The Disembodied Voice @ Bökship in London

The Disembodied Voice presents an evening of presentations exploring relationships between architecture and objects and the voice. The event will include works in process by members of The Disembodied Voice research group and a lecture by Michiel Huijben titled ‘Becoming a Building’, ending with an open discussion.

The Disembodied Voice is a collaborative research project which sets out to investigate the relationship between the disembodied voice and contemporary visual culture. The group includes Maia Conran, Patrick Coyle, Karen Di Franco and Kihlberg & Henry.

The Disembodied Voice collaborative research project is initiated and co-ordinated by Karin Kihlberg & Reuben Henry.

Thursday 18 June 2015
The Disembodied Voice ((Recording, 10am – 4pm))
Public Talk, 6 – 8pm
X Marks the Bökship

Consonants at Block Universe in London

Vision Forum node Consonants participate in the first year of Block Universe in London. Block Universe brings together a new wave of cutting-edge performance art at the cross-section of visual art, dance and music, activating major institutions and venues throughout London over the course of a week. Venue partners include Fig.2 / ICA, Royal Academy of Arts, Somerset House and unique off-site venues such as Stationers Hall and the Art Workers Guild amongst others.

Block Universe ’s goal is to create a long-term, sustained engagement with performance art through commissioning and creating opportunities to present performance in London. We aim to support growth within the UK, whilst inviting an exciting selection of artists from abroad, some showing in London for the first time. To help achieve this international outlook, Block Universe has partnered with The Kitchen, New York’s historic venue for experimental performance. In the first iteration of this ongoing exchange, we will show the work of Ellie Ga, also her UK premiere. Block Universe will also extend its life through a series of performances at the Medellín Museum of Modern Art, Colombia in the fall.

DR SINCLAIR’S DRAWER at Flat Time House, London


‘ … It was a stationery drawer, but his guesswork had been almost entirely wrong. The imagined list of objects, a moment ago an array of potent presences in the room, instantaneously dematerialised as mere conjecture. Dr Sinclair silently replaced the items, slid the drawer back in, then moved the desk against the wall. He surmised that the drawer had a peculiarly clandestine way of being; suspended within a meta-structure, like a deeply nested fiction, it was inclined to partially conceal itself within another object. He concluded that his initial assessment of the drawer’s suspicious character had been entirely correct.’
from The Fabricator’s Tale by Katrina Palmer, Book Works, London 2014

Dr. Sinclair’s Drawer is an exhibition produced by Book Works and Flat Time House with artist Katrina Palmer, following her residency at Flat Time House in Summer 2013. Featuring work by Katrina Palmer, Francesco Pedraglio, Samuel Hasler and Sarah Tripp, the exhibition comprises writing, sound recordings, video, sculpture and printed matter, presented in conversation with the physical and symbolic environment of John Latham’s former home and studio.

New Cities Projects at ICA in London

Jane Drew (1911-1996): An Introduction
12 Feb 2014 – 23 Mar 2014


Vision Forum node New Cities Project presents a selection of artworks, books and ephemera related to British architect and educator Jane Drew at ICA in London.

Jane Drew (1911-1996) was a British architect and educator. Her work signaled a major shift from universal modernism to responsive and vernacular design. Drew was an instrumental agent across the projects and fields of urban and domestic design in which she worked, yet has remained unrecognised relative to her male contemporaries. She began her career designing ergonomic kitchens and was responsible for the standard height of ovens that is still used today. A close ally of Paolozzi, Moore and Hepworth, Drew can be credited for securing the premises of the ICA (both at Dover Street in 1950 and The Mall in 1968) where she with others collectively re-designed the interiors including the fittings and furniture. Contemporary art was fundamental to her designing process and while working with her husband Maxwell Fry, she commissioned artworks as integral elements within building projects – which in the UK included social housing and public infrastructure in London and various New Towns.

Emma Hedditch at Flat Time House

Throughout the exhibition Antiknow (directed by Jakob Jakobsen) at Flat Time House, a number of artists, poets, writers and therapists have been invited to respond to antiknow using the theatrical infrastructure of the Antiknow installation; speakers, lights and microphones. "you cannot you" is an intimate performance by Emma Hedditch.

"Each person describes their experience of using a camera, they talk about being nervous and worried that when they use the camera it won't work, that it will not record, or that the light or the sound will be bad.

They talk about making things and having a camera but the technical difficulty always appears.

They talk about enjoying time, a lot of time and drifting into making, being alone and making video images and forgetting how long they have been recording, just following and framing and moving through space."

Emma Hedditch is an artist based in New York who often works collaboratively with other artists, groups and individuals, with a commitment to process over products. Her work focuses on daily practice, culture and distribution of knowledge as political actions.

More info here.

“I am a Curator” after 10 years - What Defines an Artistic Practice

Event at David Roberts Art Foundation, London - October 29 at 6.30pm.

In spring 2003 Chisenhale Gallery commissioned Per Huttner to create an exhibition that reflected on collective and collaborative practices and to developed his experimental exhibition practice. The outcome was I am a Curator (IAAC), a project where people from all walks of life came to the gallery for a day to reflect on the complexity of art and exhibition-making. They did so by researching and negotiating the work of 57 artists with the help of a technical and conceptual team.

For the project’s 10-year anniversary, David Roberts Arts Foundation (DRAF) has invited Per Huttner to think about the project and how IAAC has influenced exhibition making.

IAAC, along with a handful of other experimental projects, introduced a practice whereby exhibitions changed throughout the time that they were open to the public. The project also provoked profound questions about artistic identity and its relationship to collectivity. Both shifts, in turn, lead to changed perspectives on the relationship between artworks, exhibitions, curators and artists. In short, IAAC opened a floodgate of problematics that overwhelmed the team working with the project. It is therefore important to revisit these questions after 10 years have passed and to see how they have influenced individual artistic processes and how they can guide us into meaningful future reflections on related issues.

For the event Per Huttner will reflect of the project together with Celine Condorelli, Stephen Whitmarsh and Veronique Wiesinger. You can read Per Hüttner's text here and Stephen Whitmarsh's text here.

For more info visit here, here, here.

Art and Science at Flat Time House, London

Vision Forum has since 2009 been collaborating with curator and Flat Time House director Claire Louise Staunton on the New Cities Project. One of Vision Forum's three research fields is "Platforms for Meetings between art and Science." In order to make use of the network that we have developed in this field and draw inspiration from John Latham's work Vision Forum and Flat Time House together arrange a workshop on art and science on January 27 at Flat Time House in London - 210 Bellenden Rd, London SE15 4BW.


Invited participants:  Fatos Üstek, Claire Louise Staunton, Mauricio Dwek, Aurele Duda, Elena Nemkova, IMS project, John Hill, Stephen Whitmarsh, William Stafford and Per Hüttner.

Programme of the Day

11.00 Per Huttner introduces Vision Forum and art/science project
11.20 Stephen Whitmarsh speaks about art from the perspective of Neuroscience
11.30 Claire Louise Staunton introduces John Latham and Flat Time
11.50 Fatos Ustek and Mauricio Dwek will introduce the topic of discussion, 0/0
14.00 Lunch at The Begging Bowl thai restaurant, Bellenden Rd
15.30 Presentation and video from IMS
16.00 Discussions

Art & Science Workshop Why and for Whom?


The world population has recently surpassed 7 billion and the number of living souls on this planet has doubled since the 1970's. There are growing pressures on the environment, global food supplies, and energy resources and we need new solutions to manage such demands. The world is in need of new ideas, new thinking - creativity in short.



The amount of research, production and publication in all creative fields (artistic and scientific) inevitably leads to a process of a higher specialisation and will continue to specialise in the coming decades. Today’s research and production in a single field is so immense that it is impossible to have an overview of all the exploration that is being undertaken. So, we have to accept that art is art and science is science.


A dialogue between art and science has two important advantages (from an artistic point of view):



- A dialogue in specialized field always runs the risk of becoming too self-contained. When we move outside our comfort zones, we become aware of our own vulnerability – and I mean this in the best sense of the word. We become aware of the limits of our knowledge and working methods. We have to remain far humbler in our ignorance when approaching another genre or discipline. 



- Certain fields of mathematics and physics offer concepts that are counter-intuitive. They function contrary to what our experiences in everyday life and at the same time can be proven mathematically and through experiments. These ways of thinking offer mental gymnastics that open to new ways of perceiving the world. Whether we believe that our perception of the world is too anthropocentric or not - we can find inspiration to deal with problems in novel ways.



Why 0/0?

The number zero is considered to be one of man's most important conceptual breakthroughs. Depending on the the position, its meaning changes greatly (examples: 01, 10, 0.1 etc.). We have chosen to use the idea of 0/0 as a starting point for a dialogue between art and science, because it offers a very interesting paradox where science is compelled to deal with philosophical questions much like those that art grapples with. 0/0 offers a platform where we can discuss on relatively equal terms.

Already any natural number divided by zero (a/0) poses a problem with many different 'solutions.' And zero is said to be divided by all numbers but itself. In other words 0/0 is a trickster that allow us to prove virtually anything true. Have a look at this:

For more information visit Flat Time House and Vision Forum's websites.

Per Hüttner on the Inclusion

Per Hüttner talks about collaboration, interdisciplinary work with contemporary art and many activities that are key to Vision Forum's work on the London-based blog The inclusion. To read the text click here.

Dungeon Acid in London

Vision Forum member Jean-Louis Huhta will be performing (as Dungeon Acid) at Kristina Records in Dalston on September 21 in conjunction with the first DRAF Opera Meeting. More info here.