The project is an investigation of (relationships between) place, time and memory as manifested in artistic works exploring image, sound, text – or combinations of these. It builds upon the existing practices of participating artists and further extends investigations that have taken place within the framework of previous research projects and seminars, including, most recently, the seminar “Placeholders”, which took place at KHIB in September 2011.

The question of “Place” is considered both in terms of how artistic practices encounter and interact with actual places and, conversely, how creative acts can also take the form of “placemaking”. Artists connected to the project represent both of these positions, and in many instances, combine aspects of both in their investigations of the complex relationships between image (representation) and memory as lived experience of a specific space or place. The artistic strategies employed range from the interpretive – for example, how a contemporary composer might formulate a new soundtrack for a film such as “Berlin, A City Symphony”, through the investigative – such as photographic explorations of particular places, to the constitutive – how contemporary media are used to elaborate a “sense of place” that can be virtual distributed and post-geographic.

How “place” is constituted, reconfigured, deconstructed, augmented, discussed, described, experienced – through a variety of signifying practices – is the core theme and question of the project. There are a number of different approaches that will be used, examined, cross-referenced and interrogated during the project period. The intention is not to realize one single, unified artistic project, but to gather together a number of related and interconnected artistic processes through a series of thematically linked events that are also connected to discursive investigations of the project’s theme or themes.

While most of the participants have focussed principally upon the urban environment as both source and site for artistic investigations, a broader background to the project can be seen as a concern with landscape and memory, where the category “landscape” is not limited to the non-urban natural environment, but is the general condition of which “place” is a constituent element. A principle area of interest is the way in which this relationship between landscape and memory has been explored both by image makers, (here, film, video, and photography are the primary media under consideration) composers or sound artists, and by writers – not only theoreticians, but also literary authors whose work penetrates into the discourse of “place”. (See attached literature list)

The project’s main focus will be upon the production of new artistic works, but importantly, this will happen against a background that examines the heritage of earlier practices, in particular the avantgarde cinema of the early twentieth century as expressed in films such as Walter Ruttman’s “Berlin, A City Symphony” and Dziga Vertov’s “Man with a Movie Camera” as well as others. The extension of the concerns of these films, through other twentieth century avantgardes and further onj into contemporary practices, is a significant aspect of the project. Participants represent a range of disciplines within the visual arts and contemporary music, and this will be reflected in the range and variety of approaches that will be utilised and examined through the project.

Read more in the project's blog