Texturing Spaces

Texture weaves and relates. It moves through things, holding them together, providing contours, shaping forms. This publication is an experimental and collaborative exploration of texture from an artistic, design and conceptual angle. Based on a year-long research process between Zurich and Hong Kong the book seeks to give an account of processes of texturing as practice and material effect in urban environments. Texture, we claim, is not a mere surface structure of built configurations but hints at the dynamic and processual nature of urban ecologies as expanded cartographies. As part of a research-creation seminar at Zurich University of the Arts a modular and mobile lab for engaging with urban textures was designed and used at different sites. These ex- plorations are reflected upon from different perspectives such as philosophy, design, sociology, sound, media studies, and literature. Each of these encounters becomes a texturing of its own kind. The publication addresses researchers, artists and designers interested in artistic and design research practices and methods from a transdisciplinary and process-oriented point of view. With contributions by Sher Doruff, Karmen Franinovic, Erin Manning, Brian Massumi, Toni Pape and others.Amélie Brisson-Darveau lives and works between Montreal and Hamburg. She received her MFA from Concordia University in the Fiber Art program. Her artistic projects aim at offering an alternative experience of the obscure and unseen elements of social environments by shaping them in volume and exploring their tangibility. Installation, drawings and performing actions are the mediums she privileges to make this experience accessi-ble. Her work has been shown in internationally. Christoph Brunner is Assistant Professor for Cultural Theory at Leuphana University Lüneburg. His research focuses on the politics of aesthetics in art, media and activism. He is currently working on a book project called Activist Sense: Towards a Political Aesthetics of Experience.