poster

Ark: Architectures of Knowledge

Logan Sisley

This proposal relates to the call for posters, slideshows, movies, installations or other types of visual media relevant to the themes of Analogous Spaces. I propose to present an exhibition of Ark, an artist's publication that I am currently developing.

Ark will be an ongoing research tool and curatorial platform in the form of a journal. The publication will contain interviews with and texts by a range of people including artists, architects, librarians, and web designers. It will also contain drawings, maps, plans and other visual material.

Ark will explore how ideas surrounding the structure of knowledge and forms of classification are manifest in architectural forms. For example, how are library classification structures and archive cataloguing tools translated into the spaces they occupy? How does digital technology disrupt spatial ordering of texts and how does it offer new possibilities to create fluid structures? How are hierarchies of spaces in the city apparent in the built environment?

Ark will be simply and modestly published but will not only be a printed journal. I will also develop a physical structure, something between furniture and architecture, to house the accumulating publication. I also envisage a web presence for the journal which will explore online architectures.

The journal and proposed exhibition relates particularly closely to the second theme of the Analogous Spaces conference: spaces of knowledge and memory. Questions about the relationship between the architecture of the book and the spaces they occupy – the spaces of reading – are an ongoing concern of mine. How do the architectures of the library and the archive differ? How are structures of knowledge formally expressed in private collections as opposed to public institutions? How do these structures shift over time? These are all questions to be addressed by Ark.