Arkitektoniske Kramper is a new collaborative work by artists Brook and Black (UK) and Christina Bredahl Duelund and Natascha Thiara Rydvald (DK) at OVADA Warehouse (14a Osney Lane, Oxford OX1 1NJ) 7-22 November 2015

[The uncanny
….involves feelings of uncertainty, in particular regarding the reality of who one is and what is being experienced
….disturbs a straightforward sense of what is inside and what is outside…..a strangeness of framing and borders, an experience of liminality
….is a feeling that happens only to oneself, within oneself, but it is never one’s own: its meaning or significance may have to do most of all with what is not oneself, with others, within the world itself
….a sense of repetition or ‘coming back’….a compulsion to repeat
….is different (yet strangely the same) every time: its happening is always a kind of un-happening.  Its ‘un’ un-settles time and space, order and sense
….has to do with a sense of ourselves as double, split, at odds with ourselves
….always engages a performative dimension, a maddening supplement
….does not belong….if it belongs it is no longer a question of the uncanny.  Rather the uncanny calls for a different thinking of [classification]]

four pillars supporting the space
the structure within which other structures are
at play
obstructed doorway and improvised arch
enter a room that is not really there
separated from the frame
(the virtual frame?)
of a house that is
there, present, attached
(the third person?)
pulled together by the fabric of the space
and its shadows
pipe, work, water, work
dripping, seeping, gathering, separating
gathering again
a compulsion to repeat

an act of collaboration
or collaboration itself?
who or what is collaborating?
I am drawn in, collected
yet at once scattered
amongst, at the same time
searching for the individual
only to find itself scattered
throughout, it cannot be released
from the fabric within which it is held
Fighting to find place
in collaboration as in life
identity as door obstructed
individual erased,
doubled, supplemented
deferred, re-written

with thanks
to OVADA, Arkitektoniske Kramper and the pulling together/pulling apart symposium panel:
to Brook and Black for ‘the virtual frame’, ‘the third person’ and ‘leaving identity at the door’
to Tamarin Norwood for the ‘carriage return’ and ‘the ‘who?’ of collaboration’
to Natascha Thiara Rydvald for the ‘fighting to find place, in collaboration as in life’
to Christina Bredahl Duelund for the ‘individual erased’
to Freud (and Nicholas Royle) for ‘the uncanny’ (Royle 2003 The Uncanny Manchester University Press)