Guest lecture by Ingrid Halland, Oslo School of Architecture and Design
Perhaps the most insidious form of toxicity today lies in the blurred distinction between what is toxic and what is not. This talk looks closely at the toxic/non-toxic entanglements of a very familiar entity in art history and theory, namely the white surface.
I first focus my attention on the history of the extraction, production, and aesthetics of the white pigment titanium dioxide (TiO2), which has been fundamental for the development of aesthetic discourses throughout the 20th Century. Subsequently, the talk delves into the intertwining toxic and non-toxic aspects of the mining waste generated in the production of TiO2 by presenting three case studies from aesthetic practice that all regenerate the TiO2waste through surface aesthetics.
Surfaces can serve as crucial sites for in-depth analysis within the field of humanities, offering valuable insights into diverse realms such as aesthetics, technology, ideologies, and even existential shifts. The non/toxic white surfaces are investigated though a dialectical method that I call critical surface studies, merging different disciplinary, methodological, and temporal approaches: history, critical theory, and future-oriented arts-based research.
Bio:
Ingrid Halland is an art and architectural historian and art critic, based in Oslo and Bergen, Norway. She is associate professor in modern and contemporary art and architecture history at the University of Oslo and associate professor II at the Oslo School of Architecture and Design, where she teaches in the PhD program. She is the leader and principal investigator of the research project ‘TiO2: How Norway Made the World Whiter,’ funded by the Research Council of Norway (2023–2028). Halland is founder and editor-in-chief of Metode, a publishing platform by ROM for kunst og arkitektur.
The lecture is organized in collaboration with Museology at the Department of Media and Culture Studies.