Hold the Space

The first episode of Hold the Space is an interview with Architect, doctor of science fiction, and lecturer in architecture at the University of Reading, Dr. Amy Butt.

In this conversation we talk about:

• How to engage non-architects in architecture
• Science fiction as a way to practise the future together
• Amy’s indirect route towards her current teaching and practice
• The design crit process, and how to improve it
• A few of the ethical issues with practising and teaching architecture
• A workshop run in the Horniman Museum
• Time management
• And more!

Jump to a section

• (00:00) - 001: Amy Butt
• (00:11) - Introduction
• (03:22) - What do you do?
• (05:52) - Audience
• (08:53) - Personal journey
• (14:54) - Criticising critiques: how to improve the design critique process for students
• (22:47) - Sustainable modes of practice
• (26:55) - Teaching and workshops: The Horniman Museum
• (40:49) - Time and project management
• (50:22) - The Absent Paradigm and science fiction reading communities
• (56:53) - Beyond Gender and collaborative writing
• (01:08:21) - Success criteria
• (01:12:20) - Building communities
• (01:19:51) - Outro
• (01:20:22) - Credits

Links and references

Links

• Amy’s website / Instagram / Twitter
• Amy’s academic profile

Groups

• Society of Architectural Workers
• Involve Architecture Collective
• Beyond Gender Research Collective

Articles

• The Present as Past: Science Fiction and the Museum (2021) by Amy Butt (article and photos from the Horniman Museum workshop we discuss in this episode)
• Performance, Utopia, and the "Utopian Performative" (2001) by Jill Dolan

Books

From the Horniman Museum workshop

• The Time Machine (1895) by H.G. Wells
• We (1924) by Yevgeny Zamyatin
• The Wanderground (1979) by Sally Miller Gearhart

From the Beyond Gender reading group:

• Brown Girl in the Ring (1998) and The Salt Roads (2003) by Nalo Hopkinson
• Your Faces, O My Sisters! (1990) by James Tiptree Junior - featured in the collection Her Smoke Rose Up Together
• The Dispossessed (1974) by Ursula K. Le Guin

Contact

This show is new and evolving - if you have any suggestions or comments, things you’d like to hear (or not!) please email me at [email protected]

Credits

This podcast is made possible by the Situated Art and Design Research Group at Caradt, the Centre for Applied Research in Art, Design, and Technology. Each episode is recorded, edited, and mixed by me, Ollie Palmer. For more information - including full transcripts for each episode, links to relevant work or resources, please visit the podcast website at www.holdthespace.art, or click the link in the podcast notes.

Thanks for listening, and see you next time.

A podcast about creative practice and teaching. This week I'm joined by Dr. Nelly Ben Hayoun to discuss her work and teaching, the University of the Underground, working with large teams on multi-year projects, Hannah Arendt, Michael Jackson, and couscous. It's a great conversation; join us!

Chapters

• (00:00) - 002: Nelly Ben Hayoun
• (00:33) - Intro
• (01:45) - Nelly Ben Hayoun Intro
• (07:41) - Background: Michael Jackson, origins of practice
• (15:37) - Quick tour of the studio
• (16:32) - Success criteria
• (24:20) - University of the Underground
• (29:36) - Student projects
• (35:12) - Teaching methodology
• (40:51) - Developing projects
• (49:43) - I am Not a Monster and Red Moon films
• (52:40) - Credits
• (54:49) - Outro

Nelly, projects, and the University of the Underground

• Nelly Ben Hayoun Studios website: https://nellyben.com
• University of the Underground website: https://universityoftheunderground.org/
• Nelly’s RCA Design Interatcions graduation project The Soyuz Chair: https://nellyben.com/projects/experiences/the-soyuz-chair-2/
• International Space Orchestra: https://internationalspaceorchestra.com
• Disaster Playground film: https://disasterplayground.com

Projects mentioned in conversation

• 8:55 Nelly mentions Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_Totalitarianism
• 18:21 International Space Orchestra project with Kid Kudi: https://internationalspaceorchestra.com/international_space_orchestra_hit_the_road/
• 20:32 The End of Protest - book by MIcah White, co-founder of Occupy Wall Street https://endofprotest.com

University of the Underground students

• 30:20 Nelly discusses Alexander Cromer’s Black Arctic project. Here’s an article on the project in Metropolis M magazine: https://www.metropolism.com/en/features/49457_the_black_arctic_became_a_way_of_reclaiming_death_and_a_way_of_finding_some_kind_of_ancestral_home_in_conversation_with_alexander_cromer
• 31:55 Nelly discusses pornographer Stoya’s project GRID: https://universityoftheunderground.org/gird-loins-faith-fellows
• 32:59 Nelly discusses Ana Subeliani’s project in Georgia: https://universityoftheunderground.org/student/ana-subeliani

This podcast is made possible by the Situated Art and Design Research Group at Caradt, the Centre for Applied Research in Art, Design, and Technology. Find out more at www.caradt.nl

This episode features a conversation with teacher, artist, entrepreneur (and a few more things)...Cesar Jung Harada. You can find out more about Cesar at his website, cesarharada.com.

Cesar's biography says:

As you'll hear, I first met Cesar back in the late 2000s, where he was making an audacious project at the Royal College of Art, with a note that said 'join me' - so I did! That project took me on a wild journey, and I learnt a lot from it. Since then, Cesar has worked, lived, and taught around the world, with a wealth of weird and wonderful experiences that he brings back into all of the other roles he has. I really enjoyed this conversation - there is a lot of wisdom in Cesar's words.

Please note, this conversation was recorded in 2022, when Cesar was teaching in Hong Kong. Since then, Cesar has moved from Hong Kong to Singapore.

Links

• Cesar's website
• Cesar's academic profile
• Harada: the book Cesar made about his father, the sculptor Tetsuo Harada
• Simon Sinek's book: The Infinite Game (mentioned at around 1:10:00)

Chapters

00:00 Cesar's introduction
01:02 Ollie's introduction
06:05 Description of practice
07:40 Mode of practice
17:15 Teaching
20:08 Hong Kong
27:16 Early education
35:32 Preferred teaching exercise
41:35 Life experience and design; barriers to entry
51:50 Learning from repetition
55:14 Time management, and people management

This episode I’m delighted to be joined by Barbara Neves Alves.

Barbara was, for four years, a colleague of mine at the Master Institute of Visual Cultures, in St Joost School of Art and Design, where I teach. During that time, she was responsible for thesis supervision for Situated Design masters students. I really enjoyed working with her for all of that time, despite the fact that about half of it coincided with the global pandemic. As you’ll hear, she has a really interesting way of approaching theory, and practice, weaving them both into each other.

Barbara’s PhD was on the subject of Miscommunication: advancing the concept of Miscommunication to challenge the notion of ‘good communication’ as an objective of the field of communication design—communication is often failing to reach its intended audiences or outcomes. It expanded on miscommunication as concept and practice to demonstrate how social and cultural exchanges that produce error or misunderstanding can be provocative sites for developing new modes of communication design.

In this conversation, we talk about an article she wrote about her experiences at Occupy London years ago - there’s an odd echo of my conversation with Nelly Ben Hayoun last episode; we talk about her practice, teaching techniques, balancing the different modes of practice; and what she does if she’s stuck in a creative rut. As ever, there is a full transcript of this episode available, and the show notes have links to many of the things we’ve talked about.

This conversation was recorded way back in November 2021.

==

Links

Barbara

• Barbara’s website: https://barbaranevesalves.net
• Barbara’s article on Occupy: https://barbaranevesalves.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Miscommunicating_Publics_published_in_B.pdf
• Barbara’s PhD: https://www.academia.edu/30217879/Miscommunicating_and_design_Researching_miscommunication_as_a_proposition_for_designing_political_scenes

Books and articles mentioned

• Inventive Methods, edited by Celia Lury and Nina Wakeford: https://www.routledge.com/Inventive-Methods-The-Happening-of-the-Social/Lury-Wakeford/p/book/9780415721103
• Claudia Giannetti: https://zkm.de/en/person/claudia-giannetti
• Marcel-li Antunez (one of the creators of Fura del Baus): http://www.marceliantunez.com
• Ursula K LeGuin: The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction
• Kathy Acker: Against Ordinary Language: https://www.yvonnebuchheim.com/uploads/1/7/0/8/17088324/acker-kathy_the_language_of_the_body.pdf
• Barbara’s project around José Gil: Portugal Today: Fear of Existing. https://manifoldbooks.nl/ADiplomatsWalk.pdf
• Additional reading: Gordon Pask’s Conversation Theory discussed by Jon Goodbun and Ben Sweeting: https://journals.open.tudelft.nl/footprint/article/view/5668
• Manifold Books, Amsterdam: https://manifoldbooks.nl

I hope you enjoy this episode! For more information, full transcripts, and more episodes, please visit the show website at www.holdthespace.art

This is the trailer for Hold the Space, a new podcast hosted by Ollie Palmer. It's a show about the intersection between creative practice and teaching, and features conversations with creative practitioners who also teach. You can subscribe now at www.holdthespace.art