Artist Project and Text
Abbas Akhavan, Correspondences, 2008/2014
Kanishka Goonewardena, "Affinity/Antagonism," 2014
Information
Affinity / Disagreement: What draws people to public space?
The most fundamental paradox of public space is that people assemble because they have something in common, but at the same time they are only compelled to do so because they disagree with others about something that affects their lives. Contemporary political theorists have argued that disagreement lies at the heart of any political assembly, while others have emphasized the importance of the affinities that draw people together. If both of these claims are true, then public space has to accommodate the complexities of both consensus and dissensus.
Furnishing Positions is a serial publication that focuses on the paradoxical nature of public space. Its standard form is an 18”x18” broadsheet, consisting of an artist’s project on one side and a text on the other. It will be published once every two weeks for three months, starting September 15, 2014, with each issue focusing on a specific paradox. As a serial, each issue builds on earlier editions. As each issue is published, it will be hung and made available for free in the Blackwood Gallery, posted to the gallery’s website, postered in public sites, and circulated electronically. As the exhibition progresses these broadsheets will accumulate, generating and animating conversations in the space.
Furnishing Positions (broadsheet) is part of Adrian Blackwell’s project, Furnishing Positions, commissioned by the Blackwood Gallery and presented in conjunction with the exhibition FALSEWORK, September 15 – December 7, 2014.
Excerpt
Space is political. Though this may seem self-evident, it is still useful to ask what we mean by politics today, especially in a world so recently diagnosed by some as “post-political.” Let’s also recall that this post-political sentiment spans virtually the entire spectrum of influential opinion at the turn of the millennium, from Right to Left. Iconic at one end is Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis, the claim that the world-history of political antagonism finally came to a conclusion with the defeat of communism by capitalism, as liberal democracy proved to be the last and best of all human worlds.1 A corresponding view is discernible at the other end as well, on the political Left, which found expression in those radical thinkers who revived some old Orwellian motifs (or those of Kafka, Weber, Huxley) to suggest that a certain regime of policing2 or governmentality3 has eclipsed what used to be called politics—which for Marx had meant not managing, but changing, the world.
—From "Affinity/Antagonism" by Kanishka Goonewardena
Issues in this Series
00, Six Paradoxes, 15/09/2014
Adrian Blackwell
01, Affinity / Disagreement, 15/09/2014
Abbas Akhavan | Kanishka Goonewardena
02, Representation / Presentation, 29/09/2014
Dylan Miner | cheyanne turions
03, Materiality / Immateriality, 14/10/2014
Greig de Peuter | Paige Sarlin
04, People / Things, 27/10/2014
Karen Houle | Kika Thorne
05, Privacy / Publicity, 10/11/2014
Eric Cazdyn | Charles Stankievech
06, City / Urbanization, 24/11/2014
Mary Lou Lobsinger | Scott Sørli
How To Order
The Furnishing Positions broadsheets are all available for free download. To order free printed copies of any or all of them, please send an email including title(s), number of copies, and your mailing address to: blackwood.gallery[at]utoronto.ca.
- Contributors
- Abbas Akhavan
- Kanishka Goonewardena
- Editors
- Adrian Blackwell
- Christine Shaw
Blackwell’s research focuses on the intertwined problems of public space and private property. Publications include: “Forms of Enclosure in the Instant Modernization of Shenzhen” in Volume and “What is Property?” in the Journal of Architectural Education. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture. He was a member of Toronto’s Anarchist Free School and the Toronto School of Creativity and Inquiry, and is an editor of the journal Scapegoat: Architecture / Landscape / Political Economy.
Shaw’s work convenes, enables, and amplifies the transdisciplinary thinking necessary for understanding our current multi-scalar historical moment and co-creating the literacies, skills, and sensibilities required to adapt to the various socio-technical transformations of our contemporary society. She has applied her commitment to compositional strategies, epistemic disobedience, and social ecologies to multi-year curatorial projects including Take Care (2016–2019), an exhibition-led inquiry into care, exploring its heterogeneous and contested meanings, practices, and sites, as well as the political, economic, and technological forces currently shaping care; The Work of Wind: Air, Land, Sea (2015–2023), a variegated series of curatorial and editorial instantiations of the Beaufort Scale of Wind Force exploring the relentless legacies of colonialism and capital excess that undergird contemporary politics of sustainability and climate justice; and OPERA-19: An Assembly Sustaining Dreams of the Otherwise (2021–2029), a decentralized polyvocal drama in four acts taking up asymmetrical planetary crisis, differential citizenship, affective planetary attention disorder, and a strategic composition of worlds. She is the founding editor of The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (Blackwood, 2018–ongoing), and co-editor of The Work of Wind: Land (Berlin: K. Verlag, 2018) and The Work of Wind: Sea (Berlin: K. Verlag, 2023).
- Curator
- Christine Shaw
Shaw’s work convenes, enables, and amplifies the transdisciplinary thinking necessary for understanding our current multi-scalar historical moment and co-creating the literacies, skills, and sensibilities required to adapt to the various socio-technical transformations of our contemporary society. She has applied her commitment to compositional strategies, epistemic disobedience, and social ecologies to multi-year curatorial projects including Take Care (2016–2019), an exhibition-led inquiry into care, exploring its heterogeneous and contested meanings, practices, and sites, as well as the political, economic, and technological forces currently shaping care; The Work of Wind: Air, Land, Sea (2015–2023), a variegated series of curatorial and editorial instantiations of the Beaufort Scale of Wind Force exploring the relentless legacies of colonialism and capital excess that undergird contemporary politics of sustainability and climate justice; and OPERA-19: An Assembly Sustaining Dreams of the Otherwise (2021–2029), a decentralized polyvocal drama in four acts taking up asymmetrical planetary crisis, differential citizenship, affective planetary attention disorder, and a strategic composition of worlds. She is the founding editor of The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (Blackwood, 2018–ongoing), and co-editor of The Work of Wind: Land (Berlin: K. Verlag, 2018) and The Work of Wind: Sea (Berlin: K. Verlag, 2023).
Matthew Hoffman
Copy Editor
Jeffrey Malecki
Printer
Captain Printworks
Furnishing Positions 01
This broadsheet series is part of the commissioned project Furnishing Positions by Adrian Blackwell, and is produced in conjunction with the 2014 exhibition FALSEWORK. Curated by Christine Shaw.
Double-sided broadsheet, 18 x 18in
Free
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The Blackwood is situated on the Territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, Seneca, and Huron-Wendat.