Kris Pint
Universiteit Hasselt, Architecture and Arts, Faculty Member
Experimental poet and essayist Lisa Robertson (Toronto, 1961) has a singu-lar, lyrical approach to architecture and urbanism. Best known for Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture (2004), her writing never... more
Experimental poet and essayist Lisa Robertson (Toronto, 1961) has a singu-lar, lyrical approach to architecture and urbanism. Best known for Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture (2004), her writing never forgets the body of the dweller, nor the body of the city. In the much less studied, book-length poem Cinema of the Present (2014), Robertson offers a polyphonic voice that explores the relationship between these two bodies in ‘real time’:
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Wherever you go, you will be a city.
The question for you becomes what are we doing with our bodies, why are we here?1
Robertson’s poem can be read as an account of urban encounters. The poem reveals how an ‘embodied community’ needs past traces to empathi-cally relate to the city, and to others. We will link this to French theorist Michel de Certeau’s concept of tactics, developed in The Practice of Every-day Life (1980), and the important role these traces play for Certeau as a resistance against spatial and cultural homogenization.
By bringing these two authors together, we want to explore ‘tactical’ and embodied writing about architecture – a topoanalysis of otherness and mnemonic intimacy, intensifying spatial experiences.
66
Wherever you go, you will be a city.
The question for you becomes what are we doing with our bodies, why are we here?1
Robertson’s poem can be read as an account of urban encounters. The poem reveals how an ‘embodied community’ needs past traces to empathi-cally relate to the city, and to others. We will link this to French theorist Michel de Certeau’s concept of tactics, developed in The Practice of Every-day Life (1980), and the important role these traces play for Certeau as a resistance against spatial and cultural homogenization.
By bringing these two authors together, we want to explore ‘tactical’ and embodied writing about architecture – a topoanalysis of otherness and mnemonic intimacy, intensifying spatial experiences.
Research Interests:
It is remarkable that in fundamental and inspiring texts about the experience of the interior, the perspective is often that of a solitary dweller, as in in Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space (1958) or Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows... more
It is remarkable that in fundamental and inspiring texts about the experience of the interior, the perspective is often that of a solitary dweller, as in in Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space (1958) or Tanizaki’s In Praise of Shadows (1933). However compelling their accounts are, they run the risk of forgetting the kind of spatial encounters that disrupt the distinction between one body and another, between the self and its environment.
This article considers the erotic effect of the night-time as a metaphor for understanding and exploring (interior) space. By using the works of Lakoff and Johnson, Handelman, and Kristeva as a constructed theoretical framework, the article sketches the outlines of a phenomenology of darkness, a skotology, that allows us to explore ‘dark space,’ a conceptualisation of space that confronts us with other subjective modes of perception, sensation, and cognition.
We will follow the wanderings of an amorous Walter Benjamin through different ‘dark spaces’ in Capri, Berlin, Moscow, and of course Paris. Benjamin’s sensual writing about these intimate spaces provides us with some key elements of a possible skotology of space: a subjective process of gaining knowledge, based on a fusion with some of the bodies, spaces and cultural intertexts that surround us, a form of spatial research that also takes into account fictionality and non-linear temporality as important aspects of the experience of dark space.
This article considers the erotic effect of the night-time as a metaphor for understanding and exploring (interior) space. By using the works of Lakoff and Johnson, Handelman, and Kristeva as a constructed theoretical framework, the article sketches the outlines of a phenomenology of darkness, a skotology, that allows us to explore ‘dark space,’ a conceptualisation of space that confronts us with other subjective modes of perception, sensation, and cognition.
We will follow the wanderings of an amorous Walter Benjamin through different ‘dark spaces’ in Capri, Berlin, Moscow, and of course Paris. Benjamin’s sensual writing about these intimate spaces provides us with some key elements of a possible skotology of space: a subjective process of gaining knowledge, based on a fusion with some of the bodies, spaces and cultural intertexts that surround us, a form of spatial research that also takes into account fictionality and non-linear temporality as important aspects of the experience of dark space.
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What could be the place of artistic research in current contemporary scholarship in the humanities? The following essay addresses this question while using as a case study a collaborative artistic project undertaken by two artists, Remco... more
What could be the place of artistic research in current contemporary scholarship in the humanities? The following essay addresses this question while using as a case study a collaborative artistic project undertaken by two artists, Remco Roes (Belgium) and Alis Garlick (Australia). We argue that the recent integration of arts into academia requires a hybrid discourse, which has to be distinguished both from the artwork itself and from more conventional forms of academic research. This hybrid discourse explores the whole continuum of possible ways to address our existential relationship with the environment: ranging from aesthetic, multi-sensorial, associative, affective, spatial and visual modes of ‘knowledge’ to more discursive, analytical, contextualised ones. Here, we set out to defend the visual essay as a useful tool to explore the non-conceptual, yet meaningful bodily aspects of human culture, both in the still developing field of artistic research and in more established fields of research. It is a genre that enables us to articulate this knowledge, as a transformative process of meaning-making, supplementing other modes of inquiry in the humanities.
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Cultural artifacts only acquire meaning in a subjective context. This is particularly the case for the domestic interior, which since modernity has a strong link with the subjects inhabiting them. Inspired by the later work of Michel... more
Cultural artifacts only acquire meaning in a subjective context. This is particularly the case for the domestic interior, which since modernity has a strong link with the subjects inhabiting them. Inspired by the later work of Michel Foucault, we want to present an approach to interiors that takes into account this subjectivity, not only of the inhabitant, but also of the researcher. Using the work of anthropologist Tim Ingold, we will argue that our bodily and existential engagement with an interior environment can be considered as a valid form of scholarship. Finally, we will apply this alternative anthropology in a short analysis of a painting by Pierre Bonnard.
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Our paper takes Bruegel’s Hunters in the snow (c. 1565) as a starting point. We will not present a traditional art historical analysis, but approach it as an ‘environment of thinking’. Anachronistically, Bruegel’s painting helps us to... more
Our paper takes Bruegel’s Hunters in the snow (c. 1565) as a starting point. We will not present a traditional art historical analysis, but approach it as an ‘environment of thinking’. Anachronistically, Bruegel’s painting helps us to understand the problems and possibilities of a Nietzschean ‘transvaluation’ in and by artistic research. Bruegel’s painting is more than an allegory: we will link it – and the knowledge that can be gained by artistic research – to Michel Foucault’s revaluation of the classical notion of parrhesia, a kind of truthspeaking that is not grounded in an external framework of scientific protocols and methods, but in a personal, bodily ascesis, in an ethical praxis. We want to argue that the artistic research can operate as a modern form of parrhesia in academic discourse, a parrhesia based on the visual and sensual qualities of a work of art.
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In this article, I want to reassess Bachelard’s “topoanalysis,” a concept the French philosopher introduced in his La poétique de l’espace (1957). We will look into some of the ideological and theoretical problems that inevitably rise if... more
In this article, I want to reassess Bachelard’s “topoanalysis,” a concept the French philosopher introduced in his La poétique de l’espace (1957). We will look into some of the ideological and theoretical problems that inevitably rise if one wants to use Bachelard’s topoanalysis today. I want to argue that these difficulties are far from insuperable and that an alternative approach to Bachelard’s legacy is still possible and worthwhile. If we consider Bachelard’s exploration of the images of dwelling as a variant of what Jerome McGann coined “deformative criticism,” Bachelard’s project can still be used as a relevant methodological instrument for a critical analysis of the imaginary of interior spaces.
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Historical architecture is often considered as a picturesque but lifeless scene, abandoned by the original actors. Such an approach however focuses too narrowly on historical buildings as a static, passive form of memory. In this essay,... more
Historical architecture is often considered as a picturesque but lifeless scene, abandoned by the original actors. Such an approach however focuses too narrowly on historical buildings as a static, passive form of memory. In this essay, it is argued that architecture itself should be regarded as an actor that engages with the other human actors in the performance of memory. Four types of ‘performers’ of architectural memory spaces are discussed: the shaman, the orator, the flâneur and finally, the modernist architect. In their interactive performance, the past inevitably gets deformed, but this deformance is not a misinterpretation that should be corrected, but a continuous spatial becoming that turns the memory inscribed in our buildings into an active, provocative force. Such an approach not only focuses on the actual building and the period of its construction, but also takes into account the virtual images, the untimely fantasies it evokes in the present, as a force field that allows older ways of dwelling to be remembered in a radically other context. This deformative scenography of the past allows us to link the architectural remembrance to current problems, which can be both personal and collective, and to explore new solutions for the future.
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abstract 'I sincerely believe that at the origin of teaching such as this we must always locate a fantasy'. This provoking remark was the starting point of the four lecture courses Roland Barthes taught as professor of literary... more
abstract 'I sincerely believe that at the origin of teaching such as this we must always locate a fantasy'. This provoking remark was the starting point of the four lecture courses Roland Barthes taught as professor of literary semiology at the Collège de France. In these last ...
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What interests me especially in Belsey's analysis of Shakespeare is that she boldly reintroduces a literary term which has been withering like a kind of Cinderella in the basement of contemporary literary theory: the motif. At the... more
What interests me especially in Belsey's analysis of Shakespeare is that she boldly reintroduces a literary term which has been withering like a kind of Cinderella in the basement of contemporary literary theory: the motif. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the study of the motif ...
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'I undertake therefore to let myself be borne on by the force of any living life, forgetfulness. (. . .) Now comes perhaps the age of another experience: that of unlearning, of yielding to the unforeseeable change which... more
'I undertake therefore to let myself be borne on by the force of any living life, forgetfulness. (. . .) Now comes perhaps the age of another experience: that of unlearning, of yielding to the unforeseeable change which forgetting imposes on the sedimentation of the knowledges, cultures, and ...
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abstract This article takes as its starting point Sartre's interpretation of the reading experience as an appeal to our freedom and our existence as a unique project, which can take shape through our imagination. However, this view... more
abstract This article takes as its starting point Sartre's interpretation of the reading experience as an appeal to our freedom and our existence as a unique project, which can take shape through our imagination. However, this view largely ignores our bodily ...
abstract Although CG Jung's theory of the psyche has had far less influence on contemporary literary theory than freudo-lacanian psychoanalysis, a post-structuralist reinterpretation of his work nonetheless proves very useful for an... more
abstract Although CG Jung's theory of the psyche has had far less influence on contemporary literary theory than freudo-lacanian psychoanalysis, a post-structuralist reinterpretation of his work nonetheless proves very useful for an analysis of the literary ...
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... Author Kris Pint UGent Publishing year 2006 Type journalArticle Publication status published Subject: Languages and Literatures. Publication Koninklijke Zuid-Nederlandse Maatschappij voor Taal-en Letterkunde en Geschiedenis. ...
... Author Kris Pint UGent Publishing year 2003 Type journalArticle Publication status published Subject: Languages and Literatures. Publication Psycho-analytische perspektieven Psycho-anal. perspekt. Volume 21 Issue 3-4 Pages ...
... Author Kris Pint UGent Publishing year 2005 Type journalArticle Article type original Publication status published Subject: Languages and Literatures. Publication REKTO:VERSO (GENT) Rekto:verso (Gent) Issue 1 Pages 64 ...
Pint, Kris. 2003. “Hoe Ongezien Te Blijven : over Kunst, Kitsch En De Verbeelding Van De Avonden.” Rekto:verso (gent) (2): 4–8. ... Pint, Kris. (2003). Hoe ongezien te blijven : over kunst, kitsch en de verbeelding van De Avonden.... more
Pint, Kris. 2003. “Hoe Ongezien Te Blijven : over Kunst, Kitsch En De Verbeelding Van De Avonden.” Rekto:verso (gent) (2): 4–8. ... Pint, Kris. (2003). Hoe ongezien te blijven : over kunst, kitsch en de verbeelding van De Avonden. REKTO:VERSO (GENT), (2), 4–8.
... Author Kris Pint UGent Publishing year 2004 Type bookChapter Publication status published Subject: Languages and Literatures. Publication Memo Barthes Pages 147-162 pages Publisher Vantilt ISBN 9077503021 Department: ...
Pint, Kris. 2003. “Ontmoeting Met Het Punctum : over De Jongen in Mei.” Poeziekrant (gent) 27 (5): 52–55. ... Pint, Kris. (2003). Ontmoeting met het punctum : over de jongen in Mei. POEZIEKRANT (GENT), 27(5), 52–55. ... Pint K. Ontmoeting... more
Pint, Kris. 2003. “Ontmoeting Met Het Punctum : over De Jongen in Mei.” Poeziekrant (gent) 27 (5): 52–55. ... Pint, Kris. (2003). Ontmoeting met het punctum : over de jongen in Mei. POEZIEKRANT (GENT), 27(5), 52–55. ... Pint K. Ontmoeting met het punctum : over de jongen in Mei. ...
... Author Kris Pint UGent Publishing year 2005 Type journalArticle Article type original Publication status published Subject: Languages and Literatures. Publication POEZIEKRANT (GENT) Poëziekrant (Gent) Volume 29 Issue ...
Pint, Kris. 2005. “Hoeder Van De Lege Plek : De Onmogelijke Haiku Van Fernando Pessoa.” Poeziekrant (gent) 2: 37–41. ... Pint, Kris. (2005). Hoeder van de lege plek : de onmogelijke haiku van Fernando Pessoa. POEZIEKRANT (GENT), 2, 37–41.... more
Pint, Kris. 2005. “Hoeder Van De Lege Plek : De Onmogelijke Haiku Van Fernando Pessoa.” Poeziekrant (gent) 2: 37–41. ... Pint, Kris. (2005). Hoeder van de lege plek : de onmogelijke haiku van Fernando Pessoa. POEZIEKRANT (GENT), 2, 37–41. ... Pint K. Hoeder van de ...
... Ongeboren vaders en symbolische zonen. Kris Pint UGent (2004) POEZIEKRANT (GENT). ... author Kris Pint UGent organization: Department of Literary Studies. year 2004 type journalArticle (original) publication status published subject:... more
... Ongeboren vaders en symbolische zonen. Kris Pint UGent (2004) POEZIEKRANT (GENT). ... author Kris Pint UGent organization: Department of Literary Studies. year 2004 type journalArticle (original) publication status published subject: ...