Strikethroughs, De-letion, Blots and Other Fictional Erasures

Guest speaker: Dr. Alice Twemlow (KABK, The Hague, NL)

In the context of the artistic research lab Milieus of [Fictions] in Milieus

VENUE: Casino Display, 1, rue de la Loge, Luxembourg

As the art critic and author Brian Dillon notes, ‘erasure is never merely a matter of making things disappear: there is always some detritus strewn about in the aftermath, some bruising to the surface from which word or image has been removed, some reminder of the violence done to make the world look new again’.  

This observation refers to the micro milieus of canvas, block of marble, or page, but it also holds for the planet, where we find piles of toxin-leaching junk and e-waste, fathomless gyres of seeping microplastics, billions of metric tons of off-gassed carbon dioxide, the million-or-so-plant and animal species already fossilising… In the aftermath of the modernist project, the wreckage of which Angelus Novus retreats from in horror as he backs into the future, how do we reconcile the imperative to expunge past errors in our milieus, with the increasing knowledge that tabula rasa is an illusion?  

This talk begins with the typographic marks of effacement and goes on to explore the role of erasure in artistic research today, in the larger context of environmental crisis.

Dr. Alice Twemlow is a Research Professor at the Royal Academy of Art The Hague (KABK) where she leads the Deep Futures research project. She is also Professor by special appointment in the Wim Crouwel chair in the History, Theory and Sociology of Graphic Design and Visual Culture at the University of Amsterdam. Before moving to Amsterdam, British-born Twemlow was based in New York where she co-founded and directed the MFA in Design Criticism and MA in Design Research, Writing & Criticism at the School of Visual Arts. She has a Ph.D in History of Design (V&A/RCA), and her book, Sifting the Trash: A History of Design Criticism, was published by MIT Press in 2017.