Deep surface: On the situation of drawing

Banou, Sophia

Abstract

In the essay ‘The Gesture of Writing’, Vilém Flusser describes writing as a ‘penetrating gesture that informs a surface’. Understanding drawing as another form of ‘superficial’ graphic inscription, this paper looks into the implications of this material expression within the drawing as an object and a signifier. This essay addresses the process of architectural representation as a series of consecutive re-sitings. Taking into account not only the material situation of the drawing but also the virtual and physical loci of fabrication that precede it, the essay discusses the role of the drawing surface as an operative agent of reterritorialization. Drawing from the concept of site-specificity as it has emerged in art (Kwon) the paper suggest that the drawing surface constitutes not merely a new form of site, that is, a hyperreal counterpart of an origin (Baudrillard), but an intertextual accumulation of a number of sites that consecutively emerge in the transcriptive operations that occur in the process. This both projective and projected situation is further investigated through the author’s installation Draw of a Drawing, a ‘re-sited’ representation of the city of Edinburgh. Considered here a form of ‘drawing in space’, installation is treated as a means of illustrating the depth of the drawing, directly expressing the relation between the spatial and the superficial by bringing into appearance the negotiations that occur between surface and viewer.

Citation

Banou, S. (2015). Deep surface: On the situation of drawing

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 12, 2015
• Publication Date: Nov 1, 2015
• Journal: Inflection
• Print ISSN: 2199-8094
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 2
• Pages: 76-83
• Keywords: architectural drawing, projection, surface of drawing, architectural representation, design research, by design research, installation, site-specificity