Dialogue: Kristen Kreider & James O'Leary
Our drawn response to Kristen Kreider & James O'Leary began with a disambiguation of their contribution to Drawing Ambiguity: beside the lines of contemporary art: Particles of Moisture or other Substance Suspended in Air and Visible as Clouds (Kreider and O'Leary, 2015).
The contribution was edited into a series of extracts, shown below, supplemented with commentary from the investigators (Marshall and Sawdon).
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
Approaching ambiguity through site-related creative practice
MARSHALL AND SAWDON
Becoming… a preposition?
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
boundary
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
bounded
MARSHALL AND SAWDON
Does ambiguity have a ‘site’?
MARSHALL AND SAWDON
Where and what is our site?
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
…aspects of each: close analysis of material, contextual, social and historical aspects of site, on the one hand; imaginings of generative possibility, on the other.
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
clouded by ambiguity
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
… seven statements on ambiguity derived from our creative and critical practice.
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
Crucially, we consider the writing and drawing sequences that follow to complement one another
MARSHALL AND SAWDON
We recognise this
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
methodology
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
Through this oscillation, writing and drawing, we envision how a creative practice – one situated at a crossover between architecture, art and poetry; one capable of responding to the complexity of a given site(s) – can be employed in the pursuit and communication of a design proposition predicated on one’s subjective relationship to place, with all of its attendant ambiguity.
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
1. To be human is to encounter complexity, as it is to grapple with ambiguity.
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
2. Our relation to the world is semiotic; that is, potentially ambiguous and multivalent.
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
the complexity of site
MARSHALL AND SAWDON
What constitutes the ‘complexity’ of ‘our’ site(s)?
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
characteristics of site as: ‘open limits,’ ‘a series of points,’ ‘outer coordinates,’ ‘subtraction,’ ‘indeterminate certainty,’ ‘scattered information,’ ‘reflection,’ ‘edge,’ ‘some place (physical),’ ‘many.’ He then lists characteristics of nonsite as: ‘closed limits,’ ‘an array of matter,’ ‘inner coordinates,’ ‘addition,’ ‘determinate uncertainty,’ ‘contained information,’ ‘mirror,’ ‘center,’ ‘no place (abstract),’ ‘one’.
MARSHALL AND SAWDON
What are ‘our’ characteristics? Are / is there any mapping of these?
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
3. An image, itself, may not be ambiguous, as are its meaning and narrative.
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
We propose that Smithson’s theory and practice of the dialectic between site and nonsite can be understood as a semiological system.
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
Smithson’s network or system of signs is thus comprised of inherently complex signs, all of which frame, document and theorise the complexity of site.
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
What are the implications of this for appreciating the importance of ambiguity in drawing and other creative practices relating to site?
MARSHALL AND SAWDON
Space and place – relation to site?
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
architectural drawing can be considered a non-site
MARSHALL AND SAWDON
categories / boundaries?
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
4. Ambiguity is a foundation for ethics, which subsides with authoritative certainty.
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
How do we engage with site in order to experience, relate and respond to it?
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
‘performance of place’
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
close-up - encompasses one’s movements or spatial practice ‘on the ground’ in a particular location. Here place is experienced phenomenologically in all of its ‘thereness’ even as it is encountered, and read, in all of its semiotic complexity.
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
faraway - encompasses moving through the impressions and conceptions we have of a particular place, both those that we bring to it (e.g. through researching historical narratives, maps, cultural outputs, etc.) and those we take from it (e.g. through documenting remnants of conversations, video footage, photographs, drawings, written documents, etc.).
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
‘Site’, as we understand the term, thus arises in a middle distance somewhere between one’s close engagement with a worldly reality, in all of its material, spatial, temporal, cultural complexity and ‘thereness’, and one’s conception of that reality from afar.
MARSHALL AND SAWDON
Furthest away from either end
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
5. Ambiguity is open to, and opens through, interpretation.
metaphor and metonymy
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
6. Ambiguity propagates the proliferation of meaning.
KRISTEN KREIDER & JAMES O'LEARY
7. Ambiguity opens onto a process of thought, and is creative.
Does ambiguity have a site?
Experimentation with the close up and faraway reading of site.
Consider site… New Walk Museum Leicester, German Expressionist collection.
Pre-visit faraway performance of place.
Site visit, close up performance of place.
Post-visit performance.
A disambiguation of Particles of Moisture or other Substance Suspended in Air and Visible as Clouds (Kreider and O'Leary, 2015). A staged process. Stage 1: Pre-visit, Faraway, performance of place. A preparatory drawing of site. The drawing situates Robert Smithson’s characteristics of nonsite (closed limits, an array of matter, inner coordinates, addition, determinate uncertainty, contained information, mirror, center, no place (abstract), one) and acknowledges impressions and conceptions through researching historical narratives, maps, cultural outputs… brought to a place (New Walk Museum).
Digital drawing
Dimensions: variable
2017
A disambiguation of Particles of Moisture or other Substance Suspended in Air and Visible as Clouds (Kreider and O'Leary, 2015). A staged process. Stage 2: Close-up, a preparatory drawing of site. The drawing situates Robert Smithson’s characteristics of nonsite (closed limits, an array of matter, inner coordinates, addition, determinate uncertainty, contained information, mirror, center, no place (abstract), one) and acknowledges movements or spatial practice on the ground (New Walk Museum), experienced phenomenologically and read in all of its semiotic complexity.
Digital drawing
Dimensions: variable
2019
A disambiguation of Particles of Moisture or other Substance Suspended in Air and Visible as Clouds (Kreider and O'Leary, 2015). A staged process. Stage 3: Site, a drawing. The drawing situates Kreider and O’Leary’s characteristics of site (a middle distance; close engagement: material, spatial, temporal, cultural complexity, thereness; afar) and acknowledges movements or spatial practice on the ground (New Walk Museum), experienced phenomenologically and read in all of its semiotic complexity.
Digital drawing
Dimensions: variable
2019