Adrian Blackwell
Model for a Public Space [knot]

“Public discourses are complex and knotted. They intertwine, affect, ­antagonize, fold over themselves, and flee in different directions,” writes artist, architectural and urban designer Adrian Blackwell in his ­introduction to his installation Model for a Public Space [knot] (2010). A circuitous, ­multi-level set of bleachers built out of unfinished plywood, Blackwell’s Model occupied the Reading Room of Hart House, a multi-purpose ­building on the University of Toronto campus that houses several student services, for a month, offering visitors a space to meet and engage in “non-­hierarchical discussions.” Commissioned by curator Maiko Tanaka for her conference “extra-curricular: between art & pedagogy,” which explored the ­relationship between art, education and activism, the Model accompanied and in many ways illustrated the discussions being held in adjoining rooms about the possibilities and limitations of pedagogical art practice.

Despite its deceptively simple structure, Blackwell’s installation ­references a heady combination of radical social texts, from Vladimir Tatlin’s Model of the Monument to the Third International (1920) and Alexander Rodchenko’s abstract mobiles, to more complex schemas for analysis put forth by French theorists such as Jacques Lacan and Alain Badiou. The Model’s spare modernist aesthetic was a marked contrast to the dark wood and ostentatious detailing of the Victorian-era Reading Room that hoped to produce new social relations through a new ­architectural environment. Two discussions on love, politics and contemporary art hosted by Blackwell and his collaborator, curator and educator Christine Shaw, were meant to demonstrate how the space might be used.