#01-#06 Crabwise

Abstract

By moving sideways, this flyer series (1HEX), queries the possibility of “terrestrial” mapping (Bruno Latour) as a contemporary bid on Ethics. The series proposes—moving crabwise—an query of Baruch Spinoza’s notion of substance, from a vantage point of furniture.

More specifically, Bjørn Jørund Blikstad’s PhD project ‘level up’. The flyers explore the potential of disjuncture and exchange between writing and making, theory and practice, cabinet and wardrobe (exploring the latter in their potential as theoretical actants).

The flyer-set is a complex result of a journey with Bjørn Jørund Blikstad to Tørberget—the place of his family-origins in Trysil—where his parents, Elisabeth and Vidar, currently reside. A region where bears and wolves still thrive, and given to experiments in living.

It was implicit that this journey (June 5th-7th 2021) would be our new ground zero. Also in the sense of providing a fresh start—after Covid 19—from the queries in a number of other flyer sets (HEX) on KHiODA, enfolded. Concluding with a reflection from resilience in the archive.

Though the query is devoted to design—in the relation between art and craft—the final flyer (#06) is devoted to resilience and the archive: featuring an illustration, with credits given to the National Library, included this year in the Catalogue of Art & Craft,

This is partly due to the occasional teaching I do with Prof. Jan Pettersson in his printmaking class. And partly owing to engagements this year with the Dpt. of images, conservation and special prints at the National Library archive this year.

Theory, in this way it is explored here—as theory development—is at once discrete and conjoint, in a methodological framework conversing not only with Spinoza, but with Agamben’s ideas on animality and signatures. With a bid on art as a ‘first theory’.

A key-stone for the query featuring in this set is Bjørn Jørund Blikstad’s research on Renaissance artist Tilman Riemenschneider, which resulted in our coining a glossary of a phenomenon—the Riemenschneider effect—featuring the tangle of the crafts(wo)man, the artist and the designer.