Unknown Unknowns

Unknown Unknowns is a multimedia research library for an imaginary film. The film revolves around the worst-case scenario of a mid-air collision over Wembley Stadium on FA Cup Final day. The library consists of texts for auditions, location analysis and stunt coordination as well as computer simulations of flights, supporting photographic studies and objects. The library provides a platform to probe key themes and techniques characterising the complex nature of crisis management and risk analysis

Arkitekturmuseet Risk Centre

‘Arkitekturmuseet Risk Centre’ was a commissioned solo show at the Arkitekturmuseet (Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design) Stockholm, Sweden. The show presented an installation based on Kular’s research into educational safety centres first highlighted with Dr Fischbacher-Smith of Glasgow University as part of the EPSRC-funded ‘Impact!’ project in 2010. Never investigated as cultural forms before, such centres construct 2D and 3D representations of dangerous situations, to educate the public. With ‘Arkitekturmuseet Risk Centre’, Kular re-programmed the Swedish Museum of Architecture into a site-specific risk facility, a performance space and set. The museum was reconfigured as scenes and places in Stockholm. Potential hazards of the city were first analysed through extensive field research conducted during a residency at ‘Iaspis’, Swedish Visual Arts Fund’s international programme 2012, then realised as dioramas and sets, representing present-day and historical contexts. Each scene of risk was accompanied by an educational scenario-based script indicating an event or potential hazard related to the specific place outlined. The educational scripts were developed in collaboration with the MSB, the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency. The constructed ‘Arkitekturmuseet Risk Centre’ acted as the venue for a public engagement programme with the dual purpose of risk education and design performance. This included collaboration with Dr Erika Wall, sociologist at Mittuniversitetet Risk and Crisis Research Centre, providing material for Erika’s research into how children make sense of risk in everyday contexts. The research draws attention to a current culture of over-protection through the mechanisms of health and safety regulation by using those systems to create a sequence of spaces that take the risks out of their original context. Financial and logistical support was provided by the MSB. A catalogue published by the Arkitekturmuseet accompanied the project. The exhibition received an eight-page review in Abitare International Architecture and Design Magazine (2013)

Accept No Other Imitations

Accept No Other Imitations is a publication that documents research, proposals, critical writing and projects conducted as part of a Fellowship funded by Tussauds Studios (owners of Madame Tussauds). The preliminary research phase of Kular’s Fellowship included an in-depth survey of the design and fabrication of themed entertainment venues. The research for this included site visits to venues, interviewing industry professionals, attending monthly think-tanks at Tussauds Studios and online research into international examples. The material was logged in an online archive/library, accessible to Tussauds studios’ employees, who used it as a research tool for their own projects; in return they provided feedback and links to new examples. The research survey was later broadened to include investigations into the relationship between themed entertainment and impersonation, role-play, re-enactments and simulations. The secondary phase of the Fellowship was critical analysis, identifying key themes, methods and processes in the research examples. This became the conceptual frame for a proposal of four public events to combine art, design, and performance in investigating the relationship between entertainment, authenticity and audience participation. Two of these events were realised as public projects: ‘Elvis Was Here’, St Saviour’s Church of England Primary School, London and ‘Ready Steady Charlie’, V&A Museum, London. Through the public projects, Kular addressed research questions concerning the legal definition of impersonation, legacy, identity and authenticity in an alternative context. The final phase was the publication (2009). This included research examples, documentation of projects and a number of commissioned essays, notably from author and MacArthur Fellowship Award winner George Saunders, who responded to various key aspects of the research and projects conducted. The project was also featured in the exhibition ‘nowhere/now/here’, LABoral AICC, Asturias, Spain (2008–9)

I Cling to Virtue

Kular’s work centres on design as a means of engaging with social and cultural issues. Commissioned and exhibited by the V&A Museum, this was a mixed-media collection revealing the trajectories of the Lövy-Singh clan, a fictional East London family of mixed descent. It comprised 26 sculptures and two video pieces, developing the previous explorations of the MacGuffin in narrative (Kular REF Output 2). A catalogue with 28 fictional reminiscences, a genealogy and time line positioned the family’s experiences in geographical locations and historical events. Novel use of rapid-prototyping co-opted an industry process to confuse the experience of artefact and artifice. The design explored the historical, literary and cinematic traditions of the family saga and its relationship to memory and artefact. It presented an archive of objects derived from the flawed, biased memory of the (fictional) curator. A coherent story is replaced by one that is multiple and fragmentary. Kular and Toran (RCA) ‘produced’ the family by mixing their own genealogies with those of renowned 20th-century families, both real and fictional, such as the Magnificent Ambersons and the Rothschilds, positioning family members in everyday situations or key historical moments represented by an object and a ‘memory’ triggered by the object. Concept development was undertaken jointly by Kular and Toran. Kular’s archive research emphasised commonwealth immigrant histories and British 20th-century political events. His production contribution was in 3D modelling, rapid prototyping and display, leading production of the two films and development and editing of the narrative texts. The work was accompanied by a catalogue (2011), was reviewed in ICON Magazine (2010), discussed in an article by Hayward, Jones, Toran and Kular in Design and Culture (2013), and featured in The White Review (No. 2). It was re-exhibited in the group show ‘Politique Fiction’ at la Cité du design, Saint-Étienne, France (2013)

I Cling to Virtue - Publication

Catalogue accompanying the show I Cling to Virtue at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London 2010

The MacGuffin Library

Commissioned by Somerset House in London in 2008, ‘The MacGuffin Library’ proposes a cinematic library of MacGuffins, a collection of 18 objects and accompanying film synopses. Kular and Toran (RCA) focused on the ‘Macguffin’, a cinematic plot device, usually an object, that motivates a cinematic story. Their research examined the MacGuffin as a unique object typology, existing solely within the constraints of cinema, and defined in shape and function to achieve the singular purpose of driving a filmic narrative. The research proposed the foundations for a library of future MacGuffins. Kular and Toran first wrote a series of fictional film plots. These were inspired by a range of research interests, including Borges and Raymond Carver short stories, historical re-enactments, art forgeries, urban myths, the defining of high- and low-brow cinema, and counter-factual histories. The fictional film plots were then used to generate the MacGuffin object. The objects were drawn as 3D computer-aided models, which were then used to rapid-prototype the final MacGuffins. The research highlighted and exemplified the conventional format of cinematic genres, as well as the varying ways cinematic genres are used as instruments of social critique. The project was reviewed and exhibited extensively. Exhibitions included the Museum of Bat Yam, Israel; Saint-Étienne Design Biennale, France; Art Center, Los Angeles, USA; and Arnolfini, Bristol, UK. It was nominated for UK Designs of the Year at the Design Museum London, where it was shown in 2009. The work was also featured in Gareth Williams, 21 Twenty One, 21 Designers for Twenty-first Century Britain (V&A Publishing, 2012)

I Cling to Virtue: An Exhibition Review and Statement of Practice

The exhibition I Cling to Virtue took place at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, in 2010. The project was organized around the narrative, material, and visual memories of “Monarch Lövy Singh,” a character created by the artists Onkar Kular and Noam Toran in collaboration with the writer Keith R. Jones. In a museum renowned for authenticity and craftsmanship, Monarch’s “heirlooms” underscored a different aspect of the cultural: the ability of images and everyday objects to reconfigure otherwise distant histories and geographies. The review below suggests parallels with the use of objects as plot devices in cinema andthe efforts of contemporary designers to “re-enchant” the everyday experience of modernity. The statement of practice explains how ICTV queried the idea of authorship and used rapid- prototyped “diagrammatic” versions of everyday things to complicate the experience of artifact and artifice. Hence the problem of what constitutes “history” as opposed to “memory” merged with the paradox of what is true or false in representation