Empty Space
(2024)
author(s): Barbora Haplova
published in: UMPRUM - Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design Prague
This artistic post-master research explores interpretational possibilities of empty space. Combining literary and graphic creative work with documentary, personal and research background, the e-book asks a question how can we find connections between individual occurrences of empty space. Through bilingual essays, visual essays, and practical exercises, this work proposes the following perspectives: empty space as a mode of attention; nuanced individual interpretations of empty space as missing, coming together, not being, disappearing; empty space as a field designed to be filled; and the non-definition of empty space as accepting the unknowability of its possibilities.
Responsibility towards the Void
(2022)
author(s): Mike Croft
connected to: i2ADS - Research Institute in Art, Design and Society
published in: RUUKKU - Studies in Artistic Research
The question of responsibility is explored through drawing, specifically relating to a so-termed void space that ranges over a builder's yard and its immediate environment. The research is formatted as dated journal entries to show its chronological development, with the proviso that later stages may eclipse earlier stages, depending on their relevance. This looping, as it were, mimics the fact that the void space is best defined by the occasional circling of swifts, an observation that becomes a metaphor for how to try to articulate the space pictorially. Responsibility is referenced through theories of each of Levinas, Lacan and Foucault in relation to the Other, the latter of which is taken as the theoretical equivalent of void, but no less concerning responsibility. The author has drawn the site in such terms as locate the void in both the space that the site defines and a gap in the drawing process. This artistic effort is analogous demonstration of responsibility to that which is suggested by the theory. Responsibility is considered from the perspective of the personal and individual, automatically present in artistic commitment, in this case finding some explanation in theoretical thinking of the abstract notion of Other. The formatting of the process of attending to this theme and motif as research leads to a situation where drawing, as such, is but the predominantly visual tool alongside art writing, academic research, and graphic layout that provides live links to video clips and two explanatory texts.