EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
LOGBITS CLAUDIA CARBONE
EXHIBITION IN THE CANTEEN 22 FEBRUARY – 16 APRIL 2018
INTRODUCTION
CONTENT 03 INTRODUCTION
This exhibition catalogue is a record of the exhibition as well as the written
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LOGBITS | Claudia Carbone
contribution of the participants of the panel discussion Izabela Wieczorek Lecturer in Architecture, Architect, MSc, PhD, School of the Architecture
06 STATIONARY STATIONERY
University of Reading in UK, Angus Hardwick, Temporary Lecturer, cand.arch, BArchSt(Hons 1) , Claus Peder Pedersen Head of PhD School, Christopher
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WELCOME | Karen Kjærgaard
Germann Bæhring Ba. stud arch. and Karen Kjærgaard Curator and Head of Exhibitions, cand.arch. that took place Friday the 19 of March 2018.
10 UNDER PRESSURE The catalogue structure as a fragmented document oscillating between the
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On Framing | Claus Peder Pedersen
depiction of the exhibited work as well as the texts about the work written from different perspectives. As bits and pieces, it gathers a view of the world which
16 FRAGMENTED NATURES 18
Some Ways of Reading (or ‘Horizons, Chests and the Beginnings of an Archive’) | Angus James Hardwick
includes the notion of friction, disruption and distortion. Thanks to all involved in making the exhibition, the workshops at AAA and special thanks to
22 INSIDE OUT &
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Curiosity Atmosphere Recombination Binaries Orchestration Narrative Experimentation | Izabela Wieczorek all the people the fauna and flora that supported this project on its journey from near and far.
COLOPHON
Claudia Carbone Aarhus 2018
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UNDER PRESSURE Flatness as a result of the action of collecting, gathering and preserving under
LOGBITS
pressure as a device for building up a collection based on nature as well as on other items of a cultural origin. The exhibited items, which are displayed under pressure, become one under a flat condition of the preserved geometrical layered and distorted forms and characteristics of nature and culture. The display aims to establish a restricted and manipulated new contextual condition, as the items are not arranged by means of a usual taxonomy. They are merely floating structures keeping same spacing in between - equal distance. FRAGMENTED NATURES (7mins https://vimeo.com/258954628) A flickering film made using a selective and distorted approach based on a vast material acquired using the digital camera as medium. The aim of the work is to enhance recollections as an archival, selective superimposition of impressions that is too smooth? to please. INSIDE OUT
Is an exhibition that pieces together a (re)collection of different impressions
The architecture establishes relations from the inside, calibrating a particular
experienced during a longer stay in Australia (12 July - 26 November 2017) by
atmosphere. The surroundings are captured as a desirable tableau, drawing in
the architect Claudia Carbone. During this period behavioural patterns were
the world and the horizon as intangible views.
established to ensure that the accumulation of experiences added up to a plenitude of representations that in combination made up an architectural view of the world. STATIONARY STATIONERY A series of 54 cards displayed on an apparatus that offers an insight into sections in time and a given experience of the data in specific relation to the viewer. The cards are mnemonic devices, such as a drawn logbook, a depiction of a situation, information, and surroundings. Giving into the moment and the format of the cards, the stationery was appropriated as an aesthetic (fixed) backdrop for the collection of memories, as souvenirs. 5
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WELCOME
KAREN KJÆRGAARD Welcome to Logbits, an exhibition that pieces together a collection of physical
The first, Stationary Stationery, consists of a series of 54 cards displayed on
findings, an acoustic and artistic decoration and some ephemeral impressions
a custom made shelf that offers an insight into sections in time and a given
from a longer stay in Australia that Chilean born architect Claudia Carbone
experience of the data in specific relation to the viewer, the second, Fragmented
completed in 2017.
Natures, is a flickering film made using a selective and distorted approach based on material acquired using the digital camera as medium, the third,
Claudia Carbone is educated from Aarhus School of Architecture and have since
Under Pressure, is a result of the act of collecting, gathering and preserving
1997 been teaching at the School. As founder of the late Studio Constructing
under pressure as a device for building up a collection based on nature as well
an Archive she has been mentoring students, that have developed unique
as on other items of a cultural origin and the fourth, is an artistic decoration in
projects under her firm guidance and dedicated approach to a certain branch
the canteens new lounge, aka Claudias Corner. A place that calibrates a certain
of architecture, where art, literature and words are the main bricks. As curator
purple atmosphere, more sensual and warm than architectural photos from this
I miss CAC for it´s capability to cultivate unique, unconventional, experimental
iconic building (Sydney Opera House) normally evoke.
illusions of architecture. To use the title of a brilliant work made by students from the late studio CAC Claudias interests within artistic production include representation of the serial,
that was exhibited in Milan in 2015 Claudia Carbone condenses the ephemeral,
the structural of the small and the act of collecting and mapping. The exhibition
the dreams that architecture is made of and transforms it into something
falls in 4 parts that together add up a plentitude of representations that make
desirable.
up an architectural view of the world seen through Claudias eyes. 9
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ON FRAMING
”I only wanted Uncle Vern standing by his new car (a Hudson) on a clear day. I got him and the car. I also got a bit of Aunt Mary’s laundry, and Beau Jack, the dog, peeing on a fence, and a row of potted tuberous begonias on the porch and 78 trees and a million pebbles in the driveway and more. It’s a generous medium, photography.” Lee Friedlander
CLAUS PEDER PEDERSEN
Claudia Carbone seems to face the same challenge as the famous American photographer Lee Friedlander. The world forces itself on her in all its overwhelming visual complexity reinforced by the impressions of a first visit to the Australian continent. Like Friedlander, framing is a way for her to impose a minimum of order to this complexity. It allows her to cut out a fragment of a continuous space while retaining an imprint of contours, textures and colours. The photography depends on an automated interaction between the lens and light capturing sensor of the camera. It is only one of several framing techniques at play in her work. Another framing technique depends on visual interpretation and material properties when multicoloured stationery cards are used to document and side-order everyday events through hand-drawings. One might even interpret the collection of particular types of objects, such as leaves, as a particulat framing of a landscape and a geography. 13
Framing is a way to order and structure material and information by setting up boundaries that include certain elements and exclude others. It is however far from a simple binary distinction of what is in or out. The framing might point to something specific taking place inside the frame, but it might as well raise awareness of what has been left out or is only partly there cut up by the edge of the frame. The framing imposes an abstract order that allows for comparison or overlaying where elements, structures and events gain significance or merge into new configurations. The act of framing shares certain common traits with the architectural section. The section sets up a boundary condition that differentiates inside from outside. It allows the skilled architect to develop a refined spatial negotiation across between frames in her exhibition. Frames are layered and multiplied in her movies. They fluctuate between the partly recognisable original scenery and newly constructed atmospheres, textures and movements unleashed by the blurring and interference of different visual impressions. The reflective surfaces of the display system for the stationery cards multiply the visual appearance of the cards. This creates an intricate interplay that reflects the original content but also creates a new spatial presence in the exhibition. Maybe these common traits between the frame and the section enable Claudia to transform her interest in the ephemeral and the multitude of the world into architecture?
PHOTO: CLAUS PEDER PEDERSEN
the envelope of the building. Claudia seems to establish a similar negotiation
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SOME WAYS OF READING (OR ‘HORIZONS, CHESTS AND THE BEGINNINGS OF AN ARCHIVE’)
The Logbits exhibition, by Claudia Carbone, assembles a range of carefully chosen drawings, photographs, moving images, sounds and found items that demonstrate multiple, often intuitive, ways she ‘read’ the Australian landscape. Presented in the context of the Aarhus School of Architecture the exhibition is part pedagogical instrument, revealing a variety of ways architects can register, reflect, and unfold the potentials of a place, part personal reflection, as she reorders and reconfigures for public display the private material she produced during this time, and part living thing as the exhibition pieces warp, squish and
ANGUS JAMES HARDWICK
quietens its surroundings. There are two themes that I will briefly unfold here and place in relation to some relevant Australian artists and histories: the [re] configuring horizons and the beginnings of an archive.
[Re]Configuring Horizons The relationship between figures in the landscape (the near) to a defining and ordering horizontal (the far) has been the subject of much art making and cultural production in Australia. We might be most familiar with representations of this scene through images of lone explorers as personified by Sidney Nolan’s 1946 oil painting Ned Kelly, George Miller’s character of Max in the
Mad Max films or Shaun Gladwell’s 2007 video artwork Approach to Mundi Mundi. Even in representations of the encircling of suburbia, such as Emma Thomson’s 2010 photographs Young Love or The Connoisseurs, we are all but 19
too aware of prospects on the edge or beyond the frame. These references are
I will briefly summarise the tale of The Macquarie Collectors Chest to highlight a
suggested in the evocative photographs Claudia Carbone presents through
different approach to collecting three men took in Newcastle 200 years ago. In 1818
Inside Outside where the interior of the Sydney Opera House reminds us of
three English convicts sent to Newcastle set about constructing and furnishing
this distant view. However it would be too simplistic to describe this horizon, or
a chest that collected many flora and fauna samples from the region. This
ones experience in Australia, in these binary terms. It is in representations that
collaborating threesome - Joseph Lycett (twice convicted of forgery), Patrick Piley
simultaneously blur, distort and reconfigure this outward position with inward,
and William Temple (cabinet makers) – gifted this personal archive to Governor
condensed and distorted views that expand how we read and comprehend the
Lachlan Macquarie. The chest contained: four removable timber and glass boxes
places we dwell. The production of Sydney based artist Janet Laurence reveal
with arrangements of butterflies, beetles, insects and spiders, there are draws
a nuanced and multidimensional horizon that is defined by sensory stimulation
containing decorative displays of seaweed, forty stuffed Australian native birds,
and fragmented views. In this trajectory Fragmented Natures and the mirrors
two draws of shells arranged in ‘geometric star-like patterns’- 13 removable
installed as part of Stationary Stationery and Under Pressure embrace the
painted panels depicting images of birds, kangaroos, and views of scenery.3 While
immersive, and elusive, characteristics of the Australian horizon.
a ‘collectors chest’ may be characterised by a certain amount of scientific rigour in the classification of its contents, the heterogeneous collection is striking for its
Beginnings of an archive
decorative and wondrous displays.4 The chest, a museum in miniature, seems to account for, and gather Newcastle in one, portable, item. Like Claudia Carbone’s
“The Archive is made from selected and consciously chosen
collection Under Pressure we wonder where these pieces came from, why they were preserved and what was the reception of the collection. The archive reveals
documentation from the past and also from the mad fragmentations
as much as it leaves us questioning.
that no one intended to preserve and that just ended there... It is 1.Carolyn Steedman, Dust: The Archive and Cultural History, (Rutgers University Press, 2002), 68.
indexed, and catalogued, and some of it is lost.”1
2.Paul Ricoeur, ”Archives, Documents, Traces.” In The Archive. Documents of Contemporary Art by Charles Merewether (The MIT Press, 2006), 66-69.
The heterogeneous display of selected artefacts that define Logbits gives clear
3. From the Catalogue entry of The State Library of NSW, http://archival.sl.nsw.gov.au/Details/archive/110326952 (accessed 16.03.18).
suggestion of events, their evidence and reveals the space between the two.
4. Elizabeth Elis, Exotica: The Macquarie Collectors Chest, (State Library of NSW, 2005), 6.
2
Her public display of collected items, processes and events leaves as much out as it describes. In opposition to the openness of Claudia Carbone’s archive 21
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CURIOSITY ATMOSPHERE RECOMBINATION BINARIES ORCHESTRATION NARRATIVE EXPERIMENTATION
‘The collector dreams his way not only into a distant or bygone world but also into a better one-one in which, to be sure, human beings are no better provided with what they need than in the everyday world, but in which things are freed from the drudgery of being useful.’ Walter Benjamin, ‘Paris Capital of the Nineteenth Century (Exposé of 1935), in The Arcades Project, 3-13 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002).
The desire to collect emerged from the desire to know – a passion for novelty and knowledge. Curiosity prompted processes of experimentation and discovery. Curiosity hovers in an intermediate realm between chance and control, attention and distraction. The life of a collector, as noted by Walter Benjamin, is defined by a dialectic tension between order and disorder.1As a creative collector, Claudia Carbone ingeniously explores these binaries.
IZABELA WIECZOREK
Her work also builds on the productive interplay between the real and the imaginary, physicality and ephemerality, between the planned and the unexpected as well as between the material and the virtual. In the context of LOGBITS, the documentary nature of work is subverted by rich imagery that oscillates between fact and fiction, the idyllic and the sublime, positioning Carbone’s practice between observation and speculation. Aware of the power of the medium, Carbone also operates in the interstitial zone between seduction and manipulation. 25
‘Restricted and manipulated’, ‘calibrating atmosphere’, ‘apparatus’– are
the exhibition. Individual drawings, images and objects find their meaning
tropes that she uses to describe her work. They become part of the same
in a mutual relationship with others. They become spatial generators and
system – a system based on the intricate relationship between subjectivity
are translated in new momentary perceptions, inviting to movement and
and its exteriority. A system that draws out the dynamics of everyday life
discovery.They coalesce into a shimmering atmosphere. An atmosphere
and experience, translating them into a graspable form, and shaping these
enacted through material and spatial strategies. The use of reflecting surfaces
relationships through specific prescripted sensuous encounters.
that distort and multiply drawings as well as the implementation of big-scale images that almost magically merge with the existing space, define moments
What is of a special interest here is the device Carbone uses to contrast the
of simultaneous interruption and intervention, moments of alignment between
private internal nature of the recording and observation into public modes of
the physical and the virtual, between the real and imaginary.
appropriation and inhabitation of these memories. In this context, the narrative acquires experiential dimension, moving the focus from the content to its
Since the early years of her career, for Claudia Carbone, experimentation with
reception. That is, translating graphical narratives into spatial orchestration.
representation has been a form of inquiry and discourse integral to the design process (a creative process) that builds on and unfolds narratives drawn from
In this regard, Carbone’s concerns with atmosphere are not limited to the
the everyday (personal) experiences. Following this approach, the series of
elusive ambience of the drawing, the photograph or the moving image
works presented here is an account of a creative inhabitation of spaces and
which compose the exhibition. Neither does apparatus refer to scientific
places approached as territories for exploration and invention. Carbone’s joy
or technological device. Apparatuses, to borrow Karen Barad’s words, are
of collecting brings to life reflections about the world we inhabit, revealing
‘specific agential practices/intraactions/performances through which specific
endless creative possibilities. Her work allows one to understand a multi-
exclusionary boundaries are enacted.’2 These boundaries in Carbone’s work are
layered dimension of architectural representation that defines the alchemy of
materially performed.
thinking and making Architecture, challenging conventional understanding of architectural practice and its limits.
Appropriation, recombination, juxtaposition are Carbone’s creative devices. No isolated items but the relationships and interactions (or intraactions in Baradian terms) between them are the core of LOGBITS. In this context,
1. Walter Benjamin. ‘Unpacking my Library: A Talk about Book Collecting’ (fragment) in Curiosity. Art and the Pleasures of
diverse representations are not static objects to be look at. The animation
Knowing, edited by Brian Dillon (London: Hayward Publishing, 2013), 220.
of works is mediated both through technology (moving image) as well as
2. Karen Barad, ‘Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to Matter.’ Signs: Journal of
material presence, the full picture only revealing itself in the physicality of
Woman in Culture and Society, 28, no. 3 (Spring 2003), 801-831, 816. Italics in original,
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Aarhus School of Architecture Nørreport 20 8000 Aarhus C Denmark
Claudia Carbone is an architect and a teacher, educated from Aarhus School of Architecture. Her interests within artistic production include the representation of the serial, the
+45 89 36 00 00 a@aarch.dk Aarhus, April 2018 Front cover STATIONARY STATIONERY Back cover FRAGMENTED NATURES
AARHUS SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE
structures of the small, and the act of collecting and mapping.