Talk

Art and Craft Lectures: Jane Rendell

Title of lecture:
“From Critical Spatial Practice to Site-Writing: Genealogies and Trajectories”

Jane Rendell introduced the term ‘critical spatial practice’ in 2003, and in 2006 in Art and Architecture: A Place Between, she developed and consolidated the term as one that defined practices located at a three-way intersection: between theory and practice, public and private, and art and architecture. For Rendell, critical spatial practice is informed by Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life (1980, translated into English in 1984), and Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space (1974, translated into English in 1991), as well as the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, but her term aims to transpose the key qualities of critical theory – self-reflection and social transformation – into practice. For Rendell critical spatial practices are those, which seek to question and transform the social conditions of the sites into which they intervene, as well as test the boundaries and procedures of their own disciplines.

Other theorists and practitioners have since worked with the term, evolving it in different directions. For example, in 2011, Nikolaus Hirsch and Marcus Miessen started a book series with Sternberg Press called Critical Spatial Practice which focused on architectural discourse and practice.

Jane Rendell will also present her book “The Architecture of Psychoanalysis” at KHiO Library, 18:00–20:00, 28 September.
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Jane Rendell is a writer, art critic and architectural historian/theorist/designer, whose work explores interdisciplinary intersections between architecture, art, feminism, history and psychoanalysis, and she has more recently developed critical spatial practice through site-writing, a mode of performative critical engagement that operates through the written and spoken word. Her authored books include Silver (2016), The Architecture of Psychoanalysis (2016), Site-Writing (2010), Art and Architecture (2006), and The Pursuit of Pleasure (2002); and co-edited collections Critical Architecture (2007), Spatial Imagination (2005), The Unknown City (2001), Intersections (2000), Gender, Space, Architecture (1999) and Strangely Familiar (1995). New publications include, ‘Giving an Account of Oneself, Architecturally’, Journal of Visual Culture; and with Michal Murawski, Reactivating the Social Condenser, co-edited special issue of The Journal of Architecture forthcoming 2017). Jane is Professor of Architecture and Art at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where she is Director of History & Theory and leads the Bartlett’s Ethics Commission. http://www.janerendell.co.uk

Art and Craft Lectures
Welcome to this new series of cross-disciplinary lectures at the Art and Craft department.This lecture series highlights the breadth and depth of the art practices that the Art and Craft department encompasses. Each lecture will feature current issues pertaining to and spanning the five areas: Art and Public Space, Textile, Ceramics, Print and Drawing, Metal- and Jewellery Art.