Greetings from the Void. 

Are you an artist / curator working mainly with public installation/performance art? Are you interested in the shifting social, political, and spatial dialogues of Berlin as informing agents to your practice? If so, I would very much like to talk to you.

I am an American social anthropologist and visual artist in Berlin this summer for a collaborative residency project and also working on my own research project that deals with the topic of the void in urban spaces, particularly in the sites of Berlin and Detroit. I am interested in the work of curators, architects, and practicing artists that make use of these empty spaces, either by organizing or installing their work in the public sphere. 

I am especially interested in the work of artists, curators, architects in Berlin who install their work or are pursuing projects in places currently experiencing an “in –between” condition : such as construction sites, abandoned buildings, or spaces such as Tempelhof Park or Spree Park, whose future purpose remains uncertain. 

If you are a practicing artist, curator, architect or a director of an Art Organization in Berlin whose work fits the descriptions above, and you have the time in the next few weeks (September 1 to the 21st) to speak with me about your practice, please contact me at abucknell@uchicago.edu. I would like to meet you for a coffee or drink to discuss your work in detail and ask you a few questions related to the topic of the urban void, as an informal interview. I wouldn’t ask for more than 30 minutes of your time, unless of course you’d like to say more.

With your permission, your responses and your practice (including color images of your work, selected by you) will be included in this research project, which will take the form of a publication (upcoming, 2015), and a digital archive of the project, available online in the spring of 2015. 

Very looking forward to meeting and chatting with you. If you have any questions at all about the project, please feel free to ask.  I would like for this to be a very open, enjoyable, and stimulating conversation!

Cheers for now,
Alice


What Can the Void Do? Interview call for artists, curators, architects for interdisciplinary research project

This multi-media, multi-disciplinary project investigates the role of contemporary art in constructing new narratives of social experience within both the built and imaginary environments of Detroit and Berlin, paying particular attention to the ways in which visual 
and performance artists can (re)activate the space and politics of emptiness in the modern cityscape. This experiential-experimental project, taking the form of both a publication (upcoming, 2015) and a website, also explores the ways in which abandonment and urban voids have in turn become aestheticized; the relationship between history, fantasy, memory; and the productive and hazardous possibilities that shape these changing social, spatial, and visual dialogues.

Check in periodically to see this project unfold in its first stages (written text) here:

and then move into its web-based, interactive formations, iterations, conceptualizations  (this page will be updated accordingly.)

What Can the Void Do? The Politics and Aesthetics of Emptiness in the Urban Imaginary

Hello,

Here are several examples of recent illustration commissions I have completed for various publications, organizations, and events. 

All projects take at least 1 week to complete. When submitting inquiries, requests, or commissions please be aware of that time constraint.

For more samples, visit alicebucknell.com

Pricing is of course dependent on choice of color, size, and complexity of the commissioned work. 

I am happy to complete bona fide (i.e. free) commissions to books, publications etc. that I consider interesting or inspiring. Contact bucknella@gmail.com with any requests or proposals! 

Illustrative work for magazine covers, event flyers, novels etc. 

Swandive
2013
Resin, welded steel, bird feathers, acrylic
20" x 15" x 54"

Swandive

A Timeless Way of Building
2014
MDF, mylar
48" x 48" x 48"
A week-long interactive installation on the University of Chicago's main campus. Funded by the Festival of the arts.

A Timeless Way of Building

The letters included below are two selections from a series of letters born from brief notes made about Vienna and its occupants, recorded in Oct. – Dec. 2013, while the author was living in the city and attending classes at the University of Vienna. They are not intended to serve as universal truisms of the Viennese culture: rather these letters aim to open up a space in which the social space of Vienna can be placed alongside its cultural heritage and further dialogue about either topic might be had. Three months is enough time to fall in love with a city’s culture but not to know it as well: therefore, these observations and theories are to be taken as such, ideally with a pinch of good humor on the side.
<img src="https://scontent-b-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/t31.0-8/737320_10202310586741521_1568752209_o.jpg" />

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Alice Leonie Bucknell