Refracted Sites presents a selection of projects from the Critical Spatial Practice: Site-Writing module, part of Architectural History and Situated Practice MA programmes at The Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. ‘Site-writing’ (Rendell, 2010) takes into account the embodied experiences of the writer, along with the histories and physicality of the spaces they explore.

In the physics of light and vision, refraction refers to the change in direction of a wave as it passes from one medium to another. In March 2020, the Site-Writing group planned works that critically engaged with local sites: museums, historic houses, in-between spaces, and contested planning in cityscapes. As Covid19 emerged, the group “refracted,” dispersing across time zones, geographies and virtual realities.

Refracted Sites presents these works, bringing them back together to be shared with an online community, while asking questions of the meaning, place, reality, time, scale and media for art in our Covid19 and post-Covid19 world. The works have refracted through time, with in, between others, out of production, across language, and out of place. Each type of refraction will form one episode of the exhibition. The exhibition will show online works —moving-image, virtual stories, audio accounts, digital sculptures— that negotiate the difficulties of positioning oneself creatively within a moment of crisis.