Collections:

The dream that kicks

Transdisciplinary practice in action

£5.00
Edited Maria Fusco
Publisher Louise Wirz
Design www.axisgraphicdesign.co.uk
Contents
© writers, artists and a-n The Artists Information
Company 2006
Contributor biographies 3
ISBN 0 907730 71 X
Alighiero Boetti (after, Portrait
Published by
a-n The Artists Information Company
by Paolo Mussat Sartor) 4
Registered in England Kathy Slade
Company No 1626331
Registered address
First Floor, 7-15 Pink Lane, Newcastle upon Tyne
A new space of operation 8
NE1 5DW UK Clare Cumberlidge
+44 (0) 191 241 8000
info@a-n.co.uk Back and forth 10
www.a-n.co.uk
Jane Rendell
Copyright
Individuals may copy this publication for the limited We are all friends now 13
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a-n The Artists Information Company’s publications
Andrew Dodds
and programmes are enabled by artists who form
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Maria Fusco
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2 a-n COLLECTIONS: THE DREAM THAT KICKS

 a-n COLLECTIONS: THE DREAM THAT KICKS

Contributor biographies

Clare Cumberlidge is co-director of General Public Agency (GPA), a social,

cultural and spatial planning consultancy launched on May Day 2003. Prior to
launching GPA Clare was one of the UK’s leading independent curators
specialising in developing new areas for artistic practice. Over the past fifteen
years she has developed pioneering approaches to collaborative and cross
disciplinary work. Her clients included The British Council, The Science Museum,
The Poetry Society, The Architecture Foundation, Arts Council England, Institute
of International Visual Arts, NESTA, The Wellcome Trust and North Kensington
Amenity Trust. She serves as an advisory member of the RSA Arts Panel and the
Calouste Gulbenkian Advisory Panel on ‘Play and Risk’.
www.generalpublicagency.com

Andrew Dodds is an artist based in London, his practice embraces a range of

production and distribution methods including publication, video, audio and
talking birds, amongst other things. He founded and edits Haiku Review, which
is an online journal hosting reviews in haiku form of art exhibitions and events in
London. It has an open submissions policy online. His recent commissions include
Lost in Space, published by Book Works, which details the objects left behind on
the surface of the moon after the first lunar landing, and untitled (horror) a
collaboration with a youth orchestra to compose and perform the soundtrack
to an imagined film in the shadows of Grain Power Station, Kent.
www.andrewdodds.com
www.haikureview.com

Maria Fusco is a Belfast-born writer, editor and Senior Lecturer based in London.
She is the editor of Put About: A Critical Anthology on Independent Publishing
(Book Works: 2004) – convening an accompanying conference at Tate Modern –
and of Wonderful: Visions of the Near Future. She writes for a broad range of
international visual culture magazines including; Art Monthly, dot dot dot, frieze,
i-D, O32c and Tema Celeste, also contributing chapters to book and catalogues,
most recently for Matt’s Gallery in London. She is currently working on a book
about the intrinsic critical relationships between fiction writing and visual arts
and also developing The Happy Hypocrite, a new journal about writing in visual
art, both for release in 2007.

Craig Martin is a writer and Senior Lecturer in Contextual Studies at University

College for the Creative Arts. His research interests revolve around issues of
topology, distributive spatiality, cultural geography, material culture and the
work of Michel Serres. He is currently carrying out doctoral research in Cultural
Geography at Royal Holloway University of London, with particular focus on
turbulent space. He has been a series editor at Book Works, Research Fellow at
the Henry Moore Institute, and is on the Editorial Board of /Seconds: a journal for
contemporary art and its research.

Jane Rendell BA (Hons), Dip Arch, MSc, PhD, is Reader in Architecture and Art
and Director of Architectural Research at the Bartlett, UCL. An architectural
designer and historian, art critic and writer, she is author of Art and Architecture
and The Pursuit of Pleasure, and co-editor of the forthcoming Critical
Architecture, Spatial Imagination, The Unknown City, Intersections, Gender Space
Architecture, and Strangely Familiar. She is on the Editorial Board of Architectural
Research Quarterly and the Journal of Visual Culture in Britain, and a member of
the AHRB Peer Review College. In 2006 she was a research fellow at CRASSH
(Centre for Research in Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities) at the University of
Cambridge and received an honorary degree from the University College for the
Creative Arts.

Kathy Slade is an artist who lives and works in Vancouver. She has had solo
exhibitions at the Western Front Gallery, the Or Gallery and the Tracey Lawrence
Gallery in Vancouver. In addition she has shown in exhibitions such as ‘Post No
Bills’, White Columns, New York; ‘A Thing Called Love’, Neon Gallery, Brösarp;
‘At Play’, Liu Haisu Art Museum, Shanghai; and ‘Confidence’, Passagen Konsthall, Pages 4–7
Linkoping. She is currently collaborating with German editor and curator, Christoph Alighiero Boetti (after,
Keller to edit a series of artists’ books which includes new projects by Sydney Portrait by Paolo Mussat
Hermant, Tim Lee, and Rodney Graham. Slade is represented by the Tracey Sartor)
Lawrence Gallery in Vancouver. Kathy Slade

3
A new space of operation
I’ve been working in and around transdisciplinary
practice for the last twenty years now, and have
found it to be a fertile and stimulating ground both
for those working consistently within it or just
passing through, I’ve just noticed that only
recently has it started to become fashionable.
The art world seems to be shifting, to acknowledge
the importance and value of transdisciplinary
work. This is partly a function of the cycles of
fashion but also an unavoidable reflection of the
increasing number of artists who are not content
to have their work framed purely in a gallery
context. One can trace the shift from the early
1980s through from interdisciplinary practice
(disciplines talking to each other), to collaborative
practice (all working together), to transdisciplinary
practice (practitioners able to operate outside their
own fields).
My background is as an independent curator,
specialising in inter/cross/trans disciplinary
practice, opening up new areas of practice for
artists. In the 1980s I curated a large-scale
exhibition on Chicano art of the border states of
the US, with particular emphasis on collaborative
and cross-cultural practices. In 1993 I launched a
programme of artists’ commissions at the Science
Museum in London, which pioneered both the
relationship between contemporary artists and
museology and between artists and scientists.
8 a-n COLLECTIONS: THE DREAM THAT KICKS
Why am I interested?
As a curator: Because I like new thought, I like what happens when you put
different understandings and positions together, the fruitfulness of
misunderstanding or the shifts of understanding, the frictions and epiphanies
that can emerge. Some of my work used to involve pairing artists with other
practitioners, ‘brokering the marriage’, then artists and scientists increasingly
formed their own collaborations, as did artists and architects; though their
respective positions were still clearly defined. It is much more exciting now
that practitioners themselves are slipping confidently between disciplines,
operating as authors or directors of a group of disciplines, working in
crossdisciplinary collectives.
General Public Agency
General Public Agency (GPA) launched on May Day 2003. We are an
interdisciplinary team of architects, urban designers, artists and researchers.
There are two directors, myself, who has a curatorial background, and
Lucy Musgrave who worked first as a journalist and then became director of
the Architecture Foundation. General Public Agency delivers social, cultural
and spatial planning for clients from both the public and private sector. We
expand our core team to bring in and collaborate with other practitioners
from a wide range of disciplines where appropriate. The area of
transdisciplinary practice within urban and rural renewal is the subject of a
book I am writing with Lucy at the moment, to be published by Thames and
Hudson, Spring 2007. It’s an international survey of inspirational projects
involving artists, architects, engineers, designers that demonstrate new
approaches to regeneration or renewal. On a global scale there is a new field
emerging to tackle intractable problems; the projects are catalysed by a clear
brief emerging from a concrete problem. We think this is a new field and
through the book we are seeking to outline the principles of this field.
Images:
Left: Concept sketch of Flux Park
for King’s Cross Central Public
Realm Strategy, 2003–05.
Courtesy: General Public Agency.
Right: Extract from Nils
Norman’s graphic novel Thurrock
2015 commissioned as part of
Thurrock: A Visionary Brief in
the Thames Gateway, 2004.
Courtesy: the artist and General
Public Agency.

Who works best within transdisciplinary practice?
There are certain personal qualities that I would propose are required when
working across disciplines: the ability to listen, and an interest in and respect
for others. This true interest in the other allows a transdisciplinary practitioner
to understand and see the bigger picture, they do not see, consider or accept
the boundaries and silos, which hem in much thought and practice. An intense
curiosity also seems required, coupled with an interrogative mind. Perhaps the
most interesting minds have always been transdisciplinary. The assumed
freedom of the artists mind also exists for the most creative of scientists,
engineers, etc.
I believe that creativity is essentially transdisciplinary – the unexpected
connections, leaps, oppositions of creative responses do not respect the
barriers or borderlines of discipline or profession. This is how new thought
emerges. Art processes are useful training for this process but do not have an
exclusive hold on creativity.
Pragmatics and problems
I have always worked clearly within a client-based framework. Prior to GPA
I worked as a consultant, now we operate as a business. This seems to me to
provide the clarity of understanding between different disciplines, encourages
everyone to consider value, and of necessity requires a brief. A brief is a very
useful way to ensure that priorities and expectations are articulated. I have
always found a brief to be a stimulus for creative response, a framework
through which ideas are tested and emerge.
In our work we have our background specialisms but we do not work
exclusively to these. We work as a team: the artist, architect, urban designer,
curator contribute and comment on all projects. A team member is expected to
have a body of knowledge and expertise but not to be bound by that, obviously
then a certain level of confidence and resilience is required to be a team
member. When we commission other practitioners to join the team we make
the terms of reference clear – whether they be geographers, artists, play
experts or engineers, we clarify whether their work will be discrete and
credited/authored by them or whether it will be part of a team response.
a-n COLLECTIONS: THE DREAM THAT KICKS
When we commission other practitioners to work
with us we like to give them a challenge – to ask
them to do something new. Clarity and challenge
are important strategies in supporting people to
produce their best work.
New spaces of operation
I believe that transdisciplinary practice is a new
field. Two major cultural shifts, towards a
participative culture and the breaking down of
professional boundaries, require a
transdisciplinary response. Transdisciplinary
practice raises interesting questions, one of which
is around ideas of ownership and authorship.
Sometimes authorship can be retained but the
logical progression of this area of practice is that
notions of authorship will radically change – for if
we cannot say this is the art and this is the
engineering how will we know who to credit for
what? Are artists and the art world able to
accommodate this?
Transdisciplinary practice is fundamentally
about moving out of spaces of operation – not just
disciplines. The work exits outside material reality
but is not purely conceptual – this is a
transdisciplinary space.
Clare Cumberlidge
A NEW SPACE OF OPERATION 9
Back and forth
With a background in architectural design, followed by research in
architectural history, and then a period teaching public art and writing art
criticism, my research has tended to focus on transdisciplinary meeting points
– between feminist theory and architectural history, conceptual art practice and
architectural design, art criticism and autobiographical writing – through
individual and collaborative research projects.1
Most recently my writing has explored the position of the author, not only
in relation to theoretical ideas, art objects and architectural spaces but also to
the site of writing itself. This interest has evolved into a number of ‘site-
writings’ that investigate the limits of criticism, that ask what it is possible for
a critic to say about an artist, a work, the site of a work and the critic herself
and for the writing to still be read as criticism.2
‘Back and forth’ traces the journey of a text which started life as ‘Travelling
the Distance/Encountering the Other’ for David Blamey’s edited collection,
Here, There, Elsewhere; Dialogues on Location and Mobility3, where I wove
reflections on my childhood in the Middle East with a more theoretical
commentary on spaces of encounter in academic and intellectual life, from
teaching through to criticism. I returned to these childhood memories and
extended them in connection to the theme of sanctuary for ‘To Miss the Desert’,
a piece of art criticism commissioned by Gavin Wade in response to Nathan
Coley’s Black Tent (2003).4 Later, when I was asked to write an essay for an
exhibition ‘(Hi)story’ (2005) at the Kunstmuseum in Thun, Switzerland,
including works by four artists – Jananne Al-Ani, Tracey Moffat, Adriana Verejao
and Richard Wentworth – I took phrases from both previous essays and rewrote
them as refrains, in response to Al-Ani’s The Visit (2004), as part of a longer
essay entitled ‘You Tell Me’ which explored the theme of topological fictions.5
In what is perhaps a final transformation, this time for an exhibition, Spatial
Imagination (2006), I selected twelve short extracts from ‘To Miss the Desert’,
and edited to create short scenes of equal length. In the catalogue they were
laid out as a grid, three squares by four, to match the twelve panes of glass in
the gallery window where I repeatedly wrote the word ‘purdah’.6
‘Back and forth’ follows then, the transformations that have occurred to a
piece of writing from a hybrid essay combining theory and autobiography, into
one piece of art criticism, then another, and finally to be recomposed as two
parts – a text-work sited in a book and a complementary text-work written in a
window. We might describe this ‘site-writing’ as a procedure, which operates at
the interface of disciplines, moving back and forth, between theory, criticism
and practice, whilst retaining some elements, adding others, and transforming
in response to the demands of changing sites.7
10 a-n COLLECTIONS: THE DREAM THAT KICKS
To miss the desert
The essay I wrote for Gavin Wade in relation to
Nathan Coley’s Black Tent – a work he curated for
‘Art and Sacred Spaces’ – developed personal
memories of spaces in relation to a more
professional view of architecture. Wade had read a
piece of mine, where I questioned whether it was
possible to write architecture, rather than write
about architecture, and so he approached me and
asked me to ‘write a tabernacle’.8 Black Tent had
developed out of Coley’s interest in sanctuaries in
general but particularly the evocative and precise
description of the construction of the tabernacle
outlined in The Bible.
Consisting of a flexible structure – a number
of steel-framed panels with black fabric stretched
across them – Black Tent moved to a number of
sites in Portsmouth, including two within the
cathedral, reconfiguring itself for each location.
The essay I wrote related in both form and content
to the artwork. Structured into five sections, each
one a different spatial condition, such as ‘in the
middle’ and ‘around the edge’, my text explored
the relationship between specific locations and
generic conditions. This interest paralleled two
aspects of the siting of Coley’s work: the different
ordering of the panels depending on where the
artwork was located and the particular position of
the piece in relation to the architectural geometry
of the cathedral as a form of sanctuary. My central
spatial motifs were the secular sanctuaries of home
and refuge. I decided to investigate the changing
position of the subject in relation to the material
detail of places and emotional experiences of
security and fear, safety and danger. The narrative
I composed was spatial, like the squares; it had two
sides, two voices.
The first voice remembered a childhood spent
settling into various nomadic cultures and
countries in the Middle East. The second voice
was drawn from the architectural design of
contemporary sanctuaries, specifically a series
of community buildings for different minority
groups. These included ethnic communities, gay
and lesbian organisations, single mothers with
young children and people in long-term mental
health care being moved from large-scale
institutions into care in the community
programmes. The texts were taken from design
proposals and drawings, construction details and
specifications. Two voices were pitched against
one another to create a dynamic between personal
and public sanctuary. One voice drew on memory
to conjure up spaces of safety; the other adopted
an objective and distanced professional tone to
describe various sanctuaries at different scales
and stages of the design process.

Around the edge
The bathroom has a floor of polished marble, black, interwoven with white
veins. Perched on the toilet, with her feet dangling off the ground, she traces
the lines with her gaze. She keeps alert for cockroaches, at any time one might
crawl through a crack around the edge of the room and onto the blackness.
14 Floor Finishes
1. Location 1.5 and G5
Forbo Nairn lino sheeting 1.5 mm to be laid on 6 mm wbp ply sub floor.
Ply and lino to run under appliances and around kitchen units. Colour tba
by client.
Aluminium threshold at junction with G2, G6 and 1.1
2. Location G3 and G4
Strip and seal wooden floor.
Replace all broken floorboards with second-hand to match.
3. G6
Lay new flooring 300 mm x 300 mm terracotta unglazed tiles with sandstone
colour grout 10 mm wide joints.
All tiles to be laid out from centre line.
Finished floor level to match G5.
All the floors are marble, smooth and cool, laid out in careful grids, except for
the big golden rug next to the sofa. She likes to follow its intricate patterns
with her feet, like paths around a secret garden. But if you dance around the
edge of the squares, you mustn’t be silly enough to fall in, who knows what
could lie waiting for you in an enchanted garden?
The proposal is for the building to be single storey with a pitched roof located
at the north end of the site. The eaves height is 2 m along the perimeter walls
rising to a ridge height of 5 m. There are a few windows along the perimeter
walls facing north and east but the rooms are mainly lit by roof lights so the
new building does not overlook adjacent property.
Along one edge of her garden are a number of small rooms. These are home to
Gullum and Kareem. Gullum is tall and fair skinned, with light hair and green
eyes. Kareem is shorter, stockier, with darker skin, hair and eyes. They have
fought with each other in the past, and they will fight again, together, when the
Soviets come to Kabul, and then again, when her own people search the Hindu
Kush to wipe out all evil. But for now, there is no fighting, once the sun has
gone down, they sit and eat together.
The café will seat up to thirty people and has a door to an outside area. It may
be possible to create a garden area with a paved terrace adjacent to the building
for both the café and the crèche. This entrance could be made wheelchair
accessible by sloping the garden area from the street to the edge of the paving to
eliminate the level difference.
He is a man with property and wives. Inside the walls of his house are sunlit
orchards with trees full of dark purple fruit. A group of women dressed in
different shades of red watch them arrive. Some have their faces covered, but
even at a distance she can see the pink nail varnish on their toes. Then, as her
family draws closer, the women disappear.
They sit upstairs, in a long veranda overlooking the garden, the only
furniture is a carpet laid out in a line down the middle of the room. Important
men from the village, all in turbans, sit cross-legged around the edges of the
carpet and eat from the dishes laid out between them. Her mother, her sister
and herself are the only women. As they walk back down through the dark
house to leave, she sees a pair of eyes watching her. The eyes belong to a girl,
a girl with the hands of a woman, a woman who glints with silver. Later she
learns that this is Kareem’s youngest wife, once a nomad, who they say carries
her wealth in the jewels on her fingers.
a-n COLLECTIONS: THE DREAM THAT KICKS
You tell me
This artist is a stranger; she occupies a place
outside me, and yet I have been invited in, close
enough to share her stories of spaces. Some I enter
through my imagination, others through
remembering, by travelling back to my own
childhood I move back and forth, writing a
travelogue between inside and outside, the works
take me outside myself, offering me new
geographies, but they also return me to myself, to
my own biography. This is double movement, I am
exterior to the work, but also invited in; the work
is outside me, yet at the same time already deep
within. This two way pulse back and forth
suspends what we might call judgement or
discrimination in art criticism, and instead
develops a practice of ‘site-writing’, which both
traces and constructs that series of interlocking
places, which relate critic, artist, work and site.
[…]
They tell each other stories, back and forth, from
behind their hands, the words slip like cherries,
full and glossy. They pass them from one to
another.
As a child, my movements followed the pattern of
my father’s work: Dubai, El Fasher, Kabul, Mekele.
At the age of 11, I was told I was coming back to
England with my mother and sister. “Coming back”,
the phrase implied I was returning to a place I had
already been. But England was not home to me,
it might have been to my parents, but not to me.9
Along the horizon he paces, back and forth, a tiny
figure, smoking, on the dry crust of the earth,
lacerated with cracks, scarred by the sun. As the
day shortens, his shadow grows longer.
Once the women were back at home, my father
continued to traverse the drier areas of the globe.
He is a hydro-geologist, a man who looks for water
to bring it to the surface. He does this in lands that
are not his own, for people whose languages and
customs he has to learn anew in each place.10
Lips part and then come together; words blow in
gusts. Hands flicker; the patterns they gesture
echo the flutter of speech.
She tells me he is a man with property: land and
wives. Inside the walls of his house are sunlit orchards
full of dark purple fruit; among the trees his wives sit.
Dressed in shades of red, some of the women cover
their faces, other paint their toes nails pink. From a
distance, these women watch us arrive, disappearing
inside as we draw closer. We are taken upstairs to an
empty veranda overlooking the garden. The only
furniture here is a carpet laid out in a long line down
the middle of the room. Men sit cross-legged in
turbans around the edge of the carpet and eat from
the dishes laid out in front of them. The only women:
my mother, my sister and me. After the meal, as we
walk through the dark house to leave, I see a pair of
eyes watching me from behind a screen. The eyes
belong to a girl whose hands glint with silver. Later I
learn that this is his youngest wife, once a nomad,
who carries her wealth in the jewels on her fingers.
BACK AND FORTH 11
Back and forth continued

If you look at me, you will see only a curtain of

black obscuring my face.

She tells me she taught the Sheik’s niece English,

and because of this she was allowed to enter the
harem. Beneath their abbas, she saw that the
women wore make-up. When, for her labours, she
was offered a gift, she asked for a black abba with
a gold trim and a gold leaf burqua, the costume
that only the wives of the sheik can wear.

I drag my brush slowly through the knotted

strands again, and again, and again, and again,
while you watch.

She tells me that I was born on the eve of the haj. As

a hajia I will never have to make the journey to
Mecca. For my entrance, and her labours, my
mother received a second gift. This time, the sheik
also sent his apologies. “Sorry”, he said, “so sorry.
For a boy I would have sent you a watch, but here is
a gift for the girl”. It is a tiny gold coffee pot on a
gold chain.

You can’t see me, but from behind the veil of my

hair, I can see you.
She tells me her story.
[…]
Al-Ani’s The Visit (2004), explores the spatial
qualities of emotional tension, relating Muse (2004)
an isolated male figure traversing a flat desert
plane to Echo (1994) that place where Muse is
referred to, yet absent from. As in She Said (2000)
where words are exchanged, whispered behind
cupped hands along a chain of five women, the
presence of another sounded through speech
serves as a reminder of what is not there. This
boundary or threshold space that separates yet
binds individuals, is articulated by a veil of hair in
Untitled (2002) a visual barrier continually
inscribed between the viewer and the brushing
subject.
An embellishment: purdah
For ‘Spatial Imagination in Design’, an exhibition at the Domo Baal Gallery,
London, I made a work called An Embellishment: Purdah. It comprised a text
divided into twelve short pieces laid out in the exhibition catalogue as a grid of
squares three wide by four high. This spatial pattern corresponded to the
twelve panes of glass in the west-facing window of the gallery looking onto the
street. Here I repeatedly wrote the word ‘purdah’ in black kohl in the script of
Afghanistan’s official languages – Dari and Pashto.
In the Middle East, the term purdah describes the cultural practice of
separating and hiding women, through clothing and architecture – veils,
screens and walls – from the public gaze. The particular manifestation of this
gendering of space varies depending on location. In Afghanistan, for example,
under the Taliban, when in public women were required to wear a burqua, in
this case a loose garment, usually sky-blue, that covered them from head to
foot. Only their eyes could be seen, the rims outlined with black kohl (but
perhaps only in a westerner’s imagination) looking out through the window of
an embroidered screen.
By day or by night, from inside the gallery or from outside on the street,
back and forth, the work changes according to the viewer’s position –
transparent/opaque, concealing/revealing – this embellishment or decorative
covering invites the viewer to imagine beyond the places s/he can see.

Jane Rendell

12 a-n COLLECTIONS: THE DREAM THAT KICKS


Images:
Jananne Al-Ani, Untitled, single
screen projection DVD, 3
minutes, 2002.
Courtesy: the artist and Union,
London.
Jane Rendell, An
Embellishment: Purdah, 2006.
Part of the exhibition ‘Spatial
Imagination’ in The Domo Baal
Gallery, London 2006.
Photo: David Cross of Cornford
& Cross. Reproduced by kind
permission of David Cross.
Notes:
1 See for example Jane Rendell,
Art and Architecture: A Place
Between, (London: I B Tauris,
2006), Jane Rendell, The Pursuit
of Pleasure: Gender, Space and
Architecture in Regency London,
(London and New Brunswick: The
Athlone Press and Rutgers
University Press, 2002).
2 For an account of the
conceptual framework that
underpins my practice of ‘site-
writing’ and relates it to the work
of other theorists and critics see
Jane Rendell, 'Architecture-
Writing', in Jane Rendell (ed)
Critical Architecture, special issue
of the Journal of Architecture,
(June 2005), v. 10. n. 3, pp. 255-
64
3 Jane Rendell, ‘Travelling the
Distance/Countering the Other’,
David Blamey (ed), Here, There,
Elsewhere: Dialogues on Location
and Mobility, (London: Open
Editions, 2002), pp. 43-54
4 Jane Rendell, ‘To Miss the
Desert’, Gavin Wade (ed), Nathan
Coley: Black Tent, (Portsmouth
Cathedral, 2003).
5 Jane Rendell, ‘You Tell Me’, in
(Hi)story (Richard Wentworth,
Jananne Al-Ani, Tracey Moffat,
Adriana Varejao), (Switzerland:
Kunstmuseum Thun, 2005).
6 See Jane Rendell, ‘An
Embellishment: Purdah’ in Spatial
Imagination, (London: The Domo
Baal Gallery, 2006) with an
associated catalogue essay in Peg
Rawes and Jane Rendell (eds),
Spatial Imagination, (London: The
Bartlett School of Architecture,
UCL, 2005). Also see
www.spatialimagination.org.uk
7 For an account of another piece
of ‘site-writing’, which
transformed over three sites see
Jane Rendell, ‘Site-Writing’, Sharon
Kivland, Jaspar Joseph-Lester and
Emma Cocker (eds), Transmission:
Speaking and Listening, vol. 4,
(Sheffield: Sheffield Hallam
University and Site Gallery, 2005),
pp. 169-76
8 Jane Rendell, ‘Writing in place
of speaking’, Sharon Kivland and
Lesley Sanderson (eds),
Transmission: Speaking and
Listening, vol. 1, (Sheffield:
Sheffield Hallam University and
Site Gallery, 2002), pp. 15-29
9 Extracted and adapted from
Jane Rendell, ‘Travelling the
Distance/Encountering the Other’,
p. 44
10 Extracted and adapted from
ibid.
a-n COLLECTIONS: THE DREAM THAT KICKS
We are all friends now:
Hybrid practices and Georg Simmel’s modes of interaction
“Life flows forth out of the door from the differences of intention and action between these
limitation of isolated separate existence into the two devices; I concur with Simmel’s assertion that
limitlessness of all possible directions”. “the door speaks”6 and argue that the door is an apt
Georg Simmel, ‘Bridge and Door’ ‘mechanism’ for understanding hybrid practices in
their operationally discursive, and open
One’s experience of the contemporary milieu is,
formations. The overarching question then: how
in part, made up of a series of thresholds,
can spaces of difference be conjoined and
junctions and intersections through which we
communicate with one another?
travel; these points of passage and the relational
connections they create constitute the multiplicity
The stranger: immanence of the outside
of the everyday. In routine terms, architectural and
In considering the notions of disciplinary
geographical boundaries are broached on a regular
boundaries, ‘The Stranger’ can offer us some
basis as we pass from the inside to the outside.
insight into the operation of a ‘group’ and those
Via these tropes, distinct points, places and
purportedly external to it. The general impression
disparate entities are bridged.
of the figure of the stranger is one of mystery, an
In academic and cultural environments, the
individual who emerges unannounced from
crossing of thresholds between disciplines has
nowhere, enters a community, but remains
traditionally been a somewhat different affair.
separate. Whilst this stranger could be seen as
Typically the ability for one to work across
alien in the sense that he or she has no established
disciplines has been stymied by the notion of
bond with members of the community, Simmel
‘specialism’ and the distinction of intent between,
challenges the assumption that the stranger is
for example, the arts and the social sciences.
necessarily separate, by pointing out:
French sociologist, Bruno Latour in his book, We
Have Never Been Modern, suggests that there are “The stranger is close to us, insofar as we feel
two opposing tendencies within modernity with between him and ourselves common features of
regard to the separation of disciplines.1 Firstly, a national, social, occupational, or generally
there is the process of ‘purification’, whereby a human, nature. He is far from us, insofar as
partition, as Latour calls it, is created between these common features extend beyond him or
distinct entities; the second process – ‘translation’ us, and connect us only because they connect a
– is the mixture of these entities and the creation great many people”.7
of hybrid forms.2 Typically within translation there
So even though this individual may be seen as a
is a movement back and forth between disciplines:
stranger there are intrinsic a priori bonds. My main
“To shuttle back and forth, we rely on the notion of
assertion in raising the engagement between the
translation, or network”.3 The fashion for fusion
stranger and a social group is that intellectual,
between disciplines has increasingly become more
disciplinary groupings share a similar dynamic in
prevalent out of this spirit of translation: separate
allowing access to those external to the group; for
worlds are now interposed by conduits between
whilst a discipline such as biochemistry may seem
various practices and interests. This situation of
alien to printmaking there are ‘common features’
interconnectedness is seen by some to offer a way
that bridge these two, be they institutional,
out of an over-coded stranglehold that can often
intellectual, or economic. One could argue that they
stultify intellectual endeavour – it is quite literally
are always immanent in one another. John Allen in
a process of interference that offers some measure
his own account of Simmel’s work has noted how
of thought from the outside. Such hybridity of
“the stranger, therefore, is someone who is
interests is illustrative of the current state of what
involved, yet not involved; close to us, yet part of
we term inter-, cross- or transdisciplinary practice.4
elsewhere”.8 This duality of nearness and
A variety of the terms mentioned previously –
remoteness, of presence and absence, is
threshold, bridge, door, conduit – highlight the aim
understood by Simmel in terms of specificity and
of the current text: to consider the movement of
generality – again, this is a productive means of
thought between intellectual boundaries. As such
conceiving the relationship between academic or
then, the remit is to posit the wider intentions of
cultural disciplines. For Simmel, one has these
hybrid practices, in both academic and cultural
“general qualities in common”9 with the stranger,
spheres. The standpoint taken here is that the
whereas with members of the same group the
operation of these practices refers directly to a
notion of connection is established through “the
movement between, across and beyond disciplines,
commonness of specific differences from more
whereby an intellectual transferral takes place,
general features”.10 This can quite easily be
but more specifically in terms of how movement is
understood as akin to the very idea of specialism
facilitated through the construction of abstract
in academia; one establishes one’s specific
conduits, bridges, doors and facilitators. Clearly
specialised interests in relation to these general
these movements are conceptual, but still, this is
features. And so, does this suggest that in
an inherently spatial praxis. I shall be utilising the
disciplinary terms one always requires the
work of German sociologist Georg Simmel to help
generalised figure of the stranger or non-
carry us across these various thresholds.
specialist? This indeed could be read as one of the
Firstly, Simmel’s essay ‘The Stranger’ (from 1908)
determining characteristics of hybrid practices –
employs the ‘character’ of the stranger, in order to
the necessary presence of the stranger in order to
investigate the processes of social interaction in
facilitate commonality within the discipline itself.
and outside of social groupings.5 I use this figure
The acceptance of another discipline in this
as a means to consider the boundaries between
scenario is figured on necessity. Once again
disciplines and the ability to enter other
Simmel’s ‘tale’ of this character gives us an
disciplinary groups. Secondly, another Simmel text
analogical insight into the operation of
– ‘Bridge and Door’ – analyses the conceptual
WE ARE ALL FRIENDS NOW 13
We are all friends now continued

disciplinary hybridity. Simmel furthers his investigation by identifying the

stranger with the ‘trader’.11 His argument is that within spatially close-knit
economic groups there was no need for the middleman, as foodstuffs and
goods were produced within the group. It was only when more complex or
non-indigenous items were required from outside the group that the trader
or middleman (and hence stranger) became necessary. Once again this tallies
with the notion of looking outside the discipline for some form of
‘replenishment’. The stranger is allowed entry into the group in order to
enable growth and add something extra. Other disciplines are called upon to
invigorate the present discipline. Externality is introduced and the interests
of the group transformed and enriched by allowing the stranger to enter.
One sees here that the barrier that marks the boundary of disciplines is
temporarily lowered. For Allen,
“Boundaries – social as well as physical – which once marked the limits of
social relations are now more akin to thresholds across which communication
and other forms of distanciated interaction may take place”.12
Similarly, Reichert, in relation to disciplinary margins, calls the boundary a
“thin, unstable line”.13 And this instability suggests that the boundary between
disciplines is now becoming less permanent, more temporary.

Propped open
As a means to traverse this line between disciplines one can envisage an
intellectual ‘bridge’ of some form: once again, Simmel has investigated the
potency of the bridge and door as abstract constructs in connecting phenomena.
In Simmel’s worldview everything has the potential to be connected – to
“make one cosmos”14 as he puts it. Objects, however, remain separated in space
(ie two objects cannot occupy the same space), but not in thought.
Precisely because disciplinary boundaries are intellectual constructions the
establishment of connections are nominal entities; they are in name only and
remain noetic. However, Simmel believes that, “no matter how often they might
have gone back and forth between the two [places] and thus connected them
subjectively, so to speak, it was only in visibly impressing the path into the
surface of the earth that the places were objectively connected”.15 So, if we hold
to this, the bridge as an architectural paradigm is visually embodied
connection and as such, has to be constructed. Similarly in agreeing with
Simmel’s thesis – for hybrid practices the intellectual connection that occurs –
has to be visually established because otherwise the disciplines remain only
subjectively connected.
One could argue that the visible connections here are established and
objectified through the construction of an ‘object’, be that an art object, book,
conference paper, exhibition, etc. This ‘object’ could be understood as a bridge
that determines and maps the relationship between disciplines. However, as we
move forward through Simmel’s essay he goes on to elaborate on the ‘frozen’
qualities of the bridge as compared to that of the door. The ‘object’ of hybridity
is not ‘frozen’ precisely because it can move between disciplines, so rather
than a fixed structure the ‘object’ in question here could be more akin to the
floating bridge, or pontoon; for it is not static in the sense of the foundational
structure of the bridge, but rather moves constantly between disciplines
representing hybridity in action.

Images:
Thanks to University College for
the Creative Arts for all images.

14 a-n COLLECTIONS: THE DREAM THAT KICKS

 a-n COLLECTIONS: THE DREAM THAT KICKS

Blood ’n’ guts

The door in Simmel’s description is closer to Notes: Static don’t cut it

1 Bruno Latour, We Have Never
the intent of hybrid practices than the bridge. Been Modern, (Cambridge, Mass: It’s all neither/nor, either/or
For although the bridge depicts unity between two Harvard University Press, 1993) Nowhere’s where it’s at
points, that unity is singular, petrified. The bridge 2 Ibid, pp.10-11
3 Ibid, p.3. A much earlier
arranges spatiality “into a particular unity in precedent for the partitioning of
accordance with a single meaning”.16 The bridge disciplines is Kant’s The Conflict of •
the Faculties (1798) where he
connects two points – thus dictating a ‘direction’ – describes the difference between
a movement from A to B and back again. This the ‘lower’ and ‘higher’ faculties. Affiliation
“prescribes unconditional security and direction”.17 4 In this text I combine the three Ignorant yet brilliant
categories of disciplinarity and
Although this is advantageous for Latour’s subsume them under ‘hybrid
All together now
conception of ‘purification’ it is not emblematic practices’. Clearly there are subtle
differences in terms of movement
of the multiplicity of interests that embody the
desire for ‘translation’ and hybridity. Crucially for
and ethics but I focus instead on
the general concept of connection
•
Simmel, and my assertion here, the door, by following Latour.
5 Georg Simmel, ‘The Stranger’, Get up, get on up
contrast, when opened, opens out into a at http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/
multiplicity of directions; there is not a prescribed ~lridener/DSS/Simmel/STRANGER. Transdiciplinarity
path, as such, between A and B, in the same way HTML English translation Take it to the bridge
published in Kurt Wolff (Trans.),
that there is not a determined outcome in hybrid The Sociology of Georg Simmel,
practices. These practices are established on the (New York: Free Press, 1950), pp.
basis of their potential to produce a variety of
402 - 408 •
6 Georg Simmel, ‘Bridge and
offshoots. As such the door is potent. Like the Door’, in David Frisby & Mike
pontoon, the door is obviously a boundary of Featherstone (Eds.), Simmel on It’s not about the
Culture, (London: SAGE, 1997), Jacks-and-Jills-of-all-trades
sorts but one that can be propped open or closed p.172
when so wished: “it is absolutely essential for 7 Simmel, ‘The Stranger’, op cit. Let us facilitate
8 John Allen, ‘On Georg Simmel:
humanity that it set itself a boundary, but with Proximity, Distance and
freedom, that is, in such a way that it can also Movement’, in Mike Crang & Nigel
Thrift (Eds.), Thinking Space,
•
remove this boundary again, that it can be placed
(London: Routledge, 2000), p.57
outside it”.18 It adheres to the flexibility of entry 9 Simmel, ‘The Stranger’, op cit.
and exit that typifies hybrid practices. The door 10 Ibid
Sick manifesto
exemplifies the spirit of generosity that is 11 Ibid Irregular-style fighting
12 Allen, op cit., p.58 Now, ourselves alone
inherently at the heart of disciplinary interaction – 13 Dagmar Reichert, ‘On
it mirrors the complexity of hybridity. Boundaries’, in Environment and
Planning D: Society and Space,
1992, Vol.10, p.88 •
Transformations 14 Simmel, ‘Bridge and Door’, op
cit., p.170
There are clear parallels in the work of hybrid
15 Ibid, p.171 Traverse disciplines!
practices to that of metaphor: for Francis Wheen, 16 Ibid, p.172. Emphasis in
Kick shifting sands at those
“the function of metaphor is to make us look at original.
17 Ibid, p.173 who dare not dream
something anew by transferring its qualities to 18 Ibid, p.172
something else, turning the familiar into the alien 19 Francis Wheen, ‘The Poet of
or vice versa”.19 This desire to look afresh and Dialectics’, in The Guardian, 8 July
2006, p. 6 •
allow the experiences of the ‘other’ to enliven our 20 See Cameron Tonkinwise,
intellectual disciplines is for me an ethical issue ‘Ethics by Design or the Ethos of
Things’, in Anne-Marie Willis (Ed), There are no knowns
and is at the heart of what these hybrid practices Design Philosophy Papers: There are known unknowns
can achieve, and the willingness to let the Collection Two, (Crows Nest: Team
D/E/S), p. 49
There are unknown unknowns
‘stranger’ in is to accept the transformative
process, to seek change from the outside ‘in all
you do’.20 The politico-ethical dimension of •
hybridity and the dissolution of disciplinary
boundaries are all too starkly illustrated when one Remote viewing in
considers that other boundary – the geopolitical hybrid Hall of Mirrors
border. For if the leakage across boundaries in the reflects monsters
intellectual arena is emblematic of the wish for a
fluidity of thought, to let in the stranger through
the open door, then the function of the boundary •
in geopolitical terms – that is, the concrete,
political realm – is far from dissolved. On the One is four now, like,
contrary the boundary as physical barrier operates kind of Warholian but
as a supposed safeguard against ‘intrusion’ from Boetti’s better
the outside. We can see this in numerous arenas.
It may be desirous to allow intellectual
transferral, but the physical movement of people is •
now one of the most highly controlled spheres of
operation. So whilst the rhetoric of globalisation Direct descendants?
suggests that mobility across geographical borders is So underground’s epitaph
becoming ever increased, the reality for many is that Yes, I want some more
the boundary in physical terms is growing rapidly in
scale and authority. The door should be left ajar.

Craig Martin Andrew Dodds

BLOOD ’N’ GUTS 15

Afterword
There is nothing like a dream to create the future
As you will have by now no doubt ascertained, The dream that kicks:
Transdisciplinary practice in action is a curious collection of works, which at
once demonstrates and queries its subject.
In commissioning and editing this collection, I was dutifully cognisant of
Antonio Gramsci’s slogan, “Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will”,
which regularly appeared on the masthead of the weekly socialist newspaper
L’Ordine Nuovo, that Gramsci co-edited throughout the early 1920s, as I
sought to bring together a range of practitioners, (well for that matter
practitioners who in their turn utilise a range of methodologies in their work),
to reflect on the “volatile dispersal” (to borrow Mallarmé’s phrase) that is
‘transdisciplinary’ practice.
Here, the form is considered in tandem with the content, for each
contribution is creative yet practical, and represents a lob within the volley
of The dream that kicks, in that they refer to each others convergent and
divergent strategies, and, in that way, they are bound together as an
effervescent document.
In ‘Alighiero Boetti’, Vancouver-based artist Kathy Slade has stitched her
way across a charismatic and key figure of contemporary visual art practice,
couching as she goes a virile non-subjectivity into a recognisable mode and
delivery of mass-production. Taking Paolo Mussat Sartor’s 1969 photograph
of Boetti playing the drums (which originally accompanied an interview where
Boetti discussed the significant role of the “happy coincidence” in his work),
Slade’s series of embroidered drawings refer in passing to modernist
traditions of femmage but are more clearly visible as a critical response to the
“artisanal honesty” of the handmade.
The practical and socio-political challenges of transdisciplinary practice
are tackled by Clare Cumberlidge in her text, ‘A new space of operation’,
which in part, acts as a touchstone for the concepts explored in some of the
other contributions. Cumberlidge’s experience working as a freelance curator
for twenty years provides an exceptional insight into the development line of
evolution in the area, as she traces the shifting methodologies of participation
between, “interdisciplinary practice (disciplines talking to each other), to
collaborative practice (all working together), to transdisciplinary practice
(practitioners able to operate outside their own fields)”. Clearly siting the
subject of this collection into a practical and ambitious environment.
Jane Rendell’s ‘site-writing’, ‘Back and forth’,
combines theory and autobiography into a
creative aggregate of two complementary parts.
Rendell has revisited a selection of older pieces of
writing into a new work, thereby conflating their
content into a new work. This work compresses
the transdisciplinary roles of its author, whilst
addressing her ongoing thematic interests in
“spatial writing/topological fictions/texts within
texts as spatial figures”. ‘Back and forth’ is, as a
result, self-reflexive in nature, smartly fliting
across disciplines, tracing its own careful cycle of
writing as it goes. Rendell’s contribution here,
then, is in some ways, a starting point for
discussion, and in other ways an endgame of
production.
Reflecting on the work of nineteenth century
German sociologist Georg Simmel, Craig Martin’s
text discusses thresholds (and/or how to cross
them) in academic and cultural environments. His
close looking at the boundaries of practice evokes
an understanding of the strictures of ‘specialism’
and advocates the use of Simmel’s conceptual
tropes, “the stranger” and “the bridge”, for
traversing just such transdisciplinary cracks and
gaps. ‘We are all friends now: Hybrid practices and
Georg Simmel’s Modes of Interaction’ is a treatise
of sorts, a meditation on hybridism as a utile and
positive force for thinking.
Andrew Dodds’ contribution ‘Blood ’n’ guts’, is
perhaps the most self-reflexive piece in The dream
that kicks. A set of ten haiku, put together by
Dodds, in direct response to the other works and
concerns of this collection. It can be read either as
a whole, or as separate works in their own rights;
thereby creating a system of works, with multiple
entry and exit points, allowing or again soliciting
the reader to ‘use’ the haiku in whatever way
proves to be the most satisfying and useful at any
given time. Haiku is, of course, an ancient
Japanese form of poetry writing, seventeen
syllables in its most traditional form, arranged in
three lines of five, seven and five. Its use here
(and on its original setting of haikureview.com), is
as a ‘reviewing’ mechanism, and as such provides
an essentially transdisciplinary reflection on the
main concerns of this collection as a whole.
“All forms are similar, and none are the same,
So that their chorus points the way to a hidden
law.” Goethe
Maria Fusco