Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture

“I thought I should document the physical transitions I was witnessing in my daily life, and in this way question my own nostalgia for the minor, the local, the ruinous; for decay. It was efficient to become an architect, since the city’s economic and aesthetic discourses were increasingly framed in architectural vocabularies.”

 

Lisa Robertson

Clear Cut Press and READ Books are pleased to present the release of Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture by Lisa Robertson. The book is a lyrical document of the city of Vancouver through a decade or so of its recent transformations, comprising essays from Robertson in response to the artists and city around her. It includes numerous visual works compiled as discursive dossiers that trigger and resonate with the text. This is the third in Clear Cut Press’s eight-book subscription series of new research and popular literature (www.clearcutpress.com).

The evening will include music by vocalist Carol Sawyer and string bass player Hendrik Greidanus, a short reading by Lisa Robertson, and toasts and farewells. Robertson, an instrumental part of Vancouver’s literary and artistic worlds will soon be departing for France. A celebrated poet and essayist, her previous books include XEclogue, Debbie: An Epic, and The Weather. She maintains the Office for Soft Architecture to construct propositions and reports for the advancement of a natural history of civic surface.