Crystal Circuits @ the Contemporary Art Gallery

Posted on April 8, 2013 by rcutler

On Tuesday, April 27, 7pm please join me in a feedback talk at the Contemporary Art Gallery on the topic of Crystal Circuits in response to the Erin Shirreff exhibition, Pictures (APR 19, 2013 to JUN 16, 2013)

Randy Lee Cutler is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Visual Art + Material Practice at Emily Carr University. As a writer, artist and educator she is invested in the emergence of new cultural forms and expression. In addition to working on an ebook on the metaphor of digestion, Randy is exploring the geological and virtual potential of crystal formations. Drawn from Gilles Deleuze’s writing on cinema, crystal circuits suggest a spectacular form for both the making and experiencing of an art object. The crystal – though empty and transparent – is a flashpoint for symbolic intensities. Launching from Erin Shirreff’s exhibition, Cutler will share her research into crystals.

Crystal Worlds – Between a Virtual and a Hard Place

Posted on April 8, 2013 by rcutler

Here is a description of a recent seminar that I presented at the VISR (Vancouver Institute for Social Research) on April 1.

Crystals have both a literal dimension and a metaphorical presence representing both a thing – crystalline solids- and a way of thinking about multiple facets and transformation. Through the figure of the crystal, this talk brings together theoretical, scientific and art historical approaches highlighting a shared fascination with these resilient and always emergent formations.

‘The Crystal World’ refers to the 1966 work of fiction by J.G. Ballard and Cyprien Gaillard’s 2013 exhibition at PS 1 in Brooklyn. Both works navigate unfamiliar geographical sites and explore the relationship between desire, nature and erosion. In varied ways, the atmospherically lush and mysterious environments evoke crystalline images where time is compressed producing a profound effect of opacity and indiscernability. Gilles Deleuze takes up the figure of transparency and reflection in his work Cinema II: The Time Image particularly chapter four, “The Crystals of Time” where he considers Post WWII cinema in light of the time-image, fragmentation and internal limits. Through a reflection on various films he offers us images of a world full of doublings, mirrors and dynamic extension. Drawing out the simultaneously actual and virtual potential of the moving image, the concepts that he proposes evoke models for looking at unconventional and otherworldly expressions of space and time, literature and visual art, organic and inorganic systems. The crystal circuit or the compression of unfolding time brings to the fore recollection, memory (real and virtual) where “Ever vaster circuits will be able to develop, corresponding to deeper layers of reality and higher and higher levels of memory or thought.” Like crystals themselves, the metaphors that they call up inhabit border worlds between genres, lifeforms and rhetorical strategies not to mention the slow geology of molecular time and space.

Suggested Readings:
Gilles Deleuze, “The Crystals of Time” in Cinema II: The Time Image (1989)
Mark A. Cheetham, “The Crystal Interface in Contemporary Art: Metaphors of the Organic and Inorganic” in Leonardo (Vol. 43, No. 3, 2010)

Supplementary Reading: J.G. Ballard, The Crystal World

Sookoon Ang, Your Love is Like a Chunk of Gold, 2011

(*Privately Owned Publics)

Posted on January 8, 2013 by rcutler

>>… a ‘commons’ is a space a population uses for satisfying its social needs; it is a space of collective independence; no one owns it, but ideally, all have use of it. It is in fact constituted by those users and uses …<< Stephen Collis, A Show of Hands: Art and Revolution in Public Space, 2012

For PUSH festival fans, I will be moderating a panel on Jan 19 called POP*TACTICS (*Privately Owned Publics) from 1-4PM at the Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts (149 West Hastings Street).

Check out Sometimes I think, I can see you on Jan 18-20 from 12:00PM – 4:00PM at Vancouver Public Library, Central Branch, Atrium and the Vancouver Art Gallery, Lobby.

You may want to learn more about the art/architectural collective muf before the panel discussion.

Posted on January 1, 2013 by rcutler

Check out the exhibition Librio: The Liberation of the Book January 17-26th, 2013 at Emily Carr University’s Concourse Gallery. A group of students, recent alumni and the faculty of instructors and librarians at the university will be exhibiting artist books and zine media. I have redesigned my essay A Practice in Reading into a poster for the exhibition. A paper copy of the essay will be available at the exhibition: And here is a digital version for your reading pleasure. C_Reading2

The General Strike

Posted on November 16, 2012 by rcutler

SFU Woodward’s Vancity Community Engagement Office recently organized an event titled The General Strike. I was asked to be one of two respondents to a talk by Jaleh Mansoor. Here is the link. My contribution starts at the time of 22:44.

Informal Communities

Posted on August 12, 2012 by rcutler

Here is a short piece that I wrote on Holly Schmidt’s Grow project, now posted on the Other Sights website.

And please check another wonderful and more recent project orchestrated by Holly called The Moveable Feast.

The Floral Wallpaper

Posted on August 1, 2012 by rcutler

This new collage is inspired by the work of Ranu Mukherjee, Michel Foucault’s panopticon and Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s book The Yellow Wallpaper.

Working Images: Marie Antoinette

Posted on August 1, 2012 by rcutler

I am also working on some new images for an ebook in development. Celeste Martin who teaches typography among other things at Emily Carr will be designing it. I hope to have it finished during a sabbatical that starts in January 2013. Open Wide – the great digestive system is structured like an ABC primer and takes up writing I have done on digestion as a metaphor for experience. The plan is to have a short piece of writing for each letter accompanied by an image. Images will be represented by a range of artists including Abbas Akhavan, Myron Campbell, John Cussans, Geoffrey Farmer, Kristina Fiedrich, Allison Hrabluik, Ingrid Koenig, Germaine Koh, Liz Magor, Ranu Mukherjee, Elizabeth Mackenzie, Ryan Peter, Marina Roy, Holly Schmidt and yours truly.

Here is a collage that I am trying out for the letter ‘M’ on Sophia Coppola’s film Marie Antoinette.

And this is the first paragraph of the piece which has already been published in Pyramid Power.

In an early scene from Sophia Coppola’s 2006 film Marie-Antoinette, the transfer of an Austrian archduchess to the French Court of Louis XV spatializes and distends a geopolitical ritual. The cinematic handover represents the transformation of the naïve Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna von Habsburg-Lothringen into the dauphine Marie-Antoinette. If the future queen is a synecdoche for decadent monarchy, her incorporation into the State signals the struggle of a neophyte individual within a highly artificial scheme. Rendered spatially in a beautiful half-light, the teenage Marie-Antoinette is territorially and ceremoniously absorbed by the court of France.

Two – Performances

Posted on July 19, 2012 by rcutler

One (stand by)

Posted on July 19, 2012 by rcutler