, through small actions and disruptions both inherent in our work. The adaption of space for other use / mis-use, and corrupting the linear nature.

The ‘smooth’ and ‘striated’ theory could be the centre of a very large spider diagram relating to a list of words / verbs, and be a useful resource for distorting from one extreme to another. (I was going to say utopia vs. grid for example, but then some utopias might be the grid…)

Anyway, here’s a good summary of D&G’s theory from ‘A Thousand Plateaus’, written by Christian Hubert, who also has a very interesting website!

“According to Deleuze and Guattari, is occupied by and events . It is haptic rather than optic, a vectorial space rather than a metrical one. Smooth space is characteristic of sea, steppe, ice and desert. It is occupied by packs and nomads . It is a texture of “traits” consisting of continuous variation of free action. The characteristic experience of smooth space is short term, up close, with no visual model for points of reference or invariant distances. Instead of the metrical forms of striated space, smooth space is made up of constantly changing orientation of nomads entertaining tactile relations among themselves.”

“Smooth does not mean homogeneous, however, but rather amorphous non-formal (cf formless ) in fact, Homogeneity is the limit-form of a space striated everywhere and in all directions. According to Deleuze and Guattari, striation is negatively motivated by anxiety in the face of all that passes, flows, or varies and erects the constancy and eternity of an in-itelf. Thus A Thousand Plateaus recounts an “extended confrontation between the smooth and the in which the striated progressively took hold.”"

Smooth and Striated. Image: www.christianhubert.com

Check out his list of writings, which also is categorised as a rather nice word list. I think your right that we will probably discover how this project will take shape as we discuss it.

Sorry if that’s all a bit long! Will sort out meeting up again when I’m back from Yorkshire.

Oh, and I saw the Mike Nelson, its a real hidden gem!

Sorry for the radio silence. Been a bit snowed under on all fronts, and rather tired as a result. Whilst I remember, I’ve been to see a couple of things in the last week or so that you might like aspects of: V&A 1:1 Small Spaces show and Mike Nelson The Coral Room at Tate Britain. More here.

Your list of words brings to mind Richard Serra’s lovely verb list, which could as easily apply to any spatial practice be it architecture or sculpture. I guess one common theme we share is a interest, or distrust of a sort of identikit neo-modernism. I’m interested in the distort achieved by mashing the work of one (serra’s verbs) to some of the more regimented thoughts and systems and scales (linear/gridded/dwelling/habitation) of the words you list, that have a sort of utopian underbelly to them, that you can imagine being brainstormed (sorry, spidergraphed) by people making things only concerned with surface and not really concerned with spatial wellbeing. A sort of bad cover version of bad song inversion perhaps?

At present I would say I’m interested in something like this as a starting point for us making work independently of each other that develops around a growing theme and ideas base. Simultaneous to that, discussions about ways the growing body of work and research might be presented should become more apparent. I’m wary of committing to dialogues, interactivity and engagement without perhaps having a clearer idea of what it is we’re proposing, or asking, or looking for.

Wordy rambling Saturday missive over. Lemme know what you think. BTW, although it’s just a list on a scribbled piece of paper, I have a growing list of interesting sites and places that might be worth contacting people about the possibility of using to show and tell. Perhaps we should meet up and do a bit of a wander, taking in some places of interest over the course of an afternoon. I could do Wednesday or Thursday this week, or Friday morning.

Cheers,

Craig

Thinking about curating space and ideas. This is just a load of notes and thoughts…

Themed shows - Working with a shared interest in possible / impossible architectures. Working with building materials and construction techniques. Playful nature of imagery in works, subversive spatial actions…

Quite liked the Jotta show title ‘Geometry is never wrong‘.

Interested in other words that relate to spatial and architectural practice / theory…

/

//

/ Converging / diverging / folding / flexible / plastic / hybrid /

/ layered / fragmented / constructed / de-constructed /

/ linear / gridded / fortified / striated / geometric / concrete /

/ structure / dwelling / support / habitation / unit / concept /

//

/

A dialogue with the local area, and possible engagements within public realm.

Interactivity, engagement with work. Environment for play, learning / knowledge, exploration…

…

http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/about-us/investment-in-arts/action-recession/art-empty-spaces/

As one of the discussed options of showing spaces, I found these links I saved from something a while back. Not sure if they’ll be of any use but good starting point maybe.

www.londonmiles.com
www.utrophia.net
www.watch-this-space.org

Also, Hackney council have a page of shop properties they are trying to rent here. I’m sure they’re not interested in artists coming to them asking for free/cheap short term lets, but if we could get some funding from somewhere or something they might take it more seriously, and be prepared to do rent reduction or something. I’m particularly taken with the one on Downham Road.