Paul Devens, Niamh McDonnell - Monument dismantling –– re-materialising public space. No. 1
A City’ Joints and Muscles: About the Links Between Architecture and Art
Sound artist, curator, architectural theorist, Paul Devens will offer ways of thinking about how the artists and architects can work with sound as a tool for analysing and describing the media archives that document the 2015 dismantling of the Green Bridge monument. Devens’ approach to creating site-specific sound art installations will provide a context to discuss the proposition for reconstructing representations of the monument that produce descriptions of the relation between monument and site; it will also create an opportunity to consider how this process of reconstruction can inform the production of design proposals for new structures, presenting different kinds of possible interventions in the built environment.
Talks of September 13th and 20th work as a diptych in the series. It is dedicated to the question of how light and sound could take place of ordinary forms of monumentalization and could be used as means of representation. The talk will be moderated by a philosopher, artist and curator based in Ireland Niamh McDonnell.
The talk will take place on September 13th in the National Gallery of Art, Konstitucijos ave. 22, Vilnius.
The talk will start at 8 pm and will be in English. Event is free.
On September 14th at 10 am a workshop led by Paul Devens and Niamh McDonnell will take place. More information here: http://www.archfondas.lt/en/news/post/workshop-series-monument-dismantling
Drawing on a research-based approach within his artistic practice, Paul Devens develops bodies of works that connect elements from sound and architecture. Collecting site-specific audio recordings, Devens actively considers the physical space and social context. He does this through the method of “acousmatic listening”: selecting aspects from particular situations and implementing them in a new one – oftentimes critiquing the original situation. His research manifests in sound based installations, architectonic interventions, performances, and CD and vinyl releases. Simultaneously, he considers the presence of the audience as an integral part of the work in his installations and performances. His work furthermore alludes to infrastructures around value, preconception and code in civil society.
Niamh McDonnell is a philosopher, artist, curator based in Ireland. Her socially engaged artistic and curatorial activities draw on a background in art practice (NCAD, Dublin, 1986-87, Crawford College, Cork, 1987-90), cultural studies (MA, Goldsmiths University, London, 2000-01) and philosophy (PhD, Goldsmiths University, London, 2001-08). Her PhD on Leibniz’s mathematical art of combination in Gilles Deleuze’s theory of the diagram informs her exploration of a diagrammatic approach to material production in directing curatorial projects and creating artworks.
Her critical writing practice takes place alongside this project activity and continues the investigation of another Deleuzian philosophical concept, the fold (co-editor and contributor to the collection of essays ‘Deleuze and The Fold: A Critical Reader’, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
Designing and staging cultural resonance and amplifiers to the surface of reality: this book is inspired by Paul Devens’ “waving platforms” that establish poetic opportunities for the unheard: resonating and amplifying its cultural poetics: a vanguard pronunciation on the social and architectural embedding of sound art.
This first in depth publication on the oeuvre of international recognized Dutch sound-artist/architect/designer Devens both stimulates our perceived reality of the audible we’re surrounded by as well as our notion of the underlying social grid. Resultant poetics deeply concern our spatial environments and our opportunities to relate to this holistic sum’s ephemeral presence.
