Dr Joanna Leah

Acceptance of work for exhibition in London.

This chapter discusses how the author's blubild practice translates methods of graphic scores, dance notation, and Fluxus instruction kits to think through specific acts of embodied drawing to draw out movement data of specific bodies, labour, pedestrian movement, and subjectivities. 'blubilds,' are a playful take on the blueprint. Early blueprints by surveyors were living geometric measurements with rope (Ingold, 2013), activated through equipment and bodies. The blueprint in situ and the dance diagram are fused as a dynamic diagram of drawing actions that are choreographed and embody specific actions. This chapter discusses blubilds as embodied diagrams that draw out specific embodiments in creating and collecting different embodied phenomena in configuring our world.

‘blubilds Diagrams’ drawing ‘with’ action, Ray Lucas, ‘Drawing of, in, and with’, Presentation Panel, Art, Materiality and Representation, RAI, British Museum, London, 2018.

This presentation aims to reflect on drawing as kinetic relations informed by an artistic concept from Rosalind Krauss’s Essay ‘Horizontality’ of 1997 to think about the relationship between body, vision, space and ground in a dynamic set of relationships. Dan Smith’s article ‘Horizontality’ (2006) reflected on what this set of connections could produce in new forms of art. I propose that between choreography and drawing, action and space, there is a kinetic relational import of body, as ‘bodily disturbance’ (Bois & Krauss, 1997: 27), in relation to the horizontal plane as place that can provoke new kinetic phenomena. Trisha Brown’s interdisciplinary practice between drawing and dance, holding the pen with her toe to draw with her body (Eleey, 2008), explored relational aspects of drawing and action and informs how actions are materialised through lines of connection. Horizontality is based on material and dynamic forces and Vanessa Corby (2018) suggests such forces pose ways to think about how relational actions to environment might be materialised. These conceptions inform my approach of lively lines that materialise kinetic phenomena found in place. New Materialist, Karen Barad, emphasises how the interactivity of materiality in motion produces entangled phenomena that is a ‘dynamic agency’ within ‘the ongoing reconfiguring of the world (Barad in Alaimo & Hekman, 2008: 135). Tim Ingold argues persuasively that since a body makes line, bodies are life-lines which I interpret as lively lines which when drawn out, in place, materialise the lived movements of place as distinct kinetic relations.

Drawn to Time, selected by guest curator Susan Kemenyffy, accompanies the Drawing Research Network‘s 2021 Temporal Drawing series of research presentations organised by the Drawing Research Group (DRG) at Loughborough University.

Ecologies of Drawing: In Situ, selected by guest curator Sara Schneckloth, accompanies the Drawing Research Network‘s 2022 Ecologies of Drawing series of research presentations organised by the Drawing Research Group (DRG) at Loughborough University.

Edgelands, coined by Marion Shoard, are liminal places. Like Marc Augé's non-places that result from global and capital production; Edgelands are the waste underbelly of this expansion. Ubiquitous, their matrix-like veins are characterized by activities of dog walkers, kite flyers, graffiti, parkour, and risk takers alongside foragers and photographers. Represented as 'ruin porn,' melancholic pasts, and the subterranean activities of trespass and vandalism, Shoard, in a 'call to arms,' asked for new value and representation of Edgelands that did not rely on the click of a camera for the proliferation of melancholic images. It is the mobile phone, GoPro, or body cams with the ability to be in those activities on the move that creates new imaginative encounters and a new stream of a dynamic dissemination of Edgeland activities. My creative project “blubilds” examines inside Edgelands movements; as Tim Ingold states, to be entangled and part of the lifelines of those that live there. “Blubilds” are the blueprint lifted off the paper, a live score, a dance diagram where movements taken from the bodies that occupy those places become part of the notation of my embodied diagram, akin to Emma Cocker's work on movement systems in choreographic figures. “Blubilds” are short films, serial and processual photographs that capture the process of intersections rather than single images. This paper concludes that “blubilds” perform intersecting movements between site and artist to construct new liminal fissures and minor gestures through mediated representations to synchronously break past representations and provoke new connections to rethink Edgelands as our inverted city.

An expanded drawing exhibition exploring drawing as an agent of change following current dialogues on how drawing is entwined with environments in events and encounters to create new intersections of conversations and conditions of drawing and ecologies.

Using drawing as a tool to explore the relationship of architecture and the body, current work extends the horizontal line into spaces to map how we can transform our gaze. This in turn asks how we might adopt methods which activate spaces as memory and use these spaces as a repository for works that activate a culture specific to drawing edges.

Artist website

This output covers Blubilds, a drawing methodology between choreography – diagrammatic drawing – writing – site to draw out topologies and ecologies by which to reveal the complexities of a site. Blubilds draws on and re-examines notions of Formlessness Bois & Krauss, 1997), which adopts material forces to interrogate what is low and undervalued, aligned with New Materialist approaches to forces that investigate ‘dynamic agencies’. Blubilds poetic and political disturbances from within sites foster new inter-relational configurations of spatial and temporal encounters, complex movement systems and patterns of material forces to resist established representations of place and ecologies. This method has been applied to interrogating Edgelands, first coined as rural/urban wilds of our cities coined by Marion Shoard 2001, which has expanded to encompass broader interpretations of the intentional engagement with landscapes to express controversial voices, excluded voices human and non-human to draw out specific embodiments and ecologies of a site such as Women and bodies of water in maritime Edgelands. Blubilds frame drawing forces into a dance diagram approach to expanded drawing practices to force a crack into the fabric of sites, their interpretations and representations to rethink them. Blubilds have been disseminated via: DRN Drawing Research Network international conference Affect and Agency, 2023, foiled, Ecologies of Drawing in Situ, DRN, 2022; blu carrier, 2021 Susan Kemenyffy guest curator, Drawn to Time, International Online Exhibitions, DRN (Drawing Research Network), Loughborough University; movement analysis, Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, Trinity Buoy Wharf, London 2023; blubilds performance ‘Edgelands Echo’, Path Between, Leeds Light Night 2023, ‘Edgelands Twists as Liminal Fissures’, paper presentation, AMPS (Architecture, Media, Politics Society) Representing Pasts Visioning Futures Conference Dec 2022; Joanna Leah, 'blubilds; drawing diagrammatic stains', Publication, Drawing: Research, Theory, Practice, Volume 7. Issue 2. Oct 2022. This has contributed to being part of larger international research group Drawology (DRN).

This presentation aims to reflect on drawing as kinetic relations informed by an artistic concept from Rosalind Krauss’s Essay ‘Horizontality’ of 1997 to think about the relationship between body, vision, space and ground in a dynamic set of relationships. Dan Smith’s article ‘Horizontality’ (2006) reflected on what this set of connections could produce in new forms of art. I propose that between choreography and drawing, action and space, there is a kinetic relational import of body, as ‘bodily disturbance’ (Bois & Krauss, 1997: 27), in relation to the horizontal plane as place that can provoke new kinetic phenomena. Trisha Brown’s interdisciplinary practice between drawing and dance, holding the pen with her toe to draw with her body (Eleey, 2008), explored relational aspects of drawing and action and informs how actions are materialised through lines of connection. Horizontality is based on material and dynamic forces and Vanessa Corby (2018) suggests such forces pose ways to think about how relational actions to environment might be materialised. These conceptions inform my approach of lively lines that materialise kinetic phenomena found in place. New Materialist, Karen Barad, emphasises how the interactivity of materiality in motion produces entangled phenomena that is a ‘dynamic agency’ within ‘the ongoing reconfiguring of the world (Barad in Alaimo & Hekman, 2008: 135). Tim Ingold argues persuasively that since a body makes line, bodies are life-lines which I interpret as lively lines which when drawn out, in place, to materialise the lived movements of place as distinct kinetic relations.

Record of bodies of practice research and artworks including current research practice

The methods draw on and situate notions of formlessness, which values what is low and undervalued, in Edgelands as a spatial practice. Edgelands are dispersed as disorderly drosscape poised as formless zones first conceived by George Bataille and later the curated Formless project by Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind Krauss (1996 – 97). Drawing on Krauss’s methodology ‘Horizontality’, the heart of the Formless project, Joanna Leah extends ‘Horizontality’ via practice-led processes called along horizontality. These form diagrammatic and choreographic actions with installations to challenge existing activities in Edgelands taking Krauss’s ‘Horizontality’ outside the four walls of the gallery to Edgelands. These interventions, termed blubilds, act like a cut into the fabric of Edgelands culture to open them up for ways to act in and rethink them.   Edgelands Activator was disseminated via: Edgelands Arcade, an installation project commissioned by York council for York Illuminated and Leeds Light Night (2014) reaching audiences of over 2000; ‘A Processional Installation for Our Edgelands’, published in Arts In Society, Common Ground Publishing, on activation as a procession through Edgelands; and It’s so serious doing the twist (2016), a film screening and paper presentation at AHRA Feminisms & Architecture conference (2016), KTH Institute, Stockholm.   Research offered an original method, blubilds, a choreographic encounter to open up the sites of Edgelands as valuable tributaries in the formation of our social and cultural engagement with the city. The work could have potential to challenge the dominant representations and activities of Edgelands and expand the range of activity, and social identities occupying Edgelands.

‘Edgelands Arcade’ The ‘Edgelands Arcade’ is an engraved Greenhouse which acts as a magic lantern for the edgelands; rural urban arcades reminiscent of city scapes; modern architecture and sacred geometry; progress and flat pack housing. Etched panes reflect back our waste sites on the undervalued edges of our cities. The Greenhouse stands on the edge nearest to the rural/urban ideal, a valued creative scrub waste. ‘Edgelands Arcade’ is an outdoor light and sculptural installation shown for Leeds Light Night (2014) and at Memorial Gardens, Duncombe Place as part of SPARK Illuminating York (2014). Greenhouse was funded and procured by York Council.

Exhibition and published booklet, funded by Leeds Beckett University for LARC. ‘Oh Captain, my captain’– the familiar poetic refrain from Walt Whitman (1865) used in the film, The Dead Poet’s Society, that drew on an ideological terrain of the teacher leading innovation and stimulating students into a lively culture. It’s a pedagogical sieve!

This article charts the territories of the blueprint to inquire how it can become an artist blueprint and a model for artistic activity in Edgelands spaces (rural/urban fringes). It is a response to working with Rosalind’s Krauss’s horizontality, a spatial mapping method, and Gilles Deleuze’s theories on the diagram to propose how a diagrammatic approach can be used as artistic activity in Edgeland sites. Edgelands is a term introduced by Marion Shoard to define rural/urban-neglected zones that are unnoticed and undervalued at the edges of England’s built environment. The paper sets up a theoretical model as a continuing inquiry of art practice in Edgeland sites. An analysis of the blueprint articulates how it can become a tool for artistic activity and to propose that it could frame Edgelands through a processional spatial model rather than static works. The method is interdisciplinary, occupying the territory between art and architecture as a critical spatial practice. It considers how an architectural spatial model, as an artist’s tool, can act as a catalyst for further activity. The line as a mapping tool defines diagrams and can be extended as a diagrammatic drawing practice that centralizes the body in blueprint activity. I explore how this extends the possibility of the blueprint through procession, to extend authorship, to propose a processional schema. Therefore, this paper discusses the nature of the model as a result of working in Edgelands, to propose a procession of activity as an archi-spatial model.

Funded by Leeds Beckett University to attend and participate in the Architecture & Feminisms conference, Stockholm, Sweden 2016. Presentation of Paper & Diptych Film, both with the title ‘It’s so serious doing the twist’. . Key areas: critical spatial practice, feminist performance art, edgelands practice, spatio art/architectural practice, drawing practices, spatiality and ecriture, agrammatical and aspatial methods.

Edgelands, coined by Marion Shoard, are liminal places. Like Marc Augé's non-places that result from global and capital production; Edgelands are the waste underbelly of this expansion. Ubiquitous, their matrix-like veins are characterized by activities of dog walkers, kite flyers, graffiti, parkour, and risk takers alongside foragers and photographers. Represented as 'ruin porn,' melancholic pasts, and the subterranean activities of trespass and vandalism, Shoard, in a 'call to arms,' asked for new value and representation of Edgelands that did not rely on the click of a camera for the proliferation of melancholic images. It is the mobile phone, GoPro, or body cams with the ability to be in those activities on the move that creates new imaginative encounters and a new stream of a dynamic dissemination of Edgeland activities. My creative project “blubilds” examines inside Edgelands movements; as Tim Ingold states, to be entangled and part of the lifelines of those that live there. “Blubilds” are the blueprint lifted off the paper, a live score, a dance diagram where movements taken from the bodies that occupy those places become part of the notation of my embodied diagram, akin to Emma Cocker's work on movement systems in choreographic figures. “Blubilds” are short films, serial and processual photographs that capture the process of intersections rather than single images. This paper concludes that “blubilds” perform intersecting movements between site and artist to construct new liminal fissures and minor gestures through mediated representations to synchronously break past representations and provoke new connections to rethink Edgelands as our inverted city.

A artist research poster for conversation provocation on 'blubilds' as a methodology of producing a live score in situ based on diagrammatic and embodied drawing methods.

This project adopts the concept of a dance diagram such as Andy Warhol’s Fox Trot (1962) introduced by Rosalind Krauss in her writing on the relationship of material forces in a diagrammatic structure to create a model of notation with actions and objects derived from Edgelands. Coined by Marion Shoard, Edgelands are post-industrial cityscapes, a typology of abandon, dereliction and decay. Shoard notes these sites are characterized by creative cultural practices of photography and graffiti; urban explorers, parkour. My Blubilds project aimed to challenge these cultural practices of parkour and graffiti to provoke new engagement in those sites. To this end, I apply the concept of Rosalind Krauss’s resistant diagram and gravity I adapted from Formless: A User’s Guide (Bois and Krauss 1997). Gravity is a force of undoing to remake spaces – and I draw with my body and equipment to facilitate gravity within a dance diagram to create a new space. This contrasts the cultural practices such as Graffiti and parkour and breaks with those existing activities to tag, mark and leave a new trace in Edgelands. Blubilds draw a live embodied diagram, based on the movement patterns found in Edgeland sites, since ‘action’ is to draw a line with the body. Tim Ingold’s approach to drawing informs my perspective that lines of movement that draw (in) place engage with the lived narratives of those places. Ingold suggests that the narratives that make place are created by entangled lines created by movement; furthermore, to ‘draw out’ – as in Douglas Rosenberg’s (2012) phrase – suggests that drawing in place ‘draws-out’ new spaces. Blue is emblematic as a nod to Krauss’s ‘rude noise, the blueprint and the acts of Graffiti’, it becomes Blubilds – a dynamic diagrammatic stain.

Wise Women Exhibition and symposium