Adjective Constructions

Adjective Constructions is a speculative drawing project and a creative re-appropriation of the distance that has defined our decade-long remote collaboration across North America. Each resulting drawing – or ‘adjective construction’ – explores the question of what it means to draw together remotely, by enlisting architectural tools to push, probe, and mine the tension between the visceral materiality of the close-at-hand and its projection across the distance between us. In this paper we reflect on the process that underpins our drawing practice, one that is rooted in dialogue (between us, with the work, and with our tools). This practice foregrounds the emergent and generative capacity of play – as described by Miguel Sicart and theorised by Hans-Georg Gadamer – as the primary motive for the work. Following Gadamer’s understanding of play as essential to a dialectic approach to uncovering understanding, this paper eschews a definitive explanation of our drawing process, and instead sets up a conversation between this process and three thought-worlds which reach across disciplines and animate our designerly imagination: poet and Greek scholar Anne Carson’s presentation of the ‘adjective’ as a seemingly superfluous appendage, but one that can anchor a work in specificity; landscape architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander’s instructions for adventure playgrounds; and garden designer Henk Gerritsen’s dialectical approach to (un)natural gardening and whim topiary. While each of these practices share meaningful resonances with our own process, they are not presented as direct metaphorical correspondents. They are brought together to set up a constellation of thought-worlds and sensibilities that vibrate and cross-pollinate into expanded possibilities, while maintaining the work’s ambiguity and openness, creating opportunities for further interpretations, subsequent re-appropriations, more play. Read the full article online at: https://drawingon.org/Issue-04-06-Adjective-Constructions