For many years archives are hot both as a theme of academic discussion and as a space for the creative and investigative processes of many artists. This is a stark contrast to the traditional image of an archive as a dead place or the stereotypical archivist: a grey specialist with glasses and sleeve protectors. Let’s…
Read Morearchives
The Slow Reading Archive is online!
During quarantine, the Slow Readers met weekly from January through May 2021. Reading at a snail’s pace and experimenting with different forms of collective learning, traces were gathered into an online archive composed of notes, reading methodologies, glossaries, scraps of thoughts, and fieldnotes. While far from representing all of the group’s activities, the site captures…
Read MorePhD candidate @ Deep Histories Fragile Memories Intermedia Research Unit
In my garden, colonial legacies reside in the hydrangeas and japonicas. They were originally brought back from Japan by Philipp Franz von Siebold who worked for the Dutch East India Company. An Acanthus mollis, whose leaves characterise Corinthian columns, continues to spread through a network of subterranean rhizomes. Abortifacients, such as Bishop’s weed, artemisia, and woodruff, are present too.
Read MorePanel Discussion: Framing and Reframing Archives
Framing and Reframing Archives: Panel discussion moderated by Alice Twemlow with Renée Turner, Lauren Alexander, Dr. Andrea Stultiens
Some of the issues raised: What does the artist bring to the archive, what are the ethics of subjective interventions and how does epistolary work as a research methodology.
Read MoreWeaving, Knots And Other Entanglements
Histories are woven, knotted, and impossible to disentangle. This is especially true when working through the recent past with linked threads to the present. Moving through Gisèle’s clothing and photographic archive, Turner reflects on the epistemology of the closet, the pitfalls of taxonomical fervour, and the complexity of entangled histories.
Read MoreFault Lines: KABK Research Symposium 2019
This one-day symposium, presented by the KABK Design Lectorate, features projects being developed through the KABK Research Group 2019, with an emphasis on practice-led research. Art and design research methods to be explored include: activism, collaboration, collective making, corresponding, diagramming, drawing, enactment, filmmaking, framing, juxtaposition, letter-writing, mapping, movement, notation, pedagogy, performance, re-archiving, re-narration, salvaging, speculation, translation, visual analysis, zooming in, and more.
Read MorePresentation at Het Nieuwe Instituut: Speculative Archives
Moving through The Warp and Weft of Memory, an online archive of artist Gisèle van der Gracht’s closet, Renée Turner and Cristina Cochior will be discussing the porous border between enumeration and narration. Understanding the database as a form of writing, they will read through elements of the site and recount the making of the archive. Key to their approach is the language of weaving and the use of the Semantic MediaWiki to create a narrative tapestry.
Read MoreInterview by Amy Pickles with Renée Turner for the Rotterdam Arts & Sciences Lab
You know, one of the things I like about writing in a digital environment is that there is no master narrative, only tentative propositions, networked connections that can be followed or ignored. Maybe as a form, it suits my own inability to prioritise and make decisions and my desire to circle around things without really landing on a single point or conclusion.
Read MoreFolding
One of the challenges of making The Warp and Weft of Memory was bringing a sense of materiality to the digital. After all, clothing and textiles are tactile. Taffetas are crisp and rustle when moved, wool is rough or soft depending on how it has been treated, and silk is smooth and light to the touch.
Read MoreOpening of The Warp and Weft of Memory at H401
The exhibition took place in Gisèle van Waterschoot van der Gracht, where her work still hangs. The opening took place on August 24th and the exhibition ran until October 2, 2018.
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