Space, Place and the Body

Dr Madeleine Newman
madeleine.newman@leeds-art.ac.uk
(see handout and moodle for more notes)

Michael Landy, Semi-detached, 2004
the meaning of home and a presentation of his childhood and father's life

Architecture and the Body

Rachel Whiteread, Ghost, 1990
interior cast of her own studio – memories and experiences

Gordon Matta-Clark, Splitting, 1974
intervening in the architectural structure, subversie connotations about relationships in the home

The homely vs the 'unhomely'
homely – unhomely
domestic – haunted house
family and childhood – surreal
sanctuary – subversive
memory- psychic
nostalgia – fragmented
experience – dostorted
lived space- nightmare

structure – form - body
architecture – 'the complex or carefully designed structure of something' OED
however a hiatory of architectural theory and practice is keen to draw attention to the actual 'lived experience' of this space
the inhabitant – us – who experience the architecture through our bodies

place
'noun 1. a particular position, point or area in space; a location'

space
'noun 1. continuous area or expanse which is free, available or unoccupied'

Theory & Philosophy
Michael Foucault: Relational Space/Social Space
Gaston Bachelard: Relationship between space and time

What are the critical perspective and methodologies that we have available to think through them?
- The Carayaid Porch of the Erechtheion, Athens, 412-407 BC
- Leonardo da Vinci, Vitruvian Man, 1487

The body and the city
- Fritz Lang, Metropolis, 1927
- Archigam, Walking City, 1964
- Le Corbusier, Le Modular, 1948

Mapping intersections between body and space in At Practice:
minmalism – body, object, space, 1960s
gender and space – the feminist critique of gendered space, 1970s
postmodernism – changing the status of space and experience, 'non-place', global and collective space, 1980s onwards

Minimalism
America – 1960s – reaction to modernist painting
aimed to reduce art to abstract themes of space, shapes, materials etc

Robert Morris, Untitled (mirrored cubes), 1965
mirrors used to extend space

Minimalist object
Robert Morris, Installation Green Gallery, New York, 1964
Bruce Nauman, Green Light Corridor, 1970
Mary Miss, Perimeters/Pavillions/Decoys, 1978
Robert Smithsom, Partially Buried Woodshed, 1970
Andrea Zittel, Fifty-four-ton Floating Island, A-Z Pocket Property

'Lived Space'
focussing on the bodies relationship to space – movement, boundaries, experience
Rebecca Horn, Scratching Both Walls at Once, 1974-5
Bruce Nauman, Walking in an Exaggerated Manner Round the Perimeter of a Square

Phenomenology
- tells us that we experience the world through our body – we are an extension of it, it is only by having a body that we experience the world
- Philosopher Edward Casey – 'The places we inhabit are known by the bodies we live'
key theorist – Maurice Merlaeu-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 1945
- 'there would be no space at all for me if I had no body'
Robert Morris, The Present Tense of Space, 1978
Shepard Fairey, Phenomenology of the City, Manifesto, 1990\
- The OBEY sticker campaign can be explained as an experiment in phenomenology

Gender and Space: Critical Approaches
Doreen Massey, Space, Place and Gender, 1994
Louise Bourgeois, Femme Maison, 1946-7, ink on linen

Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, Womanhouse, Los Angeles, 1972
Helen Chadwick, In the Kitchen, 1976

Postmodernism:
non-place, collective space, liquid modernity – Zygmunt Bauman, deterritorialisation, globalisation

Non – Places
Marc Auge , Non-Places: An introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, 1992
Andreas Gursky, 99 Cent, 1999
Andreas Gursky, Terminal Five, Heathrow Airport

Reclaiming Space and Place?
Mariko Mori, Body Capsule Project, Beginning if the End: Past, Present, Future, 1995-2006
Lucy Orta, Refuge Wear – Habitent, 1992-3
Lucy Orta, Nexus Architecture X 50, Intervention Koln, 2001
Ineteriority: Psychic Space/ Surreal Space
exploration of relationship between space, place and the body in the visual arts
two key exhibitions
- Hayward Gallery, Walking in My Mind: Adventure into the Artist's Imagination, 2009
mental and psychic space, interiority, experience, creativity, alternate places, escape, intersections between art and architecture
- Barbican Art Gallery, The Surreal House, 2010
surrealism, psychoanalysis, feeling, fractured entity, the container object

'The Surreal House' – performance and film
Jan Svankmajer, The Jabberwocky, 1971
Maya Deren, Meshes of the Afternoon, 1943
Lucy Gunning, Climbing Around My Room, 1993