Mosaic: an interdisciplinary critical journal, 2021
This essay discusses methodological issues raised by Barthes's La Chambre claire within the conte... more This essay discusses methodological issues raised by Barthes's La Chambre claire within the context of his later work. It examines Barthes as a precursor of autotheory, an umbrella term applied to writing (and other cultural expressions) that combines reflections on art and theory with an exploration of intimate life.
This article argues that the essentials of the complex relationship between interiority and exter... more This article argues that the essentials of the complex relationship between interiority and exteriority, and the mediating role of teletechnology, are already present in the interiors of Paleolithic caves. As philosopher Maxine Sheets-Johnstone argues in The Roots of Thinking (1990), cave art emerged from the primal fascination with ‘being inside.’ Yet at the same time, these first interiors were most likely created to establish a form of communication with an exterior, the ‘augmented reality’ of the spirit world, made possible through rudimentary technological and biological extensions. It also required a specific use of the spatial qualities of these caves, both sensory and atmospheric. This complex hybrid constellation of interior space, the human body and (psycho)technology created a permeability between different human and non-human actors. According to prehistorian Jean Clottes in Pourquoi l’art préhistorique (2011), the ‘permeability’ between inner and outer worlds is indeed ...
It is remarkable that in fundamental and inspiring texts about the experience of the interior, ... more It is remarkable that in fundamental and inspiring texts about the experience of the interior, the perspective is often that of a solitary dweller, as in in Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space (1958) or Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows (1933). However compelling their accounts are, they run the risk of forgetting the kind of spatial encounters that disrupt the distinction between one body and another, between the self and its environment. This article considers the erotic effect of the night-time as a metaphor for understanding and exploring (interior) space. By using the works of Lakoff and Johnson, Handelman, and Kristeva as a constructed theoretical framework, the article sketches the outlines of a phenomenology of darkness, a skotology, that allows us to explore ‘dark space,’ a conceptualisation of space that confronts us with other subjective modes of perception, sensation, and cognition. We will follow the wanderings of an amorous Walter Benjamin through different ‘dark spaces’ ...
WritingPlace journal #2 Inscription: tracing place. History and Memory in Architectural and Literary Practice, 2018
Experimental poet and essayist Lisa Robertson (Toronto, 1961) has a singu-lar, lyrical approach t... more Experimental poet and essayist Lisa Robertson (Toronto, 1961) has a singu-lar, lyrical approach to architecture and urbanism. Best known for Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture (2004), her writing never forgets the body of the dweller, nor the body of the city. In the much less studied, book-length poem Cinema of the Present (2014), Robertson offers a polyphonic voice that explores the relationship between these two bodies in ‘real time’:
66
Wherever you go, you will be a city.
The question for you becomes what are we doing with our bodies, why are we here?1
Robertson’s poem can be read as an account of urban encounters. The poem reveals how an ‘embodied community’ needs past traces to empathi-cally relate to the city, and to others. We will link this to French theorist Michel de Certeau’s concept of tactics, developed in The Practice of Every-day Life (1980), and the important role these traces play for Certeau as a resistance against spatial and cultural homogenization.
By bringing these two authors together, we want to explore ‘tactical’ and embodied writing about architecture – a topoanalysis of otherness and mnemonic intimacy, intensifying spatial experiences.
It is remarkable that in fundamental and inspiring texts about the experience of the interior, th... more It is remarkable that in fundamental and inspiring texts about the experience of the interior, the perspective is often that of a solitary dweller, as in in Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space (1958) or Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows (1933). However compelling their accounts are, they run the risk of forgetting the kind of spatial encounters that disrupt the distinction between one body and another, between the self and its environment.
This article considers the erotic effect of the night-time as a metaphor for understanding and exploring (interior) space. By using the works of Lakoff and Johnson, Handelman, and Kristeva as a constructed theoretical framework, the article sketches the outlines of a phenomenology of darkness, a skotology, that allows us to explore ‘dark space,’ a conceptualisation of space that confronts us with other subjective modes of perception, sensation, and cognition.
We will follow the wanderings of an amorous Walter Benjamin through different ‘dark spaces’ in Capri, Berlin, Moscow, and of course Paris. Benjamin’s sensual writing about these intimate spaces provides us with some key elements of a possible skotology of space: a subjective process of gaining knowledge, based on a fusion with some of the bodies, spaces and cultural intertexts that surround us, a form of spatial research that also takes into account fictionality and non-linear temporality as important aspects of the experience of dark space.
Cultural artifacts only acquire meaning in a subjective context. This is particularly the case fo... more Cultural artifacts only acquire meaning in a subjective context. This is particularly the case for the domestic interior, which since modernity has a strong link with the subjects inhabiting them. Inspired by the later work of Michel Foucault, we want to present an approach to interiors that takes into account this subjectivity, not only of the inhabitant, but also of the researcher. Using the work of anthropologist Tim Ingold, we will argue that our bodily and existential engagement with an interior environment can be considered as a valid form of scholarship. Finally, we will apply this alternative anthropology in a short analysis of a painting by Pierre Bonnard.
What could be the place of artistic research in current contemporary scholarship in the humanitie... more What could be the place of artistic research in current contemporary scholarship in the humanities? The following essay addresses this question while using as a case study a collaborative artistic project undertaken by two artists, Remco Roes (Belgium) and Alis Garlick (Australia). We argue that the recent integration of arts into academia requires a hybrid discourse, which has to be distinguished both from the artwork itself and from more conventional forms of academic research. This hybrid discourse explores the whole continuum of possible ways to address our existential relationship with the environment: ranging from aesthetic, multi-sensorial, associative, affective, spatial and visual modes of ‘knowledge’ to more discursive, analytical, contextualised ones. Here, we set out to defend the visual essay as a useful tool to explore the non-conceptual, yet meaningful bodily aspects of human culture, both in the still developing field of artistic research and in more established fields of research. It is a genre that enables us to articulate this knowledge, as a transformative process of meaning-making, supplementing other modes of inquiry in the humanities.
Our paper takes Bruegel’s Hunters in the snow (c. 1565) as a starting point. We will not present ... more Our paper takes Bruegel’s Hunters in the snow (c. 1565) as a starting point. We will not present a traditional art historical analysis, but approach it as an ‘environment of thinking’. Anachronistically, Bruegel’s painting helps us to understand the problems and possibilities of a Nietzschean ‘transvaluation’ in and by artistic research. Bruegel’s painting is more than an allegory: we will link it – and the knowledge that can be gained by artistic research – to Michel Foucault’s revaluation of the classical notion of parrhesia, a kind of truthspeaking that is not grounded in an external framework of scientific protocols and methods, but in a personal, bodily ascesis, in an ethical praxis. We want to argue that the artistic research can operate as a modern form of parrhesia in academic discourse, a parrhesia based on the visual and sensual qualities of a work of art.
Herssens, J., Pint, K., Van Cleempoel, K. (2013), Drawing inner lines. Human experience and architectural research. In: J. Vanrie & B. Willems [eds.], Re search, collected. MAD/ArcK, Hasselt: Faculty of Architecture and Arts, 137-145., 2013
In this article, I want to reassess Bachelard’s “topoanalysis,” a concept the French philosopher ... more In this article, I want to reassess Bachelard’s “topoanalysis,” a concept the French philosopher introduced in his La poétique de l’espace (1957). We will look into some of the ideological and theoretical problems that inevitably rise if one wants to use Bachelard’s topoanalysis today. I want to argue that these difficulties are far from insuperable and that an alternative approach to Bachelard’s legacy is still possible and worthwhile. If we consider Bachelard’s exploration of the images of dwelling as a variant of what Jerome McGann coined “deformative criticism,” Bachelard’s project can still be used as a relevant methodological instrument for a critical analysis of the imaginary of interior spaces.
Plate, Liedeke; Smelik, Anneke (Ed.). Performing Memory in Art and Popular Culture, p. 123-134
Historical architecture is often considered as a picturesque but lifeless scene, abandoned by the... more Historical architecture is often considered as a picturesque but lifeless scene, abandoned by the original actors. Such an approach however focuses too narrowly on historical buildings as a static, passive form of memory. In this essay, it is argued that architecture itself should be regarded as an actor that engages with the other human actors in the performance of memory. Four types of ‘performers’ of architectural memory spaces are discussed: the shaman, the orator, the flâneur and finally, the modernist architect. In their interactive performance, the past inevitably gets deformed, but this deformance is not a misinterpretation that should be corrected, but a continuous spatial becoming that turns the memory inscribed in our buildings into an active, provocative force. Such an approach not only focuses on the actual building and the period of its construction, but also takes into account the virtual images, the untimely fantasies it evokes in the present, as a force field that allows older ways of dwelling to be remembered in a radically other context. This deformative scenography of the past allows us to link the architectural remembrance to current problems, which can be both personal and collective, and to explore new solutions for the future.
In reaction to Marvin Trachtenberg's claim that modernist architecture is essentially ate... more In reaction to Marvin Trachtenberg's claim that modernist architecture is essentially atemporal and even "chronicidal", this special issue aims to chart the temporal dimension of buildings and interiors in the modernist period. Next to the logic of a timeless atemporality, we argue that they manifest different “temporal regimes” which are shaping the multiple rituals and practices by which relations between past, present and future moments are structured. The contributions to this special issue explore different kinds of interior spaces that play a crucial role in the modernist imagination: the lobby in the grand hotel, the therapeutic spaces of the sanatorium and the psychiatric hospital, the house of the artist-writer and the domestic interior.
abstract 'I sincerely believe that at the origin of teaching such as this we must always loca... more abstract 'I sincerely believe that at the origin of teaching such as this we must always locate a fantasy'. This provoking remark was the starting point of the four lecture courses Roland Barthes taught as professor of literary semiology at the Collège de France. In these last ...
Rekto:Verso. Tijdschrift voor cultuur & kritiek,, pp. 48-52. Op de vraag waarom de dichteres Emil... more Rekto:Verso. Tijdschrift voor cultuur & kritiek,, pp. 48-52. Op de vraag waarom de dichteres Emily Dickinson zo een teruggetrokken leven leidde, bij bezoek naar haar kamer vluchtte en het liefst communiceerde via cryptische briefjes, luidt het laconieke antwoord van Diana Fuss in The Sense of an Interior (2004): simpelweg omdat ze dit voor het eerst in de geschiedenis ook daadwerkelijk kon. De combinatie van economische welvaart en technologische vooruitgang liet haar toe als een kluizenaar op haar kamer te leven: ze hoefde niet te werken en ze had een aparte kachel. Uiteraard gaat Dickinsons radicale levenskeuze terug op een eeuwenoude traditie van 'wereldverzakers', van de Indische asceet over de cynische filosoof tot de christelijke heremiet. Maar de industriële revolutie maakte mogelijk dat de negentiende-eeuwse burgerij haar eigen, seculiere variant van deze wereldverzaking ontwikkelde, geïnspireerd door de romantiek. Hier verschijnt het beeld van de excentrieke kunstenaar die radicaal breekt met de wereld en compromisloos kiest voor de verkenning en cultivering van het innerlijke landschap. Gustave Flaubert vatte dit bondig samen in een brief uit 1845 aan Alfred le Poittevin: 'Doe als ik. Breek met de buitenwereld, leef als een beer -een ijsbeer -laat alles stikken, alles en jezelf inbegrepen, behalve je intelligentie. Er bestaat nu tussen mij en de rest van de wereld zo'n grote afstand dat ik me soms verbaas bij het horen zeggen van de meest normale en simpele dingen.' Enkele jaren later, in 1853, merkt hij schamper op in een brief aan Louise Colet: 'het is een degeneratieverschijnsel, niet aan jezelf genoeg hebben.'
Mosaic: an interdisciplinary critical journal, 2021
This essay discusses methodological issues raised by Barthes's La Chambre claire within the conte... more This essay discusses methodological issues raised by Barthes's La Chambre claire within the context of his later work. It examines Barthes as a precursor of autotheory, an umbrella term applied to writing (and other cultural expressions) that combines reflections on art and theory with an exploration of intimate life.
This article argues that the essentials of the complex relationship between interiority and exter... more This article argues that the essentials of the complex relationship between interiority and exteriority, and the mediating role of teletechnology, are already present in the interiors of Paleolithic caves. As philosopher Maxine Sheets-Johnstone argues in The Roots of Thinking (1990), cave art emerged from the primal fascination with ‘being inside.’ Yet at the same time, these first interiors were most likely created to establish a form of communication with an exterior, the ‘augmented reality’ of the spirit world, made possible through rudimentary technological and biological extensions. It also required a specific use of the spatial qualities of these caves, both sensory and atmospheric. This complex hybrid constellation of interior space, the human body and (psycho)technology created a permeability between different human and non-human actors. According to prehistorian Jean Clottes in Pourquoi l’art préhistorique (2011), the ‘permeability’ between inner and outer worlds is indeed ...
It is remarkable that in fundamental and inspiring texts about the experience of the interior, ... more It is remarkable that in fundamental and inspiring texts about the experience of the interior, the perspective is often that of a solitary dweller, as in in Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space (1958) or Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows (1933). However compelling their accounts are, they run the risk of forgetting the kind of spatial encounters that disrupt the distinction between one body and another, between the self and its environment. This article considers the erotic effect of the night-time as a metaphor for understanding and exploring (interior) space. By using the works of Lakoff and Johnson, Handelman, and Kristeva as a constructed theoretical framework, the article sketches the outlines of a phenomenology of darkness, a skotology, that allows us to explore ‘dark space,’ a conceptualisation of space that confronts us with other subjective modes of perception, sensation, and cognition. We will follow the wanderings of an amorous Walter Benjamin through different ‘dark spaces’ ...
WritingPlace journal #2 Inscription: tracing place. History and Memory in Architectural and Literary Practice, 2018
Experimental poet and essayist Lisa Robertson (Toronto, 1961) has a singu-lar, lyrical approach t... more Experimental poet and essayist Lisa Robertson (Toronto, 1961) has a singu-lar, lyrical approach to architecture and urbanism. Best known for Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture (2004), her writing never forgets the body of the dweller, nor the body of the city. In the much less studied, book-length poem Cinema of the Present (2014), Robertson offers a polyphonic voice that explores the relationship between these two bodies in ‘real time’:
66
Wherever you go, you will be a city.
The question for you becomes what are we doing with our bodies, why are we here?1
Robertson’s poem can be read as an account of urban encounters. The poem reveals how an ‘embodied community’ needs past traces to empathi-cally relate to the city, and to others. We will link this to French theorist Michel de Certeau’s concept of tactics, developed in The Practice of Every-day Life (1980), and the important role these traces play for Certeau as a resistance against spatial and cultural homogenization.
By bringing these two authors together, we want to explore ‘tactical’ and embodied writing about architecture – a topoanalysis of otherness and mnemonic intimacy, intensifying spatial experiences.
It is remarkable that in fundamental and inspiring texts about the experience of the interior, th... more It is remarkable that in fundamental and inspiring texts about the experience of the interior, the perspective is often that of a solitary dweller, as in in Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space (1958) or Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows (1933). However compelling their accounts are, they run the risk of forgetting the kind of spatial encounters that disrupt the distinction between one body and another, between the self and its environment.
This article considers the erotic effect of the night-time as a metaphor for understanding and exploring (interior) space. By using the works of Lakoff and Johnson, Handelman, and Kristeva as a constructed theoretical framework, the article sketches the outlines of a phenomenology of darkness, a skotology, that allows us to explore ‘dark space,’ a conceptualisation of space that confronts us with other subjective modes of perception, sensation, and cognition.
We will follow the wanderings of an amorous Walter Benjamin through different ‘dark spaces’ in Capri, Berlin, Moscow, and of course Paris. Benjamin’s sensual writing about these intimate spaces provides us with some key elements of a possible skotology of space: a subjective process of gaining knowledge, based on a fusion with some of the bodies, spaces and cultural intertexts that surround us, a form of spatial research that also takes into account fictionality and non-linear temporality as important aspects of the experience of dark space.
Cultural artifacts only acquire meaning in a subjective context. This is particularly the case fo... more Cultural artifacts only acquire meaning in a subjective context. This is particularly the case for the domestic interior, which since modernity has a strong link with the subjects inhabiting them. Inspired by the later work of Michel Foucault, we want to present an approach to interiors that takes into account this subjectivity, not only of the inhabitant, but also of the researcher. Using the work of anthropologist Tim Ingold, we will argue that our bodily and existential engagement with an interior environment can be considered as a valid form of scholarship. Finally, we will apply this alternative anthropology in a short analysis of a painting by Pierre Bonnard.
What could be the place of artistic research in current contemporary scholarship in the humanitie... more What could be the place of artistic research in current contemporary scholarship in the humanities? The following essay addresses this question while using as a case study a collaborative artistic project undertaken by two artists, Remco Roes (Belgium) and Alis Garlick (Australia). We argue that the recent integration of arts into academia requires a hybrid discourse, which has to be distinguished both from the artwork itself and from more conventional forms of academic research. This hybrid discourse explores the whole continuum of possible ways to address our existential relationship with the environment: ranging from aesthetic, multi-sensorial, associative, affective, spatial and visual modes of ‘knowledge’ to more discursive, analytical, contextualised ones. Here, we set out to defend the visual essay as a useful tool to explore the non-conceptual, yet meaningful bodily aspects of human culture, both in the still developing field of artistic research and in more established fields of research. It is a genre that enables us to articulate this knowledge, as a transformative process of meaning-making, supplementing other modes of inquiry in the humanities.
Our paper takes Bruegel’s Hunters in the snow (c. 1565) as a starting point. We will not present ... more Our paper takes Bruegel’s Hunters in the snow (c. 1565) as a starting point. We will not present a traditional art historical analysis, but approach it as an ‘environment of thinking’. Anachronistically, Bruegel’s painting helps us to understand the problems and possibilities of a Nietzschean ‘transvaluation’ in and by artistic research. Bruegel’s painting is more than an allegory: we will link it – and the knowledge that can be gained by artistic research – to Michel Foucault’s revaluation of the classical notion of parrhesia, a kind of truthspeaking that is not grounded in an external framework of scientific protocols and methods, but in a personal, bodily ascesis, in an ethical praxis. We want to argue that the artistic research can operate as a modern form of parrhesia in academic discourse, a parrhesia based on the visual and sensual qualities of a work of art.
Herssens, J., Pint, K., Van Cleempoel, K. (2013), Drawing inner lines. Human experience and architectural research. In: J. Vanrie & B. Willems [eds.], Re search, collected. MAD/ArcK, Hasselt: Faculty of Architecture and Arts, 137-145., 2013
In this article, I want to reassess Bachelard’s “topoanalysis,” a concept the French philosopher ... more In this article, I want to reassess Bachelard’s “topoanalysis,” a concept the French philosopher introduced in his La poétique de l’espace (1957). We will look into some of the ideological and theoretical problems that inevitably rise if one wants to use Bachelard’s topoanalysis today. I want to argue that these difficulties are far from insuperable and that an alternative approach to Bachelard’s legacy is still possible and worthwhile. If we consider Bachelard’s exploration of the images of dwelling as a variant of what Jerome McGann coined “deformative criticism,” Bachelard’s project can still be used as a relevant methodological instrument for a critical analysis of the imaginary of interior spaces.
Plate, Liedeke; Smelik, Anneke (Ed.). Performing Memory in Art and Popular Culture, p. 123-134
Historical architecture is often considered as a picturesque but lifeless scene, abandoned by the... more Historical architecture is often considered as a picturesque but lifeless scene, abandoned by the original actors. Such an approach however focuses too narrowly on historical buildings as a static, passive form of memory. In this essay, it is argued that architecture itself should be regarded as an actor that engages with the other human actors in the performance of memory. Four types of ‘performers’ of architectural memory spaces are discussed: the shaman, the orator, the flâneur and finally, the modernist architect. In their interactive performance, the past inevitably gets deformed, but this deformance is not a misinterpretation that should be corrected, but a continuous spatial becoming that turns the memory inscribed in our buildings into an active, provocative force. Such an approach not only focuses on the actual building and the period of its construction, but also takes into account the virtual images, the untimely fantasies it evokes in the present, as a force field that allows older ways of dwelling to be remembered in a radically other context. This deformative scenography of the past allows us to link the architectural remembrance to current problems, which can be both personal and collective, and to explore new solutions for the future.
In reaction to Marvin Trachtenberg's claim that modernist architecture is essentially ate... more In reaction to Marvin Trachtenberg's claim that modernist architecture is essentially atemporal and even "chronicidal", this special issue aims to chart the temporal dimension of buildings and interiors in the modernist period. Next to the logic of a timeless atemporality, we argue that they manifest different “temporal regimes” which are shaping the multiple rituals and practices by which relations between past, present and future moments are structured. The contributions to this special issue explore different kinds of interior spaces that play a crucial role in the modernist imagination: the lobby in the grand hotel, the therapeutic spaces of the sanatorium and the psychiatric hospital, the house of the artist-writer and the domestic interior.
abstract 'I sincerely believe that at the origin of teaching such as this we must always loca... more abstract 'I sincerely believe that at the origin of teaching such as this we must always locate a fantasy'. This provoking remark was the starting point of the four lecture courses Roland Barthes taught as professor of literary semiology at the Collège de France. In these last ...
Rekto:Verso. Tijdschrift voor cultuur & kritiek,, pp. 48-52. Op de vraag waarom de dichteres Emil... more Rekto:Verso. Tijdschrift voor cultuur & kritiek,, pp. 48-52. Op de vraag waarom de dichteres Emily Dickinson zo een teruggetrokken leven leidde, bij bezoek naar haar kamer vluchtte en het liefst communiceerde via cryptische briefjes, luidt het laconieke antwoord van Diana Fuss in The Sense of an Interior (2004): simpelweg omdat ze dit voor het eerst in de geschiedenis ook daadwerkelijk kon. De combinatie van economische welvaart en technologische vooruitgang liet haar toe als een kluizenaar op haar kamer te leven: ze hoefde niet te werken en ze had een aparte kachel. Uiteraard gaat Dickinsons radicale levenskeuze terug op een eeuwenoude traditie van 'wereldverzakers', van de Indische asceet over de cynische filosoof tot de christelijke heremiet. Maar de industriële revolutie maakte mogelijk dat de negentiende-eeuwse burgerij haar eigen, seculiere variant van deze wereldverzaking ontwikkelde, geïnspireerd door de romantiek. Hier verschijnt het beeld van de excentrieke kunstenaar die radicaal breekt met de wereld en compromisloos kiest voor de verkenning en cultivering van het innerlijke landschap. Gustave Flaubert vatte dit bondig samen in een brief uit 1845 aan Alfred le Poittevin: 'Doe als ik. Breek met de buitenwereld, leef als een beer -een ijsbeer -laat alles stikken, alles en jezelf inbegrepen, behalve je intelligentie. Er bestaat nu tussen mij en de rest van de wereld zo'n grote afstand dat ik me soms verbaas bij het horen zeggen van de meest normale en simpele dingen.' Enkele jaren later, in 1853, merkt hij schamper op in een brief aan Louise Colet: 'het is een degeneratieverschijnsel, niet aan jezelf genoeg hebben.'
Vademecum. 77 Minor Terms for Writing Urban Places, 2020
Words help us to make sense of what happens in the city, and the words we use to describe urban p... more Words help us to make sense of what happens in the city, and the words we use to describe urban places imply a specific outlook. This book offers 77 concepts in the hope that they will stimulate new ways of describing and narrating European cities. The concepts are less obvious, “minor” terms that can nevertheless be used to write European cities anew, in ways that emphasize the local, alternative, disenfranchised, and overlooked. Minor concepts can reveal blind spots in urban discourse, or bring insights from one discipline or language to another.
Vademecum means walk with me, and we imagine this book as a field guide you can carry in your pocket while you explore real-life urban places. The arbitrary number of 77 terms captures a particular moment in a experiential collective process among 40 European researchers during the COVID-19 lockdown. This process brought together perspectives from different disciplines and urban settings—from Lithuania to Portugal, from Ireland to Croatia.
An incomplete and open-ended book, it is also an invitation for readers to add their own “minor concepts,” to open new perspectives and write urban places anew.
Edited by Klaske Havik, Kris Pint, Svava Riesto and Henriette Steiner. NAi Publishers.
Until relatively recently, reflecting on interior environments was not regarded as a subject in i... more Until relatively recently, reflecting on interior environments was not regarded as a subject in its own right, but rather as an adjunct to architecture or an extension of decoration. During the last decades however, activities relating to interior architecture have become more visible, and have also become relevant topics for academic research. As the practice of designing interiors requires input from diverse areas of interest, ranging from humanities, social sciences to applied sciences, research in interior architecture and the construction of its body of theory should reflect this interdisciplinary character. However, the epistemological foundations of these various components tend to differ quite strongly and so do various research approaches within the discipline itself. As a consequence hereof, in this chapter we first discuss the ‘identity’ of the discipline of interior architecture whereby an explicit focus on exploring the human perspective is proposed. Phenomenology is discussed as a very valuable approach to the analysis and understanding of interior environments.
Plevoets, B., Van Den Bosch, L., & Vande Keere, N. (2019). The church of St. Alena in Brussels. V... more Plevoets, B., Van Den Bosch, L., & Vande Keere, N. (2019). The church of St. Alena in Brussels. Vatican II as a source for adaptive reuse. TRACE - Notes on Adaptive Reuse, 2(1), 27-36.
This experimental paper proposes a shared exploration of the crease as a tactile, existential, an... more This experimental paper proposes a shared exploration of the crease as a tactile, existential, and artistic phenomenon. It takes Roland Barthes’ definition of his left-handedness as “a tenuous and persistent crease” as a basis. Hence, this phenomenon is a minor but stubborn mark on the self, a superficial matter. In order to portray an intimate and personal approach to the subject, this paper is written in first person. This “I”, though, is plural, a result of a collaboration. As part of the methodology developed to create this polyphonic voice, the paper is structured in a non-linear fashion. After each section, the reader can choose how to proceed. The imposed choices reveal the materiality of the text - they establish points of friction and awareness for a reader; and weave different discursive lines and surfaces. The aim is to allow the format to contribute to the definition of the crease, beyond images and excerpts in the content.
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Papers by Kris Pint
66
Wherever you go, you will be a city.
The question for you becomes what are we doing with our bodies, why are we here?1
Robertson’s poem can be read as an account of urban encounters. The poem reveals how an ‘embodied community’ needs past traces to empathi-cally relate to the city, and to others. We will link this to French theorist Michel de Certeau’s concept of tactics, developed in The Practice of Every-day Life (1980), and the important role these traces play for Certeau as a resistance against spatial and cultural homogenization.
By bringing these two authors together, we want to explore ‘tactical’ and embodied writing about architecture – a topoanalysis of otherness and mnemonic intimacy, intensifying spatial experiences.
This article considers the erotic effect of the night-time as a metaphor for understanding and exploring (interior) space. By using the works of Lakoff and Johnson, Handelman, and Kristeva as a constructed theoretical framework, the article sketches the outlines of a phenomenology of darkness, a skotology, that allows us to explore ‘dark space,’ a conceptualisation of space that confronts us with other subjective modes of perception, sensation, and cognition.
We will follow the wanderings of an amorous Walter Benjamin through different ‘dark spaces’ in Capri, Berlin, Moscow, and of course Paris. Benjamin’s sensual writing about these intimate spaces provides us with some key elements of a possible skotology of space: a subjective process of gaining knowledge, based on a fusion with some of the bodies, spaces and cultural intertexts that surround us, a form of spatial research that also takes into account fictionality and non-linear temporality as important aspects of the experience of dark space.
66
Wherever you go, you will be a city.
The question for you becomes what are we doing with our bodies, why are we here?1
Robertson’s poem can be read as an account of urban encounters. The poem reveals how an ‘embodied community’ needs past traces to empathi-cally relate to the city, and to others. We will link this to French theorist Michel de Certeau’s concept of tactics, developed in The Practice of Every-day Life (1980), and the important role these traces play for Certeau as a resistance against spatial and cultural homogenization.
By bringing these two authors together, we want to explore ‘tactical’ and embodied writing about architecture – a topoanalysis of otherness and mnemonic intimacy, intensifying spatial experiences.
This article considers the erotic effect of the night-time as a metaphor for understanding and exploring (interior) space. By using the works of Lakoff and Johnson, Handelman, and Kristeva as a constructed theoretical framework, the article sketches the outlines of a phenomenology of darkness, a skotology, that allows us to explore ‘dark space,’ a conceptualisation of space that confronts us with other subjective modes of perception, sensation, and cognition.
We will follow the wanderings of an amorous Walter Benjamin through different ‘dark spaces’ in Capri, Berlin, Moscow, and of course Paris. Benjamin’s sensual writing about these intimate spaces provides us with some key elements of a possible skotology of space: a subjective process of gaining knowledge, based on a fusion with some of the bodies, spaces and cultural intertexts that surround us, a form of spatial research that also takes into account fictionality and non-linear temporality as important aspects of the experience of dark space.
Vademecum means walk with me, and we imagine this book as a field guide you can carry in your pocket while you explore real-life urban places. The arbitrary number of 77 terms captures a particular moment in a experiential collective process among 40 European researchers during the COVID-19 lockdown. This process brought together perspectives from different disciplines and urban settings—from Lithuania to Portugal, from Ireland to Croatia.
An incomplete and open-ended book, it is also an invitation for readers to add their own “minor concepts,” to open new perspectives and write urban places anew.
Edited by Klaske Havik, Kris Pint, Svava Riesto and Henriette Steiner. NAi Publishers.