NEWS AND UPDATES
PARALLEL HANGZHOU
From 18 Nov 2023 - 16 March 2024, Parallel Institute presents BEYOND LENSES 意镜, taking over the whole gallery, the group exhibition features contributions from core faculty members of the Royal College of Art’ s Photography department and a selection of Chinese alumni graduated in the past two decades.
Presented in a cohesive manner within the space, the exhibition embodies the RCA’ s pedagogical ethos of inclusivity and collaborative learning since its inception, offering viewers a comprehensive perspective from diverse vantage points. It is evident, from the works of the RCA faculty, the very first Chinese international student Zhang O, to the most recent graduates, that their creations not only mirror their respective eras but also engage in a rich, non-linear dialogue, delving into the intricate nexus between individual identity, society, and nature.
Rut Blees Luxemburg, The Weight of an Image, photographic cast concrete, 10x16 cm, 2021
Rut Blees Luxemburg, Art Lessons, Photographic print on silk, 2011-2023
CITIES OF THE NIGHT AT RIBA LONDON FESTIVAL OF ARCHITECTURE
In daytime, most everything is apprehended under the light of just one furiously burning sun. But as the planet turns and daylight fades, we see things coloured by a medley of embers, the jaundiced haze emitted by a sodium streetlight, the pale glow of a screen, the ancient shimmer of deceased stars, and so many other disparate and distant points of illumination. While objects are uniformly presented to vision under one radiant light source during the day, those same objects are seen at night in a luminescent range that has no hierarchical direction.
Urban Night Practice is an artistic investigation into this metamorphic potential that emerges in cities during the night. The artists in this exhibition — Rut Blees Luxemburg, Chooc Ly Tan, and Alisa Oleva — all have practices that are receptive to the possibility of a transformation that is paradoxically rendered most clearly in darkness. As such, the artworks in this show are composed by night but given here as proposals for new ways to navigate and envisage the urban landscape by day.
Elliott Mickleburgh
RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG ON URBAN FORESTS AT PRIX PICTET
German-born, London-based urban landscape photographer Rut Blees Luxemburg joins Prix Pictet on a podcast episode where they discuss urban forests and the secrets of the Silver Birch, an exceptional tree revered for its resilience to pollution and extreme temperatures. Featured in their latest publication Collage, she explores the captivating tree in her series Silver Forest and the idea that nature is a welcome respite from the chaos of city life.
RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG WORK FEATURES in Another Country: British Documentary Photography Since 1945
Another Country offers a lively, vital rethinking of British documentary photography over the last seven decades. This collection includes a diverse range of photographers encompassing images from iconic reportage to photo-text pieces, from self-portraits to political photo-collages, including Bill Brandt, Sunil Gupta, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Tish Murtha and Rut Blees Luxemburg. Published by Thames & Hudson.
RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG WORK FEATURES IN THE NEW PRIX PICTET BOOK COLLAGE
Prix Pictet newest book, Collage, features Rut Blees Luxemburg work Urban Harvest highlights the work of women photographers nominated for the prize since its foundation in 2008, including Valérie Belin, Joana Choumali and Sally Mann. In this special edition, seventy of the world's leading women photographers address the issue of sustainability through powerful and thought-provoking images.
RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG'S WORK "THE KISS, FFOLLY" IN THE NEW PERMANENT EXHIBITION AT MANCHESTER ART GALLERY
This new display explores the different ways artworks enter the collection and showcases many new works which haven’t yet been on show. In our 200thanniversary year, we are reflecting on how the collection has been formed, how we can best use it and how it might grow in the future.
February 7, 2023 - December 31, 2025
Manchester Art Gallery
RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG WORK "PICCADILLY'S PECCADILLOES" AT HANA BANK'S HQ IN SEOUL KOREA
Exhibition "A close friend I don't know" at Hana Bank's Seoul headquarters with artists Ian Davenport, Rut Blees Luxemburg, Sejin Bae, Sungpil Han and Taekyun Kim.
Hana Bank HQ Seoul Korea
26.04.2022 - 31.07.2023
FUTURE ARCHIVE PUBLICATION EDITED BY RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG
As cities expand and change at accelerating speeds, how can artists and designers engage this epoch of hyper-velocity and materialism as it manifests in urban space?
The Royal College of Art is building a new art and design school, designed by architects Herzog & de Meuron. To develop the creative and pedagogical potentials found within the processes of making the new art school and to consolidate memories of the superseded. Rut Blees Luxemburg devised the Future Archive. In opening up the building site to field study, a group of artists, students, and researchers were brought into close contact with the realities of our contemporary materialism and its social, physical, ethical, and aesthetic dimensions, which are often invisible in the final experience and representation of architecture.
INTERVIEW: RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG ON CONCEPTUALIZING THE RCA'S TRANSFORMATION THROUGH THE FUTURE ARCHIVE
Future Archive is a new publication which gathers artworks, texts, conversations and exhibitions from the Future Archive artistic research laboratory, initiated and led by world-renowned artist and RCA Senior Research Fellow, Rut Blees Luxemburg.
The Future Archive book documents the work of the artistic research laboratory who used the construction site of the RCA’s new Battersea campus, designed by architects Herzog & de Meuron, as an opportunity for field study. The book is a culmination of their work over the four-year construction – representing a diverse range of artworks by RCA staff, students and recent alumni including paintings, photographs, billboards, performances, sculptures and video, as well as exhibitions and publications.
The RCA’s influence is also felt in the book’s design and publication – Future Archive was designed by RCA alumna Emily Schofield (MA Visual Communication, 2020) and is published on 1 June 2022 by FOLIUM, an independent arts publisher founded by two RCA alumni, Stewart Hardie and Harry Gammer-Flitcroft (MA Photography, 2018).
Structured into three main sections – Memory, Construction and Proposal – the book goes beyond the conventional archive, in looking to the future of how the Battersea campus may be inhabited by students.
To celebrate the opening of the RCA’s new Battersea campus, RCA spoke with Rut Blees Luxemburg about the collaborative approach taken by RCA students, revealing the parts of a construction site that often go unseen and an upcoming Future Archive exhibition at the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA).
FUTURE ARCHIVE OPENING AT RIBA
Luncheon at the RCA, Yushi Li, 2018
1 June - 9 July 2022
Future Archive is a bespoke publication and exhibition that gathers artworks, texts, and conversations from the Future Archive artistic research laboratory, led by artist and RCA Senior Research Fellow, Rut Blees Luxemburg.
Future Archive explores the construction of the RCA's new Battersea campus – designed by architects Herzog & de Meuron – as a location for field study, generating diverse artworks including paintings, photographs, billboards, performances, sculptures, videos and publications. The opportunity to work on a construction site provided artists with a productive conduit for exploring urban transformation, memory and the active construction of a future archive.
DIJON EXHIBITION: THE DARK INTESTINE OF NICOLAS LEDOUX
Date: Mercredi 16 Mars 2022 à 18h30
Lieu: Maison de Rhénanie-Palatinat
29 rue Buffon, 2100 Dijon
En Partenariat avec le Goethe-Institut et la Région Bourgogne-Franche-Comté
AN ARTS COUNCIL COLLECTION TOURING EXHIBITION
The World We Live In: Art and the Urban Environment: a new touring exhibition of painting, sculpture, photography, and film that explores themes from urban development to migration and the relationship between inner cities and suburbia.
Artists featured include Michael Andrews, David Austen, Rut Blees Luxemburg, Eduardo Paolozzi, Suzanne Treister and Rachel Whiteread.
TOUR DATES & VENUES
5 February - 2 May 2022
Leicester Museum & Art Gallery
21 May - 4 September 2022
Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery
18 September 2022 - 1 January 2023
Glynn Vivian Art Gallery
THE DARK INTESTINE OF NICOLAS LEDOUX AT GALLERY DOMINIQUE FIAT IN THE MARAIS, PARIS
11 NOV - 23 DEC 2021
In Arc-et-Senans lies the gates to the underworld, a semicircular fragment of a parallel reality, an alchemical symbol, a tinderbox of revolution, a pastoral factory, a time crystal, or a prescient example of an artist defining an aesthetics of work.
Dennis Goodwin
Rut Blees Luxemburg's new photographic work 'The Dark Intestine of Nicolas Ledoux' is a sideways approach towards the French revolutionary architect's oeuvre.
Revolving around the Saline Royale, his hybrid factory - part panopticon, part anticipated ruin - Blees Luxemburg exhibits nocturnal chimera of the imperfect Utopia.
Ledoux's interest in the eye, the organ of visual pleasure as well as of surveillance, anticipated photography and its double-agency.
What is this?
This is the essence of architecture, revealed to the eye of a gentle donkey.
In an unlucky strike - it is all the photographer's fault -
the eye morphs into a glaringly dead pupil reproduced on a cigarette box.
Alexander García Düttmann
SOLO EXHIBITION ‘MANIFESTO FOR THE NIGHT’ AT INDIA PHOTO FESTIVAL
19 NOV - 19 DEC 2021 / 11AM - 6PM
Rut Blees Luxemburg's Solo Exhibition 'Manifesto fot the Night' is taking place at India Photo Festival, at Hyderabad Date at State Art Gallery Venue.
Night has always been a space of alterity and resistance to the conventions and hierarchies of day. Darkness encourages a different mode of perception, perhaps more reflective, more immersive, more durational. These nocturnal photographs of London suggest that nocturnal perception opens up the possibility of a distinct form of nocturnal cognition - more curious, more permissive, more associative, less hierarchical - opening up questions around the status-quo of our urban experience. This exhibition is supported by the Goethe Zentrum in Hyderabad.
'O' AT THE SPBH LOUNGE AT WEBBER GALLERY, FITZROVIA + PANEL DISCUSSION
Self Publish, Be Happy turned Webber Gallery into a lounge, a place where we can meet and exchange ideas after the long Covid period. The space exhibited new work by artists Felicity Hammond, Gregory Eddi Jones, Rut Blees Luxemburg, Karla Hiraldo Voleau and Carmen Winant, as well as selection of recent MA graduates from UK Universities. The space also functioned as a temporary bookshop featuring new SPBH Editions titles by Carmen Winant, Whitney Hubbs, Gregory Eddi Jones and Duncan Wooldridge, and was furnished with pieces by emerging designers selected by curator Laura Houseley.
During the evenings, the lounge played host to a programme of free events which included the first meeting of SPBH Monthly Book Club, discussing the new highly awaited book Instructional Photographs: Learning How To Live Now by artist Carmen Winant and an in conversation with writer Duncan Wooldridge with Sarah Pickering, Rut Blees Luxemburg, Tom Lovelace. They talekd about the provocation of Wooldridge’s new book, To Be Determined: Photography and the Future, and asked whether the photograph is as much an object of the future as it is an object of the past?
LONDON DUST IN DUNCAN WOOLDRIDGE'S NEW BOOK
To Be Determined: Photography and the Future is a new book by Duncan Wooldridge which has just been published by SPBH Essays. The chapter London Dust is dedicated to the recent works of Rut Blees Luxemburg.
"Rut Blees Luxemburg's photographs of the city survey its units, capillaries, portals and surfaces. She pays continuous attention to its transformations, her approach modulating as the city turns".
Book available here
RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG IS EXCITED TO BE PRESENTED IN THE LEGENDARY SUPASTORE SERIES BY SARAH STATON AT SOUTH LONDON GALLERY
9 JUL – 5 SEP 2021
Sarah Staton’s SupaStore is a trading platform for artists and ideas. Works by emerging and well-known artists are presented in the SupaStore series – an ever-changing display that has been hosted intermittently by public and private galleries, museums, and independent art spaces across the world.
More info here
ROYAL PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY AWARDEES IN CONVERSATION
Rut Blees Luxemburg HonFRPS
ON 18TH OF MAY, 6PM
In this on-going series of 'in conversations' hear from leading individuals talk about how they use photography as artists, scientists, educators, publishers and curators. All our speakers are recent RPS Award recipients who have been recognised for their contribution to the medium. They are discussing their work with those who know them and their work. Rut Blees Luxemburg HonFRPS in conversation with Sophy Rickett.
Book here
RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG IS A JURY MEMBER FOR ZIMA PHOTO 2021
Rut Blees Luxemburg gave an interview for ZIMA Magazine discussing the brutalist architecture, her relationship with London and some advice for young photographers.
Read full inerview in Russian here
URBAN NIGHT PROJECT : MIDNIGHT SUN OPENS AT BLACK TOWER IN MAY
What makes life in the vertical city so enticing, so seductive, yet also so heavily contested?
Midnight Sun samples how the vertical city is experienced, imagined and sustained through an intimate examination of its everynight spaces and the technologies of night.
In London, real-estate speculation shapes the character of the built environment in ways that in recent years have taken on an intensely vertical form. Emblazoning the vertical fantasy and grounding it within an exhibition, Midnight Sun re-presents and re-configures the nocturnal city through photography, digital media and installations in dialogue with research materials that are drawn from the familiarly-strange encounters with verticality in everyday life. Midnight Sun is an experiment in reckoning with the entangled hi/stories of life in the nocturnal city.
Midnight Sun is initiated by the Urban Night Project — a research collaborative led by urban geographer Casper Laing Ebbensgaard and artist Rut Blees Luxemburg, and addresses current and future challenges of urban, nocturnal living. Midnight Sun has been conceptualised through The Dark Preview, an irregular series of pamphlet-posters that brings together writers and artists to think about and develop tactics for shaping more socially and atmospherically just futures in the urban night.
Midnight Sun features work by Rut Blees Luxemburg, Casper Laing Ebbensgaard, Adam Glibbery & Satu Streatfield, Felicity Hammond, Simone Mudde, Alisa Oleva, Michael Salu and Edu Torres.
RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG CONTRIBUTING EDITOR
INTERIOR REALMS
PUBLISHED BY THEATRUM MUNDI
Against the backdrop of the major shift in working practices, Interior Realms shares new pieces of writing—essays, poems, prose poems, short stories, interviews and audio tracks: the kitchen table, spare bedroom, home office, home studio, garage, shed, bedroom, bathroom, garden, closet and, on one occasion, car productions. All homemade, the works in this collection come from within the space that used to be a niche infrastructure, largely overlooked in studies of culture in cities, and play with the idea of what home is and where it can be found.
The chapter on the urban night is edited by Rut Blees Luxemburg and Casper Laing Ebbensgaard, The Urban Night Project
RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG IN UK BILLBOARD EXHIBITION
DIVISION/REVISION
DIVISION/REVISION brings together sixteen international artists, including Victor Burgin, Larry Achiampong, Jeremy Deller and Rut Blees Luxemburg amongst others for a UK-wide billboard exhibition curated by Uta Kögelsberger.
With everything in such a state of flux it seems fitting that participating artists’ work will appear on sixteen billboards and change daily for sixteen consecutive days in London, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield and Glasgow.
More info here
A HANDFUL OF DUST: FROM THE COSMIC TO THE DOMESTIC
TAIPEI NATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND IMAGES
2021.03.25 - 07.11
Rut Blees Luxemburg's work in landmark exhibition curated by David Campany. It is accompanied by an exhibition catalogue.
SLOWTHAI TALKS ABOUT HIS INFLUENCES
All the while, the cover of his mother’s copy of The Streets’ debut album, Original Pirate Material, became a fascination. Ty’s eyes focused on Mike Skinner’s Clipper lighter logo laid onto the iconic image of Kestrel House, a social housing block in East London, shot on film in 1995 by Rut Blees Luxemburg, a German photographer who told the Fader in 2017 that she “found modernism in these social housing estates, yet [they] were stigmatised”. Ty found his community and their circumstances represented in architectural symbolism. “This is where I come from. This is it,” he thought.
UNHIDDEN
DOMINIQUE FIAT GALLERY, PARIS
NUMÉRO
"Rut Blees Luxemburg suit la transformation d’un quartier motivée par le profit au détriment de ses populations locales".
UNHIDDEN
DOMINIQUE FIAT GALLERY, PARIS
IN FRENCH PRESS
Cathy Rémy writes:
A mix of resistance and utopia, the images of Rut Blees Luxemburg, an artist and professor of urban aesthetics at the Royal College of Art in London, explore the growing importance given to economic interests in our society. Her recent Eldorado Atlas series documents the housing crisis generated by the frantic search for profit in the central district of Old Street in London.
RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG IN THE EXHIBITION LUXURY AND GLAMOUR. THE WILLFULNESS OF THE SUPERFLUOUS
ARP MUSEUM
Panoptical Sublime, new work by Rut Blees Luxemburg, will be in the new show at Arp Musem, Germany, which will open on the 14th of February.
RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG IN MY C20 DETAIL PUBLISHED BY THE TWENTIETH CENTURY SOCIETY
A publication collecting significant yet subjective design details of the 20th century by 50 architects, designers, and writers. Edited by Catherine Croft, Thaddeus Zupančič and David Attwood of the Twentieth Century Society
My C20 detail is the white metal newspaper pipe - a modenist intrusion - roughly concreted on top of many stone walls on the graite island of Jersey. This uncanny object punctuating the rural scene is the receptacle for the Jersey Evening Post...
RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG IN UNHIDDEN AT DOMINIQUE FIAT GALLERY PARIS
(UN)HIDDEN, a group show at Dominique Fiat gallery in Paris : Rut BLEES LUXEMBURG, Nicola LO CALZO, Chantal REGNAULT, Sue WILLIAMSON. January 13 – February 27, 2021. 16 Rue des Coutures Saint-Gervais, Paris.
THE DARK INTESTINE OF NICOLAS LEDOUX BY RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG IN THE PUBLIKA FENESTRO SERIES AT FILET LONDON
The work is on view at FILET in Hoxton London. Filet is a space for experimental art production founded by Rut Blees Luxemburg and Uta Kögelsberger.
RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG'S WORK IS PART OF THE EXHIBITION TOKYO CURIOSITY 2020 SHIBUYA
Rut Blees Luxemburg's A Girl from Elsewhere is on view from December onwards at the Bunkamura museum.
RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG ON THE JURY FOR T3 PHOTO FESTIVAL TOKYO
T3 PHOTO FESTIVAL TOKYO was launched in the Ueno Park and its environs in May 2017 as the first international outdoor photo festival in Tokyo. The second installment of this festival takes place in Kyobashi district adjacent to Tokyo Station and the Ginza and Nihonbashi.
RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG HAS BEEN AWARDED THE HONORARY FELLOWSHIP OF THE ROYAL PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN
Nine Honorary Fellowships are awarded to Rut Blees Luxemburg, James Barnor, Edward Burtynsky, Sunil Gupta, Melanie Manchot, Gideon Mendel, Tracey Moffatt, Richard Mosse and Shirin Neshat. These leading photographic artists are recognised for their innovative work of the highest calibre.
Rut Blees Luxemburg in front of the Silver Forest, her permanent public work in Victoria Street, Westminster
TADEJ ZUPANČIČ on the work of RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG in Outsider, Slovenia
RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG new work THE DARK INTESTINE on Ledoux's revolutionary Saline Royale in the Journal of Civic Architecture
With essays by:
Casper Laing Ebbensgaard: Bachelard, Bakhtin and the Architectural Colonic
Dennis Goodwin: Factory, Utopia
RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG in Norwegian magazine Objektiv No 20
http://www.objektiv.no
RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG - 24/7 Artist Gallery Talk at SOMERSET HOUSE
3rd February 2020, 13:00-13:30
RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG - 24/7 at SOMERSET HOUSE
A major exhibition exploring the non-stop nature of modern lives.
31 October 2019 - 23rd February 2020
A host of international contemporary artists and designers will hold a mirror up to a world in which we are sleeping less, complex systems are exerting control, and the pull of the screen is disrupting our instincts to daydream and pay attention to the world around us, and each other. The exhibition is inspired by the book of the same title by essayist Jonathan Crary.
Contributors include Marcus Coates, Mat Collishaw, Harun Farocki, Pierre Huyghe, Rut Blees Luxemburg, Kelly Richardson, Pilvi Takala, Addie Wagenknecht, Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard.
RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG as STIMULI for LIVERDAY at the METABOLIC MUSEUM-UNIVERSITY, LJUBLJANA BIENNIAL, 2019
ARCHITECTURE OF LONDON at Guildhall Art Gallery
31 May - 1 December 2019
400 years of London's architecture
Guildhall Art Gallery’s exhibition brings together works from the 17th century to the present day to illustrate how London’s ever-changing cityscape has inspired visiting and resident artists over four centuries.
The exhibition features important loans from other major British collections and a number of private collections, including works by artists, such as Canaletto, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, Catherine Yass and Rut Blees Luxemburg.
NEW PUBLICATION
THE LESSON OF THE VINE - RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG
http://www.theeverydaypress.net/books/the-lesson-of-the-vine/?prev=2#0
LONDON & NEW YORK
ALVIN LANGDON COBURN
Introduction GEOFF DYER
Essay RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG
Two of the greatest metropolises of the early 20th century, each captured in 20 photogravures by the pictorialist genius Alvin Langdon Coburn. These facsimiles of two volumes of luminous and evocative images, first published in 1909 and 1910 respectively, convey the urban beauty of London and New York in the age of steam. The original introduction and foreword, by Hilaire Belloc for London and by H. G. Wells for New York, are included. The facsimiles are accompanied by a separate leaflet featuring a specially commissioned introduction by Geoff Dyer and a new essay by Rut Blees Luxemburg.
LOSING THE NIGHT - BBC RADIO 4
The long-held balance between day and night is shifting here on planet Earth. The nights are getting brighter, the way many of us exist in the night and in night-time spaces is changing, and we are only just beginning to understand some of the wide-ranging impacts.
Economist and writer Umair Haque in conversation with circadian rhythm researcher Satchin Panda, anthropologist Polly Wiessner, nocturnal photographer Rut Blees Luxemburg, mapping scientist and dark sky campaigner Frank Prendergast, conservation biologist Kevin Gaston and historian of the night A. Roger Ekirch.
POSSIBLES TERRITOIRES at DOMINIQUE FIAT, PARIS
Hannah COLLINS, Thierry DIERS, Laddie John DILL,
Safâa ERRUAS, Rut Blees LUXEMBURG, Sergiu TOMA
2nd February - 16th March 2019
Rut Blees Luxemburg
Anticipation, 2017
Hand printed analog C-Print
121 x 153 cm
Courtesy de l'artiste et Dominique Fiat, Paris.
REDEYE MANCHESTER - An evening with RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG
Tuesday 12 February 2019, 6.30-8pm, doors open at 6pm.
Lecture Theatre 1, Geoffrey Manton Building, MMU, Oxford Road, Manchester, M15 6BX.
Tickets at https://www.redeye.org.uk/programme/events/evening-withrut-blees-luxemburg
MEG HILLIER, MP for HACKNEY SOUTH and SHOREDITCH by RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG #209WOMEN
Rut Blees Luxemburg photographed MP Meg Hillier for the 209 Women project where 209 portraits of female MPs were made by 209 female photographers, marking the centenary first vote for women.
Exhibition displayed in Parliament from 14th December to 14th February 2019.
SILVER FOREST, JOURNAL OF CIVIC ARCHITECTURE
Silver Forest by Rut Blees Luxemburg and Lynch Architects in Journal of Civic Architecture, Issue 2.
Edited by Patrick Lynch.
https://www.lyncharchitects.com/books-writing/journal-civic-architecture-issue-2/
DARK IS THE NIGHT: IN CONVERSATION
Rut Blees Luxemburg, Mitra Tabrizan and Matthew Beaumont in conversation on the darker side of London at night. Chaired by Lewis Bush.
Friday 9 November 2018, 6.30pm, Museum of London.
https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/book?instance=397632&spektrix_bounce=true
THE LESSON OF THE VINE at Leiwen, Germany
The Lesson of the Vine is a new public artwork in Leiwen on the Moselle river. Unveiled on the 21st October 2018 by Evi I. winequeen of Leiwen.
URBAN HARVEST at PEER
Urban Harvest is an ongoing field study by Rut Blees Luxemburg focusing on urban horticultural experiments in London.
28 June - 14 July 2018
East London is a scene of intense transformation and evolving interests. The many new towering developments in the vicinity of the ‘digital roundabout’ of Old Street contrast with the slow re-emergence of an focus on nature, manifest in urban horticultural experiments. For Urban Harvest the Antwerp based poet Douglas Park has written a specially commissioned Vinetrilologue.
City centre and forest clearing — altogether pounding out their very own real live telltale heartbeat and pulse rate...
97-99 HOXTON STREET, LONDON N1 6QL
LONDON NIGHTS at Museum of London
11th May-11th November, 2018
Fusing portraiture, documentary, conceptual photography and film, London Nights will reveal the city at night through photographs ranging from the late 19th century to the present day. Drawing from the Museum's extensive collection and loaned works, including: Alvin Langdon Coburn, Bill Brandt, Sophy Rickett and Rut Blees Luxemburg.
https://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/museum-london/whats-on/exhibitions/london-nights
THEATRUM MUNDI - WORKROOM CONVERSATIONS
Rut Blees Luxemburg and lighting designer Satu Streatfield in conversation on how light transforms places.
Thursday 19 April 2018, 6.30pm
Theatrum Mundi is an independent research centre which aims to expand the crafts of city-making through exchange with other forms of practice. As part of this, we convene an ongoing series bringing different fields together around ideas in-progress, to reveal connections between the making of movement, sound, text, images, objects, and cities.
The Workroom Conversations are ‘backstage’: there is no audience. Instead, we invite practitioners to share, debate, challenge and enrich. These are conversations rather than public forums. We would be delighted for you to join as many of these as you would like to and bring your ideas to the workbench.
How Ideas Become Form?
Series 1: Between; here... there
Photographer Rut Blees Luxemburg and lighting designer Satu Streatfield in conversation on how light transforms places.
LYNCH and BLEES LUXEMBURG dwelling ON BEAUTY AND CIVIC LIFE
9th April 2018, 6.30-8.30PM
Rut Blees Luxemburg and Patrick Lynch will consider aesthetic value and civic participation.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lynch-and-luxemburg-on-dwelling-and-beauty-tickets-43095653259
Rut Blees Luxemburg asks:
What experience of beauty does the city offer to its inhabitants? Is it mainly at the margins that beauty can be found in London? And what does the encounter with the beautiful engender in the citizen? Can an aesthetic experience open up access to ideas which address larger questions of public life? How can we ‘dwell poetically’ in the contemporary city?
Dr Patrick Lynch is the founding director of Lynch Architects, an award-winning practise based in Hackney. A graduate of Liverpool, and Cambridge universities, Patrick is the author of a number of books, including, most recently, Civic Ground (Artifice, London, 2017). He is currently a Visiting Professor at Liverpool University. Before this he was a lecturer at Cambridge, where he taught the History and Theory of Architecture, and was previously also a design tutor at The Architectural Association, The Cass and Kingston University. Lynch Architects work at a variety of scales, on large offices and apartment buildings, as well as private houses and public buildings for local authorities. The work of the practise has been widely exhibited and published internationally, including The Venice Biennale in 2008 and 2012. He completed his PhD, entitled Practical Poetics, at The Cass, with Peter Carl, Joseph Rykwert and Helen Mallinson in 2015.
The Cass Research Seminar
is a forum for exploring cross disciplinary, phenomenological, academic and real-life experiences and ideas. Two presentations will be followed by a panel discussion between the audience, a professional discussant and the two speakers.
RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG'S MANIFESTO FOR DARKNESS
Ten Ideas for London's Public Space by Night, hosted by the Archeture Foundation
The Garden Museum, 23 Januaury 2018
Is civicness incompatible with darkness? Ten proposals for London Public Space Charter in the night time.
In response to Sadiq Khan’s pledge to establish a Public Space Charter, this evening discussion at the Garden Museum asks what kind of public space London should cultivate by night.
The arrival of the night tube has reinvigorated debate over how the city’s urban realm should respond to darkness. The GLA says London wants a holistic night-time economy, yet public parks and pedestrian routes continue to close after dusk. The vibrant life of public spaces we enjoy by day is often deemed threatening and disruptive by night? Is civicness incompatible with darkness?
Meanwhile can London's club culture survive the influx of luxury apartment blocks and their entitled whinging residents? Would a Berlin-like city which never sleeps mean liberation from arbitrary social norms of when it is appropriate to work, play and sleep?
Speakers include:
Heather Spurr (Shelter)
Phil Coffey (Coffey Architects)
Deborah Saunt (DSDHA)
Rut Blees Luxemburg (RCA)
Catherine Rossi (Kingston)
Alan Miller (Night Time Industries Accosiation)
Marianne Mueller (Casper Mueller Kneer Architects)
John McRae (Orms)
Chaired by Travis Elborough
http://www.architecturefoundation.org.uk/events/ten-ideas-for-londons-public-space-by-night
RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG APPOINTED AS SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW FOR RCA BATTERSEA
The Royal College of Art is delighted to announce the appointment of artist Rut Blees Luxemburg as senior research fellow for the new building at Battersea.
In this new role of Senior Research Fellow, over a four-year period, Blees Luxemburg will act as artist and researcher in residence, following the transformation of the Battersea South campus from construction site through to inhabited workshops, studios and research spaces.
This appointment follows the recent announcement that the RCA has been granted planning permission by the London Borough of Wandsworth for a new flagship building designed by Herzog & de Meuron. The building is part of the most radical transformation of the institution’s campus in its 181-year history.
Rut Blees Luxemburg said: ‘I’m excited by this opportunity to develop my research in urban aesthetics and the representation of contemporary cities with the Battersea South building project as a specific focus and field study. The project recognises the huge potential for innovative outputs to be generated when architecture and photography occur simultaneously.’
As Senior Research Fellow, Blees Luxemburg will document the progress of the Battersea South campus, creating opportunities for collaboration across the community of researchers, students and staff at the College, making connections with neighbouring institutions and involving the local community. Blees Luxemburg’s visual production will also contribute to the historic archive of the College, creating a record of this period of transformation.
Blees Luxemburg’s practice often includes collaborations with other artists and photographers, as well as writers and practitioners from other disciplines. A 2015 collaboration between Blees Luxemburg, the architect Charlotte Skene Catling, the Rothschild Foundation and the Photography programme at the RCA, commissioned artists to respond to the construction of the Flint House at Waddesdon Manor.
RUT BLEES LUXEMBURG AWARDED HONONARY FELLOWSHIP of THE ROYAL PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETY of GREAT BRITAIN
UNSEEN LONDON
The city through the eyes of contemporary photographers
Hoxton Mini Press, 2017
ELDORADO ATLAS
Rut Blees Luxemburg at Galerie Dominique Fiat, Paris.
Rut Blees Luxemburg’s new work Eldorado Atlas focuses tightly on her local neighborhood in London, a scene of intense transformation and evolving interests.
On one side is the principle of ATLAS, amplified in one of many new towering developments in the vicinity of the ‘digital roundabout’ of Old Street.
On the other side is the re-emergence of nature, manifest in urban allotments and captured in the representation of a vine, growing on the wall of a local corner shop in the shadow of a satellite dish, flourishing, despite horticultural indifference. Eldorado Atlas, an ongoing work, projects a phantasmagorical image of the emerging future city.
For the opening of Eldorado Atlas an impromptu bar will set the scene for celebrating artistic production, collaboration and hospitality, serving wine from the artist’s family vineyard on the Moselle. Rut Blees Luxemburg has collaborated with other artists to create labels that celebrate #the lesson of the wine. Rut Blees Luxemburg’s work was included in the exhibition ‘À pied d’œuvre(s)’ which marked the 40th anniversary of the Centre Pompidou at La Monnaie de Paris. She recently completed a large-scale public work titled Silver Forest, a 30 metre photographic work cast in concrete for the façade for Westminster City Hall in London. She is a reader in urban aesthetics at the Royal College of Art.
Eldorado goes POP at 4Cose
Rut Blees Luxemburg focuses tightly on her local neighborhood in London, a scene
of intense transformation and evolving interests.On the one side is the principle
of ATLAS, one of many new towering developments in the vicinity of the ‘digital roundabout’ of Old Street. On the other side is the re-emergence of nature, manifest in urban allotments and captured in the representation of a vine, growing on the
wall of a local corner shop in the shadow of a satellite dish, flourishing, despite horticultural indifference.
The #lesson of the vine is celebrated with a new Riesling Secco label POP (goes the Elefant) by Simon Popper.
EYESORE TALKS: London in Limbo
As part of the wider programme surrounding ‘Silver Sehnsucht’, EYESORE presents ‘London in limbo’ - a panel discussion aiming to understand who the city belongs to. Speakers are housing activists Focus E15, critic and columnist Phineas Harper and the photographer Rut Blees Luxemburg. The discussion will be chaired by Matthew Beaumont - co-director of UCL Urban Lab and author of last year’s highly lauded Night walking.
link to view more info
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxC-eC7MJZNySnVIbUN0MW8ycm8/view?usp=sharing
DEAR DAVE magazine
A certain kind of arithmetic is eroding in the way we look at things, in the way we see…
link to view article
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxC-eC7MJZNySFBFUHJQZEh4Z1E/view?usp=sharing
A Handful of Dust, Whitechapel Gallery
7 June – 3 September 2017
A Handful of Dust is a speculative history of the 20th century, tracing a visual journey through the imagery of dust from aerial reconnaissance, wartime destruction and natural disasters to urban decay, domestic dirt and forensics.
The exhibition features works by over 30 artists and photographers including Marcel Duchamp, Walker Evans, Robert Filliou, Man Ray, Gerhard Richter, Rut Blees Luxemburg, Jeff Wall and Nick Waplington alongside magazine spreads, press photos, postcards and film clips.
Conceived by writer and curator David Campany, the exhibition takes as a starting point the 1920 photograph taken by American artist Man Ray of Marcel Duchamp’s work in progress The Large Glass (1915–23) deliberately left to gather dust in his New York studio. First published in André Breton’s seminal Surrealist journal, Littérature
in 1922 and captioned as a ‘view from an aeroplane’ by Man Ray, the photograph went on to appear in various journals, books and magazines, cropped and contextualized differently each time, before the image was formally titled Élevage de poussière (Dust Breeding) (1920) in 1964.
http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/a-handful-of-dust/
Speaking in Brogues
For Arts week 2017 at Birkbeck College, Marina Warner in conversation with Rut Blees Luxemburg, Maria Aristodemou and Mattia Gallotti. Universities then to be multilingual communities, and for the most part, we teach and study English.
Do the sounds, rhythms and locutions of many mother tongues, echoing through our conversations, help us and help others who are coming here - to feel at home? What role can language play in a period of increasing tensions over immigration and Europe?
18th May 2017, Birkbeck College
‘À pied d’œuvre(s)’, Rut Blees Luxemburg’s work in the exhibition marking the 40th anniversary of the Centre Pompidou
On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Centre Pompidou, la Monnaie de Paris and the Centre Pompidou display this unique journey in the exhibition spaces of la Monnaie de Paris.
In 1917, with Trébuchet [Trap], Marcel Duchamp attached a coat-rack to the floor that should normally have hung on the wall: the shift from sculpted object to found object and from the vertical plane to the horizontal one are two revolutions that deeply marked the History of Sculpture in the 20th century. “À pied d'œuvre(s)” explores this “flattening” of one of the trade’s essential technique: instead of placing works on plinths, instead of a quest for monumentality or a choice of conventional subjects, Modern and Contemporary sculpture lies directly on the floor.
1 March 2017 - 9 July 2017
https://www.monnaiedeparis.fr/en/exhibits/floor-naments
Whitechapel Gallery, Rut Blees Luxemburg Prix Pictet Conversations on Photography
The London-based artist Rut Blees Luxemburg discusses her large-scale photographic works, which concern the alteration of the city. How does the transformation of photography impact on the representation of the urban? And can photography be an active agent in imagining and proposing a ‘commonsensual’ approach to the city?
http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/events/prix-pictet-conversations-rut-blees-luxemburg/