“As I often do, (…).”
“As I often do, (…).” With these words the organisers Emma Cheatle and Catalina Mejia Moreno started the one day research symposium “The Visual + the Verbal” at the University of Brighton, referring to their continuous turning to Sigmund Freud and Walter Benjamin respectively. The phrase indicated the repetition of the authors, references, and words they use. At the same time it was the phrase used by both of them in their introduction to the conference, mirroring each other’s writings. There was also the magical moment in their introduction when they both read the same text from their introduction in parallel, two voices speaking as one. They immediately positioned the voice as ‘instrument of production’, as ‘invisible labour’, and as ‘new form’. Hence, it was clear from the beginning that the conference would not only be about the words and images of the lectures, but equally or even more importantly about their verbalising (speaking) and visualising (projecting), or what could be called the ‘performative paradigm’.
The opening keynote speaker Jonathan Hill located his paper more between the visual and the textual. The keynote explored the relation between architectural design, the picturesque landscape, the early novel, and empiricist history. His reconceptualisation of the architect as ‘historian’, as designer and writer allowed the consideration of drawing, building, and writing as architectural works. He also proposed an understanding of drawing and design as autobiographic, which raised the question about the ‘graphic’—drawing and writing—as central to architecture.
The first session, chaired by Tilo Amhoff, asked whether we are talking about or rather listening to drawings and other visual material. In her paper Anne Hultzsch was taking the audience through the pages of the London Illustrated News, demonstrating her methodology for their close reading and interpretation. Her presentation explored the dialogue between the author and the reader, verbal descriptions of visual images, and word-image relations. In questioning ‘what is an illustration?’ her paper demonstrated that it was not only the images that illustrated the text, but also the text that illustrated the images in the nineteenth century illustrated press. Ben Sweeting turned to ‘conversation theory’ for his conceptualising of ‘listening’ to our students and their drawings. For him, following Gorden Pask and Ranulph Glanville, listening to drawings is the creative aspect of design, but it’s also the speaking that surprises. In order to support the shift in emphasis from speaking to listening he cited Maurice Merleau-Ponty: “My own words take me by surprise and teach me what I think.” He reminded us of the social and communal nature of conversation, meaning to live with, to keep company, and to share common. The next speaker, George Themistocleous, introduced the concept of duration and the moving image to the debate, and highlighted the techniques and technologies of perception and re-collection. It was based on his reading of Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze, theorising the becoming of the image in movement, through his own design project, a prosthetic wearable visual device. The presentation described a seeing that like listening was also ‘taking time’. Further, it was not synoptic and instantaneous, but mediated by the body and other devices.
The second session, chaired by Philippa Lyon, explored the multiple relations between drawings and writings. In the first paper Rosa Ainley presented her ‘plurivocal writing method’, the creative writing of interwoven voices. She understands her work not only as writing about architecture, but as a contribution to and the making of architecture. In her taxonomy of writing, different types of writing perform different tasks. She explores how language can articulate the immaterial traces of a building, questioning if the reader enters the building, or the building enters the reader. In her paper Sophie Read defined John Soane’s lectures as ‘architectural acts’ and analysed them in the context of other nineteenth century performative practices. She observed an equal relationship between the manuscript and the drawings in the lectures, neither of them acting as the dominant ordering device. Hence, the drawings were to be spoken with, rather then about, and to be seen from far, and in succession. For her, Soane’s lectures are an oral history. However, the annotated manuscripts and drawings are the only evidence of Soane’s performances. Tom Wilkinson then spoke about the voice as the medium for broadcasting art history in radio broadcasts and film and the lecturer as its mediator. He asked whether it was a crazy idea to talk about architecture on the radio, or maybe to show it on film, when the image of architecture was invisible on the radio, and the ‘voice’ of architecture was unhearable in silent film. He then argued for an Eigensinn of the image, its own embodied meaning, reminding us that the image remains silent, despite the voice over in film, or the voice of the radio broadcast. To close the session, Kristen Kreider read an extract from “Man on Wire,” a recent work by Kreider + O’Leary and found in their book Falling (2015). The text, accompanied by a series of enigmatic visuals and written from different points of view, used the conventions of film in writing. Interestingly, Kristen states that Kreider + O’Leary also approach writing as drawing. The reading raised a series of questions about the relation between the rhythm of writing to the voice of reading, the difference between reading and hearing the text, and the embodiment of the speaking figure and persona.
The third session, chaired by Kate Cheyne, highlighted approaches to drawing and researching together. For Duncan Bullen drawing is a practice of mindfulness, a paying attention to the world in a particular way. He understands drawing as a particular state of seeing and being in the world, best described as ‘before one can name what the body already senses’. For him drawing therefore moves us towards seeing. He showed an exceptional drawing by his young daughter, drawing in a state of no separation between drawing and self. The paper raised the importance of nothingness, emptiness, and silence, as spaces of creative potential. In the next presentation Claire Hoskin showed her work from the Pitt Rivers Museum and discussed Rivers’ idea of ‘eye training’. According to Rivers you cannot understand the world unless you know how to draw it. Claire understands her own work as a practice of ‘eye training’. Interestingly she states that she draws as a ‘maker’. The paper took us through her process of making, from re-drawing to re-making to the re-conceptualisation of tools. For her words are ideas expressed by sound, while tools are ideas expressed by hands. The next speaker, Adriana Cobo described her practice as an architect as ‘making visually available other kinds of use’. In her work, she used the fountains on Granary Square for doing her laundry, activating the image of her mother washing cloth in the Cali River. This made ‘visually available’ the city in which water and its use was for everyone, unlike the water in the privatised public space of Granary Square. Her work opened up a discussion between the now/then, here/there, us/them, and you/me; performing acts of daily life while testing what is accepted behaviour. In the final presentation, Alex Zambelli explored the analogy between architectural and archaeological drawing. Asking how to draw as an archaeologist or as an architect, the paper raised questions about the disciplining of drawing, and the embodying and practicing of other disciplines. He also directed our attention to the importance of drawing instruments and the effect they have on the drawings we make with them. He showed a series of his ‘undisciplined drawings’, developing an inter-disciplinary drawing practice.
The closing keynote speaker, Julieanna Preston, shared her recent performative projects, including sound and video works. In her engagement with and her becoming of building materials she demonstrated the use of her entire body as sounding and hearing device, as an instrument for listening to the materials, in order to not give but to find the voice they already have. Her sound making practice shifts the emphasis from seeing to hearing, and at the same time is the site of making theory. Importantly, drawing on Joseph Beuys’ teachings as artistic action practice, her work intends to move writing away from description towards performance.
This symposium brought a fantastic group of scholars into conversation with their audience, talking and listening to each other. However, it felt like this was just the beginning of the visual and the verbal, hopefully leading to further critical and creative engagement with, and exploration ofthe ephemeral and the voice, for instance. In which direction the organisers are going to take the research project remains to be seen, but the symposium opened up a series of important questions around the techniques and technologies of visual and verbal, the importance of the voice, and the ‘performative paradigm’. All papers offered unique ways and methods in which the questions could be further developed. It will be very exciting to see this taken forward.
thevisualandtheverbal 