KOLAJ LIVE ONLINE
Architecture & Collage
Tuesday, 21 July 2026, 7-9PM EDT (2300 UTC)
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Kolaj Institute’s Architecture & Collage Project views Architecture as a building technology, as a form of visual art, and as culture. In this sense, a building can be a vessel of history or a site of storytelling and folklore. Buildings exist in time, their meaning and function may be different in the past, present, and future, and they exist in a dynamic cycle of construction, use, decay, preservation, reuse, and ultimately destruction. The project holds space for those buildings that are cultural symbols and works of art and those buildings that make up our neighborhoods and communities and asks, How can collage reveal overlooked buildings, preserve architectural memory, or imagine new relationships between past and present? How might modernism be understood differently when viewed through the texture, ornament, complexity, and cultural specificity of New Orleans? Through this conversation, Kolaj Institute invites participants to dive deeper into architecture, modernism, preservation, and the possibilities of collage as both a creative and historical practice. During this edition of Kolaj LIVE Online, Seth Ter Haar, Kolaj Institute Managing Director and Fellow of Docomomo US/Wisconsin, Clive Knights, Portland, Oregon-based artist and architect Clive Knights, and Michael Eble, Lafayette, Louisiana-based artist and educator, will speak about the connections between collage and modern architecture.
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ABOUT THE PRESENTERS
Seth Ter Haar
Based in New Orleans, West Michigan–born artist and curator Seth Ter Haar is a former Fellow of Docomomo US/Wisconsin. During the two-year fellowship, he researched Modern architecture across Wisconsin, with particular attention to the Layton School of Art and the queer histories that shaped the region’s built environment. In his artistic practice, Ter Haar uses technologies such as laser cutting and CNC machining to reinterpret historic woodworking and religious imagery through queer frameworks. On the panel, he will introduce Kolaj Institute’s Architecture & Collage Project and share examples of buildings and artworks that demonstrate the relationship between the two disciplines.
Clive Knights
Portland, Oregon-based artist and architect Clive Knights will discuss An Architecture of Experiential Encounter. Knights argues that architectural education often prioritizes plans, measurements, and digital models over the sensory experience of space. Drawing on four decades of teaching, he uses collage to help architecture students explore qualities such as light, material, depth, scale, and the relationship between space and the human body. His presentation will feature collages by Knights and his students that demonstrate how architecture can emerge from corporeal and experiential encounters rather than formal systems alone.
Michael Eble
Lafayette, Louisiana-based artist and educator Michael Eble creates abstract works combining collage, acrylic paint, and drawing. During a Solo Residency at Kolaj Institute, he researched New Orleans’ mid-century architecture, including the International Rivergate Center, the Louisiana Superdome, and lesser-known examples of regional modernism. This research informed a new body of collages and large-scale paintings incorporating geometric forms, layered textures, and colors associated with mid-century design. His process of building and sanding through painted and collaged surfaces evokes both architectural construction and weathering. On the panel, Eble will discuss his research and his process of transforming architecture into abstract collage.
ABOUT ARCHITECTURE & COLLAGE PROJECT
Collage and architecture as we know them today share a closely connected history. In the early twentieth century, as mass printing, photography, advertising, and illustrated magazines became increasingly accessible, artists, designers, and architects began cutting, combining, and recontextualizing printed images to imagine new realities. Collage became not only an artistic medium, but also a tool for testing spatial ideas and bringing different materials, histories, and perspectives into conversation. Kolaj Institute’s Architecture & Collage Project is an ongoing study of why collage is particularly useful as a tool and technology for understanding buildings. The project considers architecture as building technology, visual art, culture, history, storytelling, and folklore while asking how artists can learn from the past and imagine new futures.
When artists make collage about architecture, they invite viewers to consider the buildings that make up our world, how they are used, and how they shape our relationships to place, identity, and culture. At Kolaj Institute, we believe art wields power in context. Through residencies, exhibitions, publications, discussions, and artist-led research, the project brings artists together to create artwork, write, exchange ideas, and develop a multidimensional, experiential, community-based theory of Architecture and Collage.
Artists interested in contributing to this ongoing inquiry are invited to learn more and apply for Kolaj Institute’s four-week virtual Architecture & Collage Residency. LEARN MORE
ABOUT KOLAJ INSTITUTE
The mission of Kolaj Institute is to support artists, curators, and writers who seek to study, document, & disseminate ideas that deepen our understanding of collage as a medium, a genre, a community, and a 21st century movement. We operate a number of initiatives meant to bring together community, investigate critical issues, and raise collage’s standing in the art world. www.kolajinstitute.org
ABOUT KOLAJ LIVE ONLINE
Kolaj LIVE Online is a series of virtual programs in the form of forums, panels, workshops, artist talks, studio visits, and other activities that allow people to come together, learn and talk about collage, and connect in real time to the collage community. Our goal is to bring the community together in a spirit of mutual support and fellowship. Kolaj LIVE Online manifests Kolaj Magazine and Kolaj Institute by bringing together artists, curators, and writers to share ideas that deepen our understanding of collage as a medium, a genre, a community, and a 21st century movement. MORE