POST DATA: BUT THERE IS ALSO KNOWING FROM ABOVE
SOME THOUGHTS (AND A VIDEO) IN THE AFTERMATH OF A CONVERSATION WITH ALISON KILLING
(the scale of space)
Based in Rotterdam, Alison Killing is the only architect to have won a Pulitzer Prize, one of the most coveted awards in journalism and literary circles.
She use architecture and urban planning skills to investigate urgent social issues: from the surveillance in cities to the transboundary and shape-shifting flux of migration… and even for uncovering secret networks of prison camps in China.
In her hands, satellite maps, building protocols and other unusual sources of data suddenly become tools to first discover and then tell stories, using novel investigative and narrative techniques, exploring other ways of knowing that are deeply influenced by her architecture and visual arts background. In this and other work, she also engages in diverse and hybrid creative practices: from design of buildings to urban strategies, film making, exhibitions and events.
When we recently got together to watch a spectacular lightning storm from her Rotterdam balcony, I suddenly realized during our conversation: there are also fascinating epistemological views from above to be considered when thinking about education from below… I also found it deeply compelling to think about the possibility of aesthetic inquiry and creative research adding layers of substance to other fields like social justice and human rights – and in a move towards more sophisticated visual epistemologies, at the encounter with different disciplines and already embedded with their own unique narrative strategies.
Then, in the weeks that followed, I also had an inspiring conversation with Sam Gregory (yet another balcony, yet another city, yet another talented brain working on the crossroads of visual practices and social concerns). Sam – who is the director of Witness, an award-winning organization founded several decades back by Peter Gabriel, after the Rodney King beating in LA – has been working since then to amplify the power of video and technology to address violations to human rights and get video footage (plus other novel sources) admitted into court as proper evidence. Talking about both Alison’s work as well as the work of the likes of Forensic Architecture, who work out of Goldsmiths, he stressed the fact that he has observed in the span of his career how certain topics gather traction because they have been able to deploy a critical conversation in different spaces (such as an exhibition at a contemporary art museum); and also because they are just as sophisticated with their investigative tools as with their narrative techniques.
In this context, I wonder what the future could hold for creatives with a different set of hybrid skills and multiple deployment spaces, straddling worlds.
– Gabriella Gómez-Mont, August 2022