On Support

On Support, interview with Celine Condorelli
(turkish version "Müşterek Bilginin Üretimi ve Eylemi, in Betonart Architecture Magazine, Spring issue, 2010, Istanbul)

Pelin: There are alot of definitions of "support" and "support structures" in the book. As far as I know, it has a conceptual/philosophical meaning and practical meaning. Could you explain your approach with examples of your projects?

Celine: I will first try to explain what i mean by Support. Support is based on generosity; it is not a critical category, in the sense that while it is critical, it is not a category in itself as it can be applied to and work across and over other categories. Support can be defined as a type of relationship between people, objects, social forms and political structures, in the same way that participation, or conflict, are other forms of relations; each proposes a specific mode and language of operation, and opens towards further relations. Support however, promotes particular investigations in how we might work together towards change, and becomes critical in allowing a form of political imagination to take place, both as a position and a practice; it invites readings and inhabitations of relationships between power structures, social realities and institutional forms.

There are of course many forms of support, but nothing is inherently supportive as much as nothing is inherently conflictual. Support can occur in the interstices of cultural structures or society, in its ad-hoc formations and encounters. Support only exists with a ‘for’ immediately following it, an add-on, a means-to-an-end, an adjunct. It is sometimes hard to recognize as it takes up a position of mediation and organization, which inevitably recedes in the background; it is a practice which uses weakness and negotiation, and as such functions through a language between the ad-hoc and the temporary.

Support, I think, allows us to think towards an equalizing movement, and this is perhaps its most important aspect. What I mean by this is that it is a carrier for inter-dependency as a form of re-equalization. The proposition of support, therefore, is to transform what we produce by revisiting the way we do things, our modes of production, and by rethinking the very processes through which we operate, through the practice of supporting. Defining a relationship such as support aims at a different category for action- it is concerned with how the political is staged and performed, the inherent ideology of frames and display, organizational forms, appropriation, dependency and temporariness.

Then more specifically in terms of my practice, and how I address these questions, I work, broadly speaking, with art and architecture, and combine a number of approaches from developing possibilities for ‘supporting’ (the work of others, forms of political imaginary, existing and fictional realities) to broader enquiries into forms of commonality and discursive sites, resulting in projects merging exhibition, politics, fiction, public space and whatever else feels urgent at the time. I have been interested in the role and nature of what I call ‘support’ through three specific, yet parallel and simultaneous strands. The first one is thinking the role of support through the performative and the theatrical, as stages and staging devices through projects like Alterity Display (O’Hana Gallery, London, 2004), Theatre Pieces (stage/public plaza at Tate Triennial, London, 2006), and Green Room (White House) (a temporary public square/theatre in 4’33’’, Bregenzer Kunstverein, 2007). The second one addresses support through structures, with the 10-phase project Support Structure, with artist-curator Gavin Wade (various sites, 2003-2009), resulting in my recently published book Support Structures (Sternberg Press, 2009), which is both a project and the creation of the first bibliography, or reader, for a type of practice. Finally, the third movement explores forms of commons and commonality, making a small, specific cut into the large question of how to live autonomously and together by focusing on old and new enclosures, forms of communing and of being in common. This aspect of my practice focuses on property relations and the quotidian, as for example in Life Always Escapes (Generosity is the new political, Wysing Arts, 2009), and the text piece of the same title (e-flux journal, 11/2009).

Pelin: How architectural practice could function as a cultural criticism? How the conflict does appear between building practice in mainstream architecture and the knowledge production of research architecture? How contemporary architectural research practice would affect critical thinking, criticism in architecture? Does cultural criticism of architecture is creating its own institutional body?

Celine: I think perhaps this book is a good example of what you mean. Support Structures is a manual, but in truth it is also a compendium. It gathers together a broad variety of essays, images and small works that address the notion of support in relationship to what we do, in cultural practice; the book as a whole is also the culmination of a collaborative project entitled 'Support Structure', undertaken by myself with Gavin Wade between 2003-2009. This relationship is important, because it also means that there no separation, or difference between the projects (physical, object-based, ect...) produced by a practice and the ideas, concepts, and theoretical possibilities produced by it. Perhaps this is what is truly designated by the notion of interdisciplinarity. It is for example true that my practice is extremely varied in nature (and manifests itself in things both physical and theoretical as I just explained above) and sites, as is my background (in architecture, music, art, history and theory), and an important aspect of my work is that it takes place outside and across traditional disciplinary boundaries. However, it is Roland Barthes’s notion of interdisciplinarity that it strives to instantiate: “Interdisciplinary work, so much discussed these days, is not about confronting already constituted disciplines (none of which, in fact, is willing to let itself go). To do something interdisciplinary it’s not enough to choose a ‘subject’ (a theme) and gather around it two or three sciences. Interdisciplinarity consists in creating a new object that belongs to none”. Not owned by anyone yet, it dwells in the public domain, which does not guarantee anything except that there is still some room to claim rather than discipline its meaning into existence.

Pelin: How to use the book, what is the structure of the book?

Celine: This book was produced by and constitutes the last phase of the ‘Support Structure’ project, and includes its corresponding set of works, actions, and manifestations. The ten phases of ‘Support Structure’ form a process of investigation into the methodologies and conceptual devices offered by thinking through what a support structure could or might be. The cumulative parts of this project forms a research archive, with a set of terms and possibilities for thinking through support outside the traditional terms that are assigned to it. It is present in this book as an art project and the primary research towards developing the argument that support, though often unrecognized or belittled, is an important, productive, and qualitative work.

The book is also a discursive site, and was developed as a reader, a compendium, a supporting structure for the creation of support’s discourse, to house other forms of support structures, and to revive, not a subject in the taxonomic sense, but a particular way of engaging in and with subjects in a desire towards emancipation.

This relationship mirrored on a larger scale throughout the book and that is manifested in the way in which the book is compiled. It is divided in eleven sections and the beginning of each is marked with a red title page which is a step in a methodology (for example: 2. ask a question). Documentation from the longer 'Support structure' project is reproduced on darker yellow paper and the front cover is itself a contents page. In keeping with the spirit of the project there are another two, more detailed contents pages further in, while across the book there are a variety of other paper stocks in use - a bible light paper with red ink text for the 'Directions for Use', a glossy heavier stock for color photographs and a heavy matt white paper for the main body of text, theoretical essays and reference projects. All of the decisions are to support the reader and structure navigation of the various texts and works, enacting the subject under investigation. The architecture of the book is further buttressed by a series of key essays scattered throughout this methodology/manual. Each on of these essays offers a substantial analysis of 'support' in all its different manifestations, with different writers and thinkers addressing the subject from different points of view, disciplines and writing styles. For example Mark Cousins writes on the philosophical aspects of support and says in his essay 'On support'' "Almost all speculative books on politics and political theory seem to me to make a very startling omission: while political theorists are very much in favor of things called principles, when looking through histories of political discourse or theory, the entry 'negotiation' does not appear. That is very strange... Negotiation, I would like to propose, is the most repressed element about the idea of democracy..."


Celine Condorelli: Celine Condorellis practice is concerned with notions of support, developing critical models towards exhibitions and public spaces. She is architect-curator at Eastside Projects, Birmingham and Senior Lecturer, London Metropolitan University. Guest professor at Nüerberg Architecture and Urban Research MA program, www.a42.org