RESIDUAL versus EXCESS

RESIDUAL versus EXCESS is a discussion/exchange of thoughts/conversation with artists Janice Kerbel and Ruth Maclennan, exploring issues of the systematic imaginary plan and the urban hide, as well as the challenge and potential of mapping knowledge, migrational knowledge, and the proliferation, fluidity, and detours of thought.

The idea for this discussion began by looking at creative proposals for revisiting the environmental in/active urban places, investigations in ‘natural and built environments’, and how a contemporary practice might suggest imaginative alternatives to established sites and systems. This initial process of researching particular works that, as Yates McKee describes, unsettle “the self-evidence of ‘environment’ itself” led to a complex map of inquiries, some of which are evident in Janice Kerbel and Ruth Maclennan’s practices. These significant inquiries led to the exploration of other issues including: calculable versus imaginary forms; the impractical; practising institutions; re-inventing the place and function of ordering and classifying.

Responding to the artists’ tools and modes of practice in particular, questions and points of the evening include: What does the plan allow? Discovering in-significant details – is it a question of what to do with them? Is there a ‘culture reserve’? What is the role of empathy in scientific observation? Can it be an artistic tool too? Can there be a place to stand still in urban space?
RESIDUAL versus EXCESS aims to provide a context in which to explore further these questions.
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