House for
Material Imagination

Arts Letters & Numbers is pleased to announce “SunShip: Thesis at Arts Letters & Numbers”, a six-week immersive virtual studio program led by David Gersten and Homa Shojaie. The Studio program is being held as part of “SunShip: The Arc That Makes The Flood Possible,” Arts Letters & Numbers’ exhibition in the CITYX Venice Italian Virtual Pavilion of the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale. SunShip: The Arc That Makes the Flood Possible Tens of centuries ago, trees of enormous scale were cut, trimmed, skinned of their bark, and bound together using a particularly robust fibrous rope for the construction of rafts that anticipated the crossing of the great raging seas. Although strong, this rope was not often used near the sea; salt broke down its fiber, sea salt ate away its strength. The trees were bound in such a way that the rolling motion of the sea dug the rope into the soft wood of the...

The Earth Of: Ruptures and Reckonings is a collective virtual space of inquiry. Through writing and discourse we investigate how to manifest and inhabit the fractures that pervade our lives, allowing for the creative space to grow organically through digressions, tangents, musings, and synchronistic linkages. What does it mean when humanity crosses a threshold of such significance it manifests as a rupture, when the world is on the cusp? The brain wants to organize, filter, and separate out. Yet, beyond the confusion perpetrated by language that fails to adequately define, are spaces. We find meaning when we implicitly inhabit these spaces—gestures that guide the cracks to spread toward shattering. These moments of rupture burst forth from gesture into reckoning, exposing us to what is real and true and essential. Who We Are To be a writer requires willingness to examine the uncomfortable, accept the paradoxical, and swim in the rupture.  Rooted firmly in love, trust,...

This Zoom based three session workshop hopes to open a conversation engaging diverse voices through the language and space of the written word. The workshop introduces concepts of self-expression in creating space through the medium of calligraphy. Participants will go through the process of beginning a personal quest to establish a narrative for expressing this space, a search to visualize this narrative through hand-written words of their chosen language and choose a new alternative habitat for its expression. This dialogue between space and language is essential to calligraphy and is the focus of this workshop.  This workshop aims to explore the following principles: Self- expression th rough composing spaceIn this practice, the participants will be encouraged to work with the written word in composing visual spaces that create various distance between the visual space and the readability or meaning of the words. Exploring positive and negative space and texture are some of the tools along...

An interrupted dialogue taking place during a feast: city noises, words mis-spelled or etymologically mis-routed, “We have to choose whether to speak or to eat: we must not speak with our mouth full.”  – Jeanneret, M., A Feast of Words.                                                 where was the feast,                                                  where was the table,                                                  erehw? An interrupted dialogue taking place during a feast: city noises, words mis-spelled or etymologically mis-routed, prudency, a muddy journey through the dark meanders of the city, lately arrived guests, edible monuments, non-edibles … and on-going negotiations on some allegorical roles. One curiously  accepts the role of the cauldron, the other speculates on the potential persona of the fork and one other still searches for her role… Meanwhile voices  complete each others’ sentences in such unique ways, that obscure exquisite-corpses are formed which eventually act as a set of talismanic incantations. Waiting for the invited guests to arrive in order to commence eating. Found or rather listened...

Arts Letters & Numbers is pleased to announce “SunShip: Thesis at Arts Letters & Numbers”, a six-week immersive virtual studio program led by David Gersten and Homa Shojaie. The Studio program is being held as part of “SunShip: The Arc That Makes The Flood Possible,” Arts Letters & Numbers’ exhibition in the CITYX Venice Italian Virtual Pavilion of the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale. SunShip: The Arc That Makes the Flood Possible Tens of centuries ago, trees of enormous scale were cut, trimmed, skinned of their bark, and bound together using a particularly robust fibrous rope for the construction of rafts that anticipated the crossing of the great raging seas. Although strong, this rope was not often used near the sea; salt broke down its fiber, sea salt ate away its strength. The trees were bound in such a way that the rolling motion of the sea dug the rope into the soft wood of the...

This two-part experimental workshop will examine the poetics of Line and Stitch and the ways in which drawing may be used in our everyday practices. We will explore the relationship between drawing and the architecture of the everyday: from the ways a line may be employed as a divider that separates the self from (an)other; to drawing as a form of embodied meaning-making and storytelling across time and space.Reflecting on the inner geography of the pandemic, unpacking placeness and memory through observation of texture and surface, tracing, mark making, frottage, collage, decollage, we will look at the ways the line can become a form of stitching or mending and other kinds of meaning making.We will also examine ways of recording and translating our body, our pulse, breath, blood pressure, gestures and movements in our surroundings as a kind of translation project.Participants are encouraged to bring to the workshop a few images or objects from one’s past and present everyday surrounding. Part...