Bartlett Lecturer Collaborates on New Journal with Open City Documentary Festival

Inscriptions is the sixth issue of Non-Fiction, a journal produced by Open City Documentary Festival since 2020 to foster considered, critical and creative writing on non-fiction. The journal features contributions offered in response to moving image, audio or cross-media, both contemporary and historical.

The journal was edited by Henrietta Williams in collaboration with Oliver Wright from Open City Documentary Festival. Henrietta and Oliver were interested in how the moving image can be used to detect an event, document a site, and then reconstruct a situation. They invited a number of artist-filmmakers to write specific contributions to the journal to explain their methods of situated research when making site-specific films. Contributors include Onyeka Igwe, whose essay ‘Looking for 'lost' archives’ unfolds the idea of colonial buildings as protagonists, and Suneil Sanzgiri who considers how spatial technologies such as LiDAR scanners can become narrative tools.

Inscriptions builds on a previous Bartlett-funded project, The Bartlett Screening Room. Henrietta and Oliver launched the online film club during the Covid-19 lockdown, gathering a Bartlett audience to watch short films and artists’ moving image works, hear from artist-filmmakers and have conversations that framed the work through a spatial lens. Inscriptions extends these temporal conversations and establishes a tangible home for some of the ideas discussed in the Bartlett Screening Room.

The journal was produced with funding from UCL Grand Challenges and Open City Documentary Festival, and launched online on 18 January at Non-Fiction’s website. 

Henrietta Williams is an artist/researcher exploring urbanist theories, and a lecturer (teaching) at The Bartlett School of Architecture. Henri’s work takes the form of moving image and photographic installations, writing, walking and performance. These methods are often used as ways to ask questions about how our cities are formed through conflict and how the security and surveillance of the built environment change our lived experience. She is a core tutor for Situated Practice MA, and tutors across a number of programmes with a particular focus on critical filmmaking methodologies. She is currently completing an LAHP-funded PhD by Design, also at The Bartlett, making short films and moving image installations alongside a written thesis.

Henri has exhibited work internationally including at the Het Nieuwe Instituut, the Golden Thread Gallery Belfast, the Mies van der Rohe Institute, the V&A, and the Architectural Association. She has presented her research through Open City Documentary Festival, Modern Art Oxford, the Royal College of Art, and the Bauhaus. Her project ‘The Secret Security Guard’ was featured on the front page of the Guardian newspaper and she has presented the ‘Ring of Steel’ project on a number of international television programs and the BBC Culture Show.

More information

• Read Inscriptions at Non-Fiction’s website
• Visit Henrietta Williams' UCL Profile
• Visit Henrietta Williams’ website
• Find out more about Situated Practice MA
• Learn more about UCL Grand Challenges

Lead image: Still from Golden Jubilee, Suneil Sanzgiri, 2021 (Courtesy of Suneil Sanzgiri)
Carousel images: 1. Still from Canada Park, Razan AlSalah, 2020 (Courtesy of Razan AlSalah)
2. Still from a so called archive, Onyeka Igwe, 2020 (Courtesy of Onyeka Igwe)
3. Photograph of Radio Malabar site (Courtesy of Jan Willem Udo, Radio Kootwijk)