Still from Charles and Ray Eames, Powers of Ten, International Business Machines (IBM), Office of Charles & Ray Eames, 1977
Tuesday 15 September
“This is how space begins, with words only, signs traced on the blank page. To describe space: to name it, to trace it, like those portolano-makers who saturated the coastlines with the names of harbors, the names of capes, the names of inlets, until in the end the land was only separated from the sea by a continuous ribbon of texts. Is the aleph, that place in Borges from which the entire world is visible simultaneously, anything other than the alphabet?”
Georges Perec, Species of Spaces (Paris: Galilée, 1974; London: Penguin, 1997)
We will start, as Georges Perec does in his poetic spatial taxonomy Species of Spaces, with words. More to the point, we will start with reading. Reading words like “orthography,” for instance. And considering reading as “orthographic.” Further inspiration comes from Mexican conceptual artist Ulises Carrión, who counters notionally flat “old art” book traditions by proposing that “In the new art … communication is still inter-subjective, but it occurs in a concrete, real, physical space—the page.”
Introductions
Orientation
Project Introduction & Workshop Reading Reading (3 weeks)
Assigned Reading
- Ulises Carrión, “The New Art of Making Books”, Kontext 6/7, 1975
- Georges Perec, “Foreword” and “The Page” from Species of Spaces (Paris: Galilée, 1974; London: Penguin, 1997)
Jost Hochuli and Robin Kinross, “Format and Thickness, Hand and Eye,” in Designing Books: Practice and Theory (London: Hyphen Press, 1996)
Tuesday 22 September
“Anyone who credits (a design methodology) with ‘objectivity’ should realise that human judgement will colour and pre-select every seemingly objective assessment other than measurable fact reducible to number (and even here strange things can happen).”
Norman Potter, What is a Designer (London: Hyphen Press, 2006)
Reading Reading 1-on-1 meetings, survey work in Miro, chat in Slack & Zoom
Assigned Reading
- Amaranth Borsuk, The Book (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2018) Excerpts of introductory pages from each of the four chapters: “The Book as Object,” “The Book as Content,” “The Book as Idea,” “The Book as Interface” (see also the book’s project website)
- Tony Cokes (interviewed by Hiji Nam), “Tony Cokes on quotation and legibility,” Artforum, 30 September, 2019
- Jost Hochuli and Robin Kinross, “Designing books: an introduction to book design, in particular to book typography” (including “Format and Thickness, Hand and Eye”) in Designing Books: Practice and Theory (London: Hyphen Press, 1996)
Further Reading
- Jorge Luis Borges, The Aleph (Buenos Aires: Editorial Losada, 1949; London: Penguin Classics, 2004)
- Louis Lüthi, On the Self-Reflexive Page (Amsterdam: Roma Publications, 2010)
Teresita Fernández, Autumn (…Nothing Personal), Harvard Yard, 2018 (Photo: Robin Lubbock/WBUR)
Tuesday 29 September
“For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock.”
James Baldwin, “Nothing Personal,” in Richard Avedon and James Baldwin, Nothing Personal (New York: Atheneum; Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1964)
Lecture Word Worlds
Reading Reading Ongoing discussions, reviews
Assigned Reading
- Kelly Pendergrast, “Home Body,” Real Life, 17 August 2020
- Jennifer L. Roberts, “Introduction: Seeing Scale” in Scale, Terra Foundation Essays, Volume 2 (Chicago and Paris: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2016)
- Laurel Schwulst, “My website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge. What could yours be?,” The Creative Independent, 21 May 2018
Further Reading
- James Baldwin, “Nothing Personal,” in Richard Avedon and James Baldwin, Nothing Personal (New York: Atheneum; Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1964)
- Alejandro Cesarco, Interview with Luis Camnitzer, Bomb 115, Spring 2011
Ceal Floyer, Helix, 2002
Tuesday 6 October
“In many cases ‘the body’ could be replaced with specific qualifiers as to what body or bodies we are talking about: ‘my body,’ ‘your body,’ ‘his/her/their body,’ even ‘our bodies.’ Though these designations might not be fully described, they give the bodies in question context, place, and position——all prerequisites to an adequately diverse theory of human beings. Wherever there are bodies, there is the possibility, even the guarantee, that there is difference. Our use of language should reflect this.”
Gordon Hall, “Why I Don’t Talk About ‘The Body’—A Polemic,” Monday Journal, Volume 4, 2020
Units are individual things or persons regarded as single and complete but which also form individual components of a larger or more complex whole. They are what connect us to nature and the built environment and, in measuring and systematising them, they allow designers to understand and operate within the world we live.
Reading Reading Final review (half class)
Project Introduction Contemporary Modulor (4 weeks)
Lecture Human is the Measure of All Things
Exercise Calibrate Yourself
Assigned Reading
- Léopold Lambert, “A Subversive Approach to the Ideal Normatized Body,” The Funambulist, April 29, 2012
- Michael Rock, “The Accidental Power of Design,” New York Times Style Magazine, September 26, 2016
Le Corbusier’s Modulor at the Unité d’habitation, Nantes-Rezé, France, 1955
Tuesday 13 October
“Le Corbusier’s Modulor represents a curious turning point in architectural history. In one sense it represents a final brave attempt to provide a unifying rule for all architecture——in another it records the failure and limits of such an approach.”
Michael J. Ostwald, reviewing Le Corbusier’s Modulor and Modulor 2 in Nexus Network Journal, Vol. 3 No. 1, Winter 2001
Throughout history, humans have attempted to rationalise, represent, and universalise the body through various systems that reconcile our physical form with architecture and urban space. From Vitruvius and da Vinci, through Zeising, Neufert, and Corbusier, to Sagan, Dreyfuss, and beyond, artists, scientists, and architects have employed graphic language to reduce complexities of human form, proportion, and movement to clear, legible diagrams.
Reading Reading Final review (remaining half class)
Contemporary Modulor Work in progress
Calibrate Yourself Share results & observations
Assigned Reading
- Jesse Chun, “On lunar colonization and ‘unlanguaging’ empire,” Artforum, Sept 9 2020
- Lauren Goode (interviewing Caroline Criado Perez), “Why Everything From Transit to iPhones Is Biased Toward Men,” Wired, 2 July 2019
- Christine Sun Kim, “I Performed at the Super Bowl. You Might Have Missed Me.,” New York Times, 3 Feb 2020
Further Reading
- Beatriz Colomina, “Collaborations: The Private Life of Modern Architecture”, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 58, No. 3, September 1999
- Giancarlo Paba, “Body, Architecture, and City” in Planum: The Journal of Urbanism, No. 27, Vol. 2, 2013
Fiona Banner, Buoys Boys, 2016. Full Stop inflatables, from left to right: Onyx, Bookman, Capitalist, Didot, Courier. De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, United Kingdom
Tuesday 20 October
“We live in a time when we need to defend complexity and the right to be complex. That doesn’t mean being baroque or deliberately trying hard not to be understood. It simply means defending different perspectives, and respecting and accommodating people who are not like us.”
Tania Bruguera in Amandas Ong, “Tania Bruguera on transforming Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall,” Apollo, 2 October 2018
As graphic designers working in space, we are, in many situations, involved in the articulation, interpretation, and reproduction of scale: from urban space to website, from artwork to book, from book to exhibition.
Contemporary Modulor Work in progress
Lecture Slightly Complicated: Towards a New Fuzzy Logic
Assigned Reading
- Tania Bruguera in Amandas Ong, “Tania Bruguera on transforming Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall,” Apollo, 2 October 2018
- Keller Easterling, Medium Design (excerpt) (Moscow: Strelka Press, 2018)
- Andrene M. Taylor, “Our patriarchal society doesn’t always tell the stories of Black women,” The Undefeated, 22 July 2020
The word ‘killer’ is seen on a statue of Andrew Jackson across from the White House in Washington DC on 23 June, 2020. Photo: Kevin Lamarque (Reuters)
Tuesday October 27
“The traditional function of monuments has been to activate or even sustain a certain narrative of memory which people of influence have deemed worthy or important to maintain. They are mnemonic devices.”
Ken Lum, Monument Lab, in Carolina A. Miranda, “Commentary: Goodbye, guy on a horse. A new wave of monument design is changing how we honor history,” Los Angeles Times, July 23, 2020
Contemporary Modulor Work in progress
Monumental Mnemonics Introduction
Field Trip: Critical walk surveying memorials, monuments, and statues around downtown Providence and RISD & Brown urban campuses. XYZ Monumental Mnemonics Google Map
Assigned Viewing
- Titus Kaphar, “Can Art Amend History?,” TED Conference, Vancouver, April 2017
Assigned Reading
- Carolina A. Miranda, “Commentary: Goodbye, guy on a horse. A new wave of monument design is changing how we honor history,” Los Angeles Times, July 23, 2020
- Michael Warner, “Publics and Counterpublics”(Abbreviated Version), Quarterly Journal of Speech, November 2002
Further Reading
- Ted Hyunhak Yoon (ed.), Decoding Dictatorial Statues (excerpts) (Eindhoven: Onomatopee, 2019)
- Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (Cambridge: Zone Books, 2002)
Sharon Hayes, If They Should Ask, Monument Lab, Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia, PA, September 2017—November 2017
Tuesday 3 November (Election Day)
“Instead of having one monument that goes up on the spot where Confederate statues were, we should have artists of all styles come in for a period of time where their work is on the pedestal. Then it comes down and other voices go up there. I like that idea of the pedestal itself as the frame. It’s our way of creating a stage, and whomever we decide to shine the spotlight on in that moment is incredibly important”
Kehinde Wiley in Dionne Searcey, “Kehinde Wiley on Protests’ Results: ‘I’m Not Impressed Yet’,” New York Times, 28 Aug 2020
Contemporary Modulor Final Review (first half of class)
Monumental Mnemonics Work in progress
Assigned Reading
- Kehinde Wiley in Dionne Searcey, “Kehinde Wiley on Protests’ Results: ‘I’m Not Impressed Yet’,” New York Times, 28 Aug 2020
- Reverend William Barber and Bernice King, “Removing monuments is the easy part. We must make America a real democracy,” The Guardian, Sat 1 Aug, 2020
Further Reading
- Fred Moten, “‘to consent not to be a single being’,” (On Édouard Glissant), Poetry Foundation, 15 February 2010
- Hans Ulrich Obrist and Asad Raza (eds.), Mondialité: Or the Archipelagos of Édouard Glissant (Paris: Éditions Skira, 2017)
Supporters of an arrested protester raised blank pieces of paper in lieu of slogans banned under the new national security law, Hong Kong, July 13, 2020. Photo: Lam Yik Fei, New York Times
Tuesday 10 November
“A place between is spatial, it is a mapping of the topographies between here, there and elsewhere. A place between is temporal, it pays attention to time, to the ways in which we locate the then from the now, the now from the yet-to-come, for in our writings of history, our placing of the past in the present, we are already positioning possibilities for the future. A place between is social, it is an articulation of the place of dialogue, ongoing discussion, between one and another.”
Jane Rendell, “A Place Between, Art, Architecture and Critical Theory,” Proceedings to Place and Location, Tallinn, Estonia, 2003
Contemporary Modulor Final Review (last half of class)
Monumental Mnemonics Work in progress
Assigned Reading
- Alex Kitnick, “Crossed Paths: Alex Kitnick on the public art of Lower Manhattan,” Artforum, July/August 2020
- Jane Rendell, “A Place Between, Art, Architecture and Critical Theory,” Proceedings to Place and Location (Tallinn, Estonia: 2003)
Further Reading
- Lucy R. Lippard, The Lure of the Local: Sense of Place in a Multicentered Society (New York: The New Press, 1998)
![Ellsworth Kelly (1923–), Ground Zero (detail), 2003. Collage on paper (newsprint). [Whitney Museum of American Art, New York]](http://xyz.practise.studio/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/ellsworth-kelly-ground-zero-2003-265x199.jpg)
Ellsworth Kelly, Ground Zero (detail), 2003. Collage on paper (newsprint). [Whitney Museum of American Art, New York]
Tuesday 17 November
“I feel strongly that what is needed is a ‘visual experience,’ not additional buildings, a museum, a list of names, or proposals for a freedom monument.”
Ellsworth Kelly, in a letter to New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp that accompanied the artist’s collaged proposal for Ground Zero
As we progress exponentially through time and space, we start to plan and test the display and presentation of our projects, through the enactment of what we have learned and explored to date, we will discuss strategies and politics of publishing and display.
Monumental Mnemonics Work in progress
X, Y, and Z Digital/Print Publication Discuss gathering, preparation, editing digital & print formats
Assigned Reading
- Zoë Lescaze, “America’s Monuments, Reimagined for a More Just Future,” New York Times Style Magazine, 24 Aug 2020
- Yvette Mutumba, “Otobong Nkanga” in Quinn Latimer and Adam Szymczyk (eds.), documenta 14: Daybook (New York: Prestel, 2017)
Further Reading
- Julie Ault, Judith Barry, Martin Beck, “Making the Politics of Display Visible”, in Critical Condition (Essen: Zollverein/Zeitgenössische Kunst und Kritik, 2003)
- Judith Barry, “Designed Aesthetic: Exhibition Design and the Independent Group”, in Lucy Steeds (ed.), Documents of Contemporary Art: Exhibition (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014)
- Roger M. Buergel, ”‘This Exhibition is an Accusation’: The Grammar of Display According to Lina Bo Bardi”, Afterall, Spring 2011
![Amalia Pica, Venn Diagrams (under the spotlight), Installation view ILLUMInations, Venice Biennial 2011. [Courtesy Herald Street, © the artist]](http://xyz.practise.studio/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Amalia-Pica-Venn-Diagrams-2011-265x199.jpg)
Amalia Pica, Venn Diagrams (under the spotlight), Installation view ILLUMInations, Venice Biennial 2011. [Courtesy Herald Street, © the artist]
Tuesday 24 November
“It’s taken years for a specific class of people——white people——in northern, western Europe to build up an intellectual canon that is deeply protected. You can puncture this elitist construction by supplanting it with more immediate concerns of the body. Your body is always going to be the most central, most important part of your experience of art, and yet somehow it has been denied by art criticism for centuries.”
Zarina Muhammad of The White Pube in Kitty Grady, “Meet The White Pube, The Diet Prada of the Art World,” Vogue (UK), 8 March 2020
Monumental Mnemonics Work in progress
X, Y, and Z Digital/Print Publication Discuss gathering, preparation, editing digital & print formats
Otobong Nkanga, Post: I (detail), in From Where I Stand, Tate St Ives, 2019
Tuesday 1 December
“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.”
Arundhati Roy, “The Pandemic is a Portal,” Financial Times, April 3, 2020
Monumental Mnemonics Final Review
X, Y, and Z Digital/Print Publication Finalising plans for online publishing & print formats
Lorraine O’Grady, Rivers, First Draft: A Little Girl with Pink Sash Memorizes her Latin Lesson, 1982/2015. Digital C-print from Kodachrome 35mm slides in 48 parts.
Tuesday 8 December
RISD Reading Day No Class
No assigned reading on Reading Day
