NORA WENDL: PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY & COLEMAN STEVENSON: ART INSTITUTE OF PORTLAND

• published: 27 Aug 2014
• views: 367

The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible,” Mark Twain once commented. It is precisely in the tense space between reality and fabrication that architects and authors alike must work, constructing alternate, speculative worlds that are so believable clients will show their faith through financial and political support, so authentic that readers will live inside of scenes and forge relationships with characters. It is in this liminal space that Coleman Stevenson and Nora Wendl have constructed the Center for Fictive Architecture, a framework for their individual and collaborative projects. In this talk, they discuss those ideas that form the basis of their current collaborations, in particular the related natures of architecture and poetry. COLEMAN STEVENSON is the author of The Accidental Rarefication of Pattern #5609 (bedouin books, 2012). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in a variety of journals, including Paper Darts, Common Ground Review, E-ratio, Hawaii Pacific Review, Mid-American Review, Seattle Review, and the anthology Motionless from the Iron Bridge. She teaches poetry, cultural communication, and word/image collaboration to design students in Portland, Oregon. NORA WENDL often aligns architecture and its histories with the adjacent fields of fiction, poetry, contemporary art and literature. She is co-editor, with Isabelle Loring Wallace, of Contemporary Art about Architecture: A Strange Utility (Ashgate, 2013). Her research has been featured or is forthcoming in internationally and nationally recognized journals including 306090, Journal of Architectural Education, Architecture and Culture, Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, and On Site Review, and she performed and exhibited at various venues including Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Public Library, and Wordstock. She is Assistant Professor of Architecture in the School of Architecture at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon.