MSD at HOME with Jane RENDELL
Practices Of Architecture-Writing
Jane RENDELL and Hélène FRICHOT
Jane Rendell (BSc, DipArch, MSc, PhD) is Professor of Critical Spatial Practice at the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL, where she co-initiated the MA Situated Practice and supervises MA and PhD projects. Jane has introduced concepts of ‘critical spatial practice’ and ‘site-writing’ through her authored books: The Architecture of Psychoanalysis (2017), Silver (2016), Site-Writing (2010), Art and Architecture (2006), and The Pursuit of Pleasure (2002). Her co-edited collections include Reactivating the Social Condenser (2017), Critical Architecture (2007), Spatial Imagination (2005), The Unknown City (2001), Intersections (2000), Gender, Space, Architecture (1999) and Strangely Familiar (1995), and recently launched the situated review site Reading Writing Quarterly. With Dr David Roberts, she leads the Bartlett’s Ethics Commission; and with Dr Yael Padan, ‘The Ethics of Research Practice’, for KNOW (Knowledge in Action for Urban Equality).
Professor Jane Rendell will discuss the development of her site-writing practice over the past 20 years, starting with ‘Undoing Architecture’ from 1998, drawing attention to core concepts such as situatedness, relationality and positionality, informed by feminist philosophers such as Donna Haraway, Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray, and psychoanalysts like Donald Winnicott, Andre Green and Jean Laplanche. With reference to several essays and work produced in the last few months, Jane will focus on the vital contribution situatedness offers to the process of structuring arguments, allowing spatial narratives to rework the conventional form of academic texts, while genres of autotheory, fiction and creative nonfiction, show ways of refiguring relations of intra- and inter-subjectivity, finding unexpected voices and points of view. The talk will conclude with a conversation between Professors Jane Rendell and Hélène Frichot about practices of architecture-writing/site-writing, focusing on the importance of feminist theory/philosophy, cultural geography, psychoanalysis and creative and other literary genres to the development of alternative ways of writing architectural history, theory and criticism, that they have been developing through their own work and with others.
Presentation and Q+A
Date: Tuesday, 14 September 2021
Time: 19:00 - 20:30 AEST* Melbourne (UTC +11)
Venue: Online - ABP Zoom Webinar
Event link: Once you have registered for the event, the event link will be sent to you via your Eventbrite confirmation email and reminder emails.
* London: Tuesday 14 September 2021, 10:00 - 11:30; BST
* Singapore: Tuesday 14 September 2021, 17:00 - 18:30; SGT
* Dubai: Tuesday 14 September 2021, 13:00 - 14:30; GST
* New York: Tuesday 14 September 2021, 05:00 - 06:30; EDT
* Los Angeles: Tuesday 14 September 2021, 02:00 - 03:30; PDT