Surface Tension – Supplement No. 1
Following the international success of Surface Tension: Problematics of Site in 2003, Errant Bodies Press announces Surface Tension – Supplements, a book series on site-based practices in art, architecture and performance.

Identifying an intensified concern for place-based production in art and architecture, Surface Tension – Supplements addresses questions of site-specific art, public and architectural design, and location-based practice. With “Supplement No. 1” issues of design activism and the role of media in spatial experience are explored in critical essays by Jennifer Gabrys on Fresh Kills Landfill in New York, Michael Rakowitz on the projects of the Hungarian-based team Big Hope, and by Claudine Isé, curator of “Vanishing Point”, an exhibition at the Wexner Center for the Arts, which questions the role of photography and cinema in depictions of place. In addition field reports by Robin Wilson on new architecture in London, Octavio Camargo on the cultures of interventionist practice in Curitiba Brazil as conveyed through the work of Iliadahomero, Museu do Poste, Guilherme Soares and Goto, and Ken Ehrlich on the infrastructure of signage in Los Angeles as seen through the photographic works of Brandon Lattu. Complementing the articles, documentation of projects by the artist groups Simparch and e-Xplo will be presented, along with projects designed specifically for the book by Kristin Kreider and James O’Leary, London-based artists working with forms of “site-specific writing”.

Surface Tension – Supplement No. 1 presents contemporary site-based practices through writing, documentation, and projects, and actively questions the role such practices might offer in defining contemporary culture and society. The publication aims to follow forms of design through site-specific moments, where artistic practice performs to actively discover, define, and re-create public space.

Brandon Labelle 13/08/2005