Concrete and Ink Book Launch
What role does storytelling play in urban imaginaries? How do these imaginaries converge or diverge from reality? How can cities be constructed, reconstructed or deconstructed through storytelling? Who tells the story? Who are the characters? Is a city or a building a setting or a character in the story? Can we use stories to test ideas for future architecture?
TICKETS £17 INC. LIVE LAUNCH EVENT + COPY OF THE BOOK
Stories are, and have been, part of all cultures around the world: from myths to TV series, from fables to radio plays, from epic poems to theatre, from novels to films, from oral histories to video games. Fictional stories have the power to sweep one into a different world, at times to a vision of the future or distant past. And, just like buildings, stories are constructed.
Concrete and Ink: Storytelling and the Future of Architecture, edited by Marta Michalowska and Justinien Tribillon, and published in partnership with nai010 publishers, Rotterdam, brings together commissioned writing in fiction and non-fiction, a graphic story, and interviews, narrating buildings, housing estates and cities, between utopias and dystopias, through imagination, dreaming, magic, games and concrete realities, across past and present, and into the future.
Contributors: Adania Shibli/ Alia Trabucco Zerán/ Alison Irvine/ Bedwyr Williams/ Ben Okri/ Crystal Bennes/ Jodie Azhar/ Justinien Tribillon/ Marta Michalowska/ Matthew Dooley/ Meghana Bisineer/ Mona Kareem/ Natasha Lehrer/ Nina Leger/ Sophie Hughes,/ Sophie Mackintosh.
To celebrate the launch of Concrete and Ink: Storytelling and the Future of Architecture, Theatrum Mundi is hosting a virtual evening featuring readings by Ben Okri, Nina Leger and Adania Shibli, and a screening of the short film Dust by artist Meghana Bisineer, and a discussion.
LIVE PROGRAMME
15th June – 18.30 – 20.00 BST
Introduction by one of the editors – Marta Michalowska
Reading by Ben Okri of extracts from his short story The House Below
Screening of Dust by Meghana Bisineer
5:30 mins | Single channel video with sound | made in Bangalore, India | 2020
Observing the rituals of cleansing the entrance to her home, and her body, the departed soul laments to her sisters who perform her last rites. Featuring a traditional folk labour song in Kannada sung by Shilpa Mudabi.
Reading by Nina Leger (in French and English) of extracts from her piece The Life and Death and Life of Antipolis
Reading by Adania Shibli (in Arabic and English) of extracts from her story Word War
Discussion around the themes of the book chaired by Marta Michalowska
BIOGRAPHIES
Adania Shibli (b. 1974, Palestine) writes fiction and non-fiction. Her latest novel Tafsil Thanawi (Beirut: Al-Adab, 2017, translated into English as Minor Detail published by Fitzcarraldo Edition/New Directions, 2020) was the finalist for the National Book Award 2020. She has been teaching part-time at Birzeit University, Palestine, and is a researcher in cultural studies and visual culture.
Ben Okri is a poet, novelist, and playwright. His novel The Famished Road won the Booker Prize in 1991. His works have been translated into twenty-six languages. His book Astonishing the Gods was chosen by the BBC as one of the most influential novels written over the last 300 years. His latest novel is The Freedom Artist and his latest volume of stories is Prayer for the Living, both published in 2019. A new collection of poems A Fire in my Head was published in January 2021.
Meghana Bisineer (b.1978) is an Indian-born animation artist, curator and educator. She works between London, UK and Oakland, California. Her practice traverses artist collaborations, experimental film and installation across galleries, art spaces and festivals. Her films have been shown internationally. Since 2016, she has been Assistant Professor of Animation and Graduate Fine Arts at the California College of the Arts, SF, USA.
Nina Leger is a writer and an art critic. She lives between Paris and Marseille where she teaches art history at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Her critically acclaimed novel Mise en Pièces (Gallimard, 2017) won the Prix Anaïs Nin, and was published in English by Granta as The Collection (2019). Her other writings include texts for artists’ books, exhibition catalogues and art history journals.
Marta Michalowska is a curator, producer, artist and writer based in London. She has recently completed her debut novel Sketching in Ashes, supported by Arts Council England through the Developing Your Creative Practice programme, and is currently writing her second one A Tram to the Beach, both exploring contested territories. Michalowska is Associate Director of Theatrum Mundi and Director of The Wapping Project.