http://anexact.org www.anexact.org Tue, 22 Jan 2013 10:11:43 +0000 http://anexact.org en http://anexact.org/MTLO-studio http://anexact.org/following/anexact.org/MTLO-studio Tue, 22 Jan 2013 10:11:43 +0000 www.anexact.org 4750008 MTLO studio MTLO studio (pronounced Mount Low) is the design, print, projects, and general services division of the Institute of Improbable Poromechanics; it is co-directed by Etienne Turpin, Mary O'Malley, and Sara Dean. We design and build exhibitions and objects, inhabitable and defensible spaces, graphic works, and related projects and services. To contact MTLO studio for project commissions, collaborative endeavors, or general inquiries, please email MTLO (at) improbableporomechanics (dot) org or visit MTLO studio _ __________________________________ RECENT WORK _ Fabrication for Campus in Camps: experimental educational platforms and practice-led interventions in Palestinian Refugee Camps for the Art Gallery of Windsor exhibition Border Cultures: Part One (homes, land) January 25 – March 31, 2013 <img src="http://payload122.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4750008/Screen Shot 2013-03-06 at 9.36.11 PM.png" width="670" height="333" width_o="1264" height_o="629" src_o="http://payload122.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4750008/Screen Shot 2013-03-06 at 9.36.11 PM_o.png" data-mid="27533761" border="0" align="left"/> <img src="http://payload122.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4750008/Screen Shot 2013-03-06 at 9.33.46 PM.png" width="670" height="362" width_o="1278" height_o="691" src_o="http://payload122.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4750008/Screen Shot 2013-03-06 at 9.33.46 PM_o.png" data-mid="27533786" border="0" align="left"/> <img src="http://payload122.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4750008/Screen Shot 2013-03-06 at 9.33.25 PM.png" width="670" height="348" width_o="1072" height_o="558" src_o="http://payload122.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4750008/Screen Shot 2013-03-06 at 9.33.25 PM_o.png" data-mid="27533828" border="0" align="left"/> <img src="http://payload122.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4750008/Screen Shot 2013-03-06 at 9.34.27 PM.png" width="670" height="373" width_o="1268" height_o="707" src_o="http://payload122.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4750008/Screen Shot 2013-03-06 at 9.34.27 PM_o.png" data-mid="27533861" border="0" align="left"/> <img src="http://payload122.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4750008/Screen Shot 2013-03-06 at 9.35.09 PM.png" width="670" height="368" width_o="1275" height_o="701" src_o="http://payload122.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4750008/Screen Shot 2013-03-06 at 9.35.09 PM_o.png" data-mid="27533904" border="0" align="left"/> Images above from Campus in Camps exhibition for Border Cultures: Part One (homes, land); courtesy of Anexact.org. MTLO is proud to support the project of Campus in Camps by completing the fabrication for the exhibition model. You can read more about the project here. You can read more about Srimoyee Mitra's curatorial project for Border Cultures here. The Art Gallery of Windsor is also currently hosting the The Border Bookmobile Public Archive and Reading Room, by Lee Rodney in collaboration with Mike Marcon, from January 25 – March 31, 2013. <img src="http://payload122.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4750008/Screen Shot 2013-03-06 at 9.36.43 PM.png" width="670" height="390" width_o="1269" height_o="739" src_o="http://payload122.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4750008/Screen Shot 2013-03-06 at 9.36.43 PM_o.png" data-mid="27534006" border="0" align="left"/>Detail from Border Bookmobile Public Archive and Reading Room; courtesy of Anexact.org. _ In-America (2012-Present) <img src="http://payload122.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4750008/Screen Shot 2012-11-23 at 11.47.06 AM.png" width="548" height="913" width_o="548" height_o="913" src_o="http://payload122.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4750008/Screen Shot 2012-11-23 at 11.47.06 AM_o.png" data-mid="25759576" border="0" align="left"/> "Wolff in America," from the In America collection, a print series for the 21st century hydro-leak enthusiast ... More prints from the series are available here. MTLO studio MTLO studio (pronounced Mount Low) is the design, print, projects, and general services division of the Institute of Improbable Poromechanics; it is... http://anexact.org/SYNAPSE-curators-network http://anexact.org/following/anexact.org/SYNAPSE-curators-network Tue, 22 Jan 2013 10:11:42 +0000 www.anexact.org 2608465 SYNAPSE International Curators' Network As a 2013 member of SYNAPSE, the International Curators' Network at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, I have been participating in The Anthropocene-Project in Berlin. Further details about SYNAPSE, the Anthropocene-Project, and the Anthropocene Observatory, are included below. <img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608465/Screen Shot 2013-04-29 at 2.39.16 AM.png" width="670" height="446" width_o="697" height_o="465" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608465/Screen Shot 2013-04-29 at 2.39.16 AM_o.png" data-mid="29652299" border="0" align="left"/> SYNAPSE Curators 2013. Photo: Dante Busquets, 2013. My proposal, The Design of the Anthropocene: A Prehistory, is available here. The Framing the Anthropocene blog, in development by the HKW, is available here. More details about the HKW project, and SYNAPSE, are included below. _ ______________________________________ Haus der Kulturen der Welt John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10 10577 Berlin www.hkw.de www.hkw.de/anthropocene (all details below from HKW) Nature as we know it is a concept that belongs to the past. No longer a force separate from and ambivalent to human activity, nature is not an obstacle nor a harmonious other. Humanity forms nature. Humanity and nature are one, embedded within the recent geological record. This is the core premise of the Anthropocene thesis, announcing a paradigm shift in the natural sciences as well as providing new thought models for culture, politics and everyday life. Popularized by Nobel laureate and chemist Paul Crutzen, the basis for the Anthropocene as our current geological epoch rests on the claim that humankind is the driving power behind planetary transformation. Over the next two years, the HKW embarks on an exploration of this hypothesis and its manifold implications. The Anthropocene Project opens with a four-day gathering, bringing together renowned thinkers, artists, filmmakers, scientists, and scholars to meet, discuss, and debate an archipelago of thoughts. Fundamental positions, issues, and implications posed by "the age of mankind" are considered: If the opposition between humanity and nature has been dissolved, what processes must we undergo to shift our perspectives and trained perceptions? Where to draw the borders of an ever-expanding "planetary garden"? Is it necessary to rethink the nature of economies, or should we assign nature its own economy? What impact does the Anthropocene have on global, political decision making? What image of humanity forms if nature appears in the image of man, as if it were human? The Opening employs multiple formats to facilitate presentation, discussion, and reflection. Organized around the themes "Perspectives," "Times," "Gardens," "Oikos," and "Techné," five Island Stagings offer trans-disciplinary landscapes and thingly narratives where our entanglement within the world may unfold. Keynotes will address the socio-political, philosophical, and creative capacity of the Anthropocene thesis to (re)mobilize the planet. Pointed questions to and provocative opinions around the Anthropocene are exchanged in a series of Dialogues. Two Roundtables tackle storytelling and friction under the sign of the Anthropocene. Specially commissioned Artistic Interventions present visual, spatial, and poetic reflections, particularly considering the cosmological dimensions of the Anthropocene thesis. A Research Forum brings together researchers and experts to discuss their ongoing projects. A Metabolic Kitchen, an architectonic culinary intervention designed by raumlaborberlin, suggests a sensory experience of social relations approached via metabolic processes. Participants include: Akeel Bilgrami, Arno Brandlhuber, Christina von Braun, Claire Colebrook, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Lorraine Daston, Erle Ellis, Harun Farocki, Kodwo Eshun, Renée Green, Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Aldo Haesler, Ursula K. Heise, Rem Koolhaas, John Law, Xavier Le Roy, Emma Marris, Gloria Meynen, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, raumlaborberlin, Daniel Rosenberg, smudge studio, Will Steffen, Michael Taussig, Paulo Tavares, John Tresch, Eyal Weizman, Cary Wolfe, Jan Zalasiewicz On view in 2013 10–13 January 2013 The Anthropocene Project. An Opening ... as if it were human Island Stagings, Keynotes, Dialogues, Artistic Interventions, Roundtables, Research Forum _ Videos from the opening are now available online. _ The detailed program brochure is also available here. _ For a review of the events by Smudge Studio, see their Friends of the Pleistocene post Engaging the Age of Change. 21–24 February 2013 Unmenschliche Musik Compositions by Machines, by Animals, and by Accident Concerts, performances, installations, films, conversations, game shows from 1 April 2013 onwards Im Archiv Discourses, debates, experiments <img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608465/das_anthropozaen_eine_eroeffnung.jpg" width="600" height="502" width_o="600" height_o="502" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608465/das_anthropozaen_eine_eroeffnung_o.jpg" data-mid="25619393" border="0" align="left"/> Illustration by Benedikt Rugar. 23–27 April 2013 SYNAPSE – International Curators' Network Workshop www.synapse.info 26 April–1 July 2013 The Whole Earth. California and the Disappearance of the Outside Exhibition 21–22 June 2013 Conference from 22 May 2013 Anthropocene Observatory Film Series by Territorial Agency (John Palmesino and Ann-Sofi Rönnskog), Armin Linke and Anselm Franke 24–27 October 2013 Böse Musik Odes to Violence, Death and the Devil Concerts, performances, installations, films, conversations, game Further information: www.hkw.de/anthropocene The Anthropocene Project is an initiative of Haus der Kulturen der Welt in cooperation with the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Deutsches Museum, the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich and the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, Potsdam. Haus der Kulturen der Welt is supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as well as by the Federal Foreign Office. SYNAPSE International Curators' Network As a 2013 member of SYNAPSE, the International Curators' Network at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, I have been... http://anexact.org/PHGH-emissions-1 http://anexact.org/following/anexact.org/PHGH-emissions-1 Tue, 22 Jan 2013 10:11:41 +0000 www.anexact.org 4750032 PHGH is the emissions-blog of the Institute of Improbable Poromechanics. Organized by IIP co-directors Etienne Turpin, Mary O'Malley and Sara E. Dean, PHGH aggregates the virtual archive of poromechanical wonders. Follow the leakage here. <img src="http://payload122.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4750032/Screen Shot 2012-12-30 at 12.41.58 PM.png" width="670" height="444" width_o="670" height_o="444" src_o="http://payload122.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4750032/Screen Shot 2012-12-30 at 12.41.58 PM_o.png" data-mid="25759772" border="0" align="left"/> Detail of analogue ventilation strategy, Capela do Morumbi, Sao Paulo, Brasil; courtesy of PHGH. PHGH is the emissions-blog of the Institute of Improbable Poromechanics. Organized by IIP co-directors Etienne Turpin, Mary O'Malley and Sara E. Dean, PHGH... http://anexact.org/POROMECHANICS http://anexact.org/following/anexact.org/POROMECHANICS Mon, 19 Nov 2012 10:14:08 +0000 www.anexact.org 4214382 Institute of Improbable Poromechanics "The strategy is to introduce something into - or more precisely, to find something "implicated in" - the gridded space, which it cannot contain, which leaks or spills out from it, linking it to the outside." - John Rajchman, Constructions <img src="http://payload95.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4214382/Screen Shot 2012-10-13 at 8.02.48 PM.png" width="670" height="384" width_o="926" height_o="531" src_o="http://payload95.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4214382/Screen Shot 2012-10-13 at 8.02.48 PM_o.png" data-mid="22421979" border="0" align="left"/> IIP image of 20th century containment logic farcically deployed in 21st century. While dominant culture continues to insist on hiding, disguising and otherwise overcoding our improbably poromechanical reality, the Institute of Improbable Poromechanics + MTLO studio (pronounced Mount Low) assert that we have left the 20th century and its penchant for containment, closure, and exclusion; our techniques for securing distinction, from the impervious surface to the hermetic seal, are decisively historical. The postnatural condition of the 21st century is a post-heroic time of leakage. We can no longer be content with the tired models for thinking and designing that emphasize otherworldly modes of permanent distinction. As our world departs from the exhausting logic of 20th century containment, the IIP + MTLO studio facilitate new forms of urban research, theoretical inquiry, architecture, design and exhibition space; we pursue Reza Negarestani's imperative: "Be a hydro-leak engineer. Make things leak out." <img src="http://payload95.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4214382/Screen Shot 2012-11-19 at 1.08.30 PM.png" width="670" height="382" width_o="1272" height_o="726" src_o="http://payload95.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4214382/Screen Shot 2012-11-19 at 1.08.30 PM_o.png" data-mid="23681749" border="0" align="left"/> IIP tour of Improbable Detroit, with Richard Pell, Director of the Center for Postnatural History, and Emily Kutil. Image courtesy of Richard Pell. <img src="http://payload95.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4214382/Screen Shot 2012-12-07 at 4.04.34 PM.png" width="670" height="264" width_o="1285" height_o="507" src_o="http://payload95.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4214382/Screen Shot 2012-12-07 at 4.04.34 PM_o.png" data-mid="24307586" border="0" align="left"/> Albert Kahn-designed Conservatory on Belle Isle; IIP tour of Improbable Detroit. Image courtesy of MTLO studio. <img src="http://payload95.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4214382/Screen Shot 2012-12-07 at 4.05.06 PM.png" width="670" height="298" width_o="1286" height_o="572" src_o="http://payload95.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/4214382/Screen Shot 2012-12-07 at 4.05.06 PM_o.png" data-mid="24307589" border="0" align="left"/> Fake fauna in the Conservatory on Belle Isle; IIP tour of Improbable Detroit. Image courtesy of MTLO studio. _ IIP design services - visit MTLO studio _ IIP blog - visit PHGH emissions _ contact - info (at) improbableporomechanics (dot) org Institute of Improbable Poromechanics "The strategy is to introduce something into - or more precisely, to find something "implicated in" - the gridded space,... http://anexact.org/DESIGN-RESEARCH-MSc http://anexact.org/following/anexact.org/DESIGN-RESEARCH-MSc Sun, 15 Jan 2012 15:03:55 +0000 www.anexact.org 2608466 PLEASE NOTE: The MS_DR program or 2012-2013 has been cancelled. For urgent inquiries regarding the MS_DR and other MS programs, please contact Associate Dean and Director of Professional Programs Milton S.F. Curry at msfcurry@umich.edu. Master of Science in Design Research Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan The Master of Science in Design Research (MS_DR) is one of the post-professional degree concentrations offered by Taubman College. Exemplary of the range, depth, and precision of emergent platforms for contemporary design research, STUD10 (MS_DR 2011-12) has developed a formidable series of collaborative and individual projects; details regarding their exhibitions at Taubman College, which are free and open to the public, can be found below. Master of Science _ Design Research (2012-13) Call for Applications Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning is currently accepting applications for the Master of Science _ Design Research (MS_DR). The MS_DR is a two semester, post-professional degree that posits architectural studio work as a design research protocol. The 30 credit-hour curriculum is constructed around a two-semester studio/seminar combination that asserts ideas, ideation, and the making of theory as grounds for an independently pursued research inquiry. Additional application information is here. MS_DR Laboratory MS_DR studio work attempts to place architecture deep inside its cultural site of reckoning, working vividly with mediated influences, technological imperatives, and representational biases within the contemporary social apparatus and its forms of digital culture. The theory seminar colludes with this studio emphasis, deflecting studio practices through the heuristic making and leveraging of theory across a multitude of considerations within design research. For the 2012-2013 sequence, students will deploy a laboratory model for research, working closely with their MS colleagues and instructors to develop both individual and collaborative projects. The laboratory is not, in our MS_DR research model, a hygienic space partitioned from the world to afford a distanced observation; the _LAB, as studio model, is instead a platform for embedded forms of inquiry, construction, intervention, speculation, and experimentation. These forms of studio practice are affirmed through design research that considers a multiplicity of scales, dimensions, and experiences. MS_DR Production The 2012-13 MS_DR program will be organized through the thematic of production, and work towards an exhibition and published text that hybridizes design research and theory—production. We will consider architecture as producer and track the manifestations of architecture as production in the broad sense of the term, examining the critical intersections among architecture, design research, and their spatial consequences. In a contemporary practice, what does architecture aim to produce? Does the production of architecture today enable or prohibit previous disciplinary modes of agency and efficacy? If architecture is producer, how can the architect position herself to encounter new ethical, social, and environmental challenges that pressurize the discipline? Among these and other urgent questions, the MS_DR will orient its studio and seminar pedagogy to challenge normative assumptions regarding the PRO_duction of contemporary architecture theory and practice. MS_DR Sequence Fall 2012 PRO_LAB I - The Apparatus of Production studio directed by Assistant Professor Robert Adams THEORY - Making | Theory | Work 1: Architecture as Producer seminar organized by Etienne Turpin, Ph.D. CRITIC TBA <img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/RTM_adams_large.jpg" width="545" height="316" width_o="545" height_o="316" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/RTM_adams_large_o.jpg" data-mid="15818337" border="0" align="left"/> Robert Adams, Spontaneous Mutations, Genetic Deletions, Adaptive Environments, and Assistive Technology in the Compression of Developmental Time Winter 2013 PRO_LAB II - Production and Relationality studio directed by Assistant Professor Perry Kulper PRAXIS - Making | Theory | Work 2: Documentation/Dissemination seminar organized by Etienne Turpin, Ph.D. CRITIC TBA <img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/museum_sectionl.jpg" width="670" height="446" width_o="1000" height_o="667" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/museum_sectionl_o.jpg" data-mid="15818292" border="0" align="left"/> Perry Kulper, Museum. Section. <img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/bleachedout1-relationaldrawing.jpg" width="670" height="469" width_o="1214" height_o="850" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/bleachedout1-relationaldrawing_o.jpg" data-mid="15818443" border="0" align="left"/> Perry Kulper, BleachedOut1.RelationalDrawing. Applicants The application deadline for the MS_DR has been extended to May 1, 2012; however, international students (outside the U.S.) are encouraged to apply by April 15, 2012, to ensure processing time for legal protocols. Additional Information Additional information, including application forms and details regarding application eligibility, processing, and schedule can be found online. For information, questions, or concerns regarding your application to the MS_DR, please contact Etienne Turpin at sturpin@umich.edu. MS_DR STUD10 (2011-12) <img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2011-12-04 at 11.52.44 PM.png" width="670" height="265" width_o="1635" height_o="648" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2011-12-04 at 11.52.44 PM_o.png" data-mid="16926926" border="0" align="left"/> Thesis Students BRAD SMITH CHARLIE VENEKLASE JANET YOON JESSICA HESTER JONATHAN LEJUNE KEITH PEIFFER MELINDA ROUSE SARA DEAN SCOTT SØRLI VALERIA FEDERIGHI Coordinator + Studio Instructor JASON YOUNG Support Instructors PERRY KULPER ETIENNE TURPIN 2011-12 Visiting Critics RICARDO DOMIGUEZ JOHANNES VON MOLTKE MS_DR STUD10 Exhibitions <img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-28 at 7.58.00 PM.png" width="670" height="143" width_o="876" height_o="187" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-28 at 7.58.00 PM_o.png" data-mid="16927044" border="0" align="left"/> LOOSE CANONS MS_DR STUD10 Thesis Exhibition Taubman Gallery Art + Architecture Building North Campus University of Michigan Opens April 25 2012 6pm Loose canons of architecture oscillate between works outside the current canon of the discipline and producers who explode onto the scene in unexpected and unpredictable ways. At a time when the concept of an architectural canon is contested, what are the possibilities inherent in work that explores the edges of the discipline? As institutions attempt to reposition professional practice, what are the tolerances for robust architectural research? In our post-digital age, how does architectural research operate in the present and anticipate new realities? Loose Canons curates the work of MS_DR as ten individual projects, deploying the gallery as a collective platform that encourages deep reads of the work. <img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-30 at 7.48.48 AM.png" width="670" height="335" width_o="1281" height_o="642" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-30 at 7.48.48 AM_o.png" data-mid="16979016" border="0" align="left"/> <img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-28 at 7.57.26 PM.png" width="670" height="172" width_o="877" height_o="226" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-28 at 7.57.26 PM_o.png" data-mid="16927045" border="0" align="left"/> BAD INFINITY MS_DR STUD10 Selected Works Exhibition Duderstadt Building North Campus University of Michigan Opens April 6 2012 6pm MS_DR curated a pop-up exhibition, BAD INFINITY, at the Duderstadt Digital Media Commons Gallery from April 6 – 11. BAD INFINITY traces a relentless pursuit of perpetuation in spaces and contemporary culture as it intersects the ten individual projects of the MS_DR students. <img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-12 at 6.14.49 PM.png" width="670" height="445" width_o="1291" height_o="858" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-12 at 6.14.49 PM_o.png" data-mid="16347412" border="0" align="left"/> MS_DR STUD10 Bad Infinity photographs courtesy of Catie Newell. <img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-12 at 6.13.06 PM.png" width="670" height="445" width_o="1291" height_o="858" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-12 at 6.13.06 PM_o.png" data-mid="16347392" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-12 at 6.13.22 PM.png" width="670" height="444" width_o="1293" height_o="857" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-12 at 6.13.22 PM_o.png" data-mid="16347338" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-12 at 6.14.11 PM.png" width="670" height="445" width_o="1293" height_o="859" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-12 at 6.14.11 PM_o.png" data-mid="16347375" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-12 at 6.13.36 PM.png" width="670" height="444" width_o="1292" height_o="858" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-12 at 6.13.36 PM_o.png" data-mid="16347381" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-12 at 6.14.00 PM.png" width="670" height="444" width_o="1361" height_o="903" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-12 at 6.14.00 PM_o.png" data-mid="16347387" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-12 at 6.15.12 PM.png" width="670" height="444" width_o="1287" height_o="853" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-12 at 6.15.12 PM_o.png" data-mid="16347424" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-12 at 6.15.23 PM.png" width="670" height="444" width_o="1290" height_o="856" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-12 at 6.15.23 PM_o.png" data-mid="16347426" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-12 at 6.15.33 PM.png" width="670" height="444" width_o="1293" height_o="858" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-12 at 6.15.33 PM_o.png" data-mid="16347429" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-12 at 6.15.46 PM.png" width="670" height="443" width_o="1290" height_o="854" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-12 at 6.15.46 PM_o.png" data-mid="16347433" border="0" align="left"/> <img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-12 at 6.15.02 PM.png" width="670" height="443" width_o="1291" height_o="855" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-04-12 at 6.15.02 PM_o.png" data-mid="16347415" border="0" align="left"/> MS_DR STUD10 Final Critical Conversation March, 2012 Thesis presentations and conversation with Visiting Critics Ricardo Dominguez and Johannes von Moltke, with guest critics Lori Brown, Kerstin Barndt, and Amy Kulper, and MS_DR instructors Jason Young and Etienne Turpin. <img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-30 at 11.43.21 AM.png" width="670" height="407" width_o="807" height_o="491" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-30 at 11.43.21 AM_o.png" data-mid="15878070" border="0" align="left"/> MS_DR final critical conversation images courtesy of Jesse Wetzel. <img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-30 at 11.51.43 AM.png" width="670" height="375" width_o="1288" height_o="722" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-30 at 11.51.43 AM_o.png" data-mid="15878377" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-30 at 11.51.57 AM.png" width="670" height="397" width_o="1256" height_o="746" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-30 at 11.51.57 AM_o.png" data-mid="15878379" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-30 at 11.52.16 AM.png" width="670" height="437" width_o="1185" height_o="774" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-30 at 11.52.16 AM_o.png" data-mid="15878383" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-30 at 11.52.35 AM.png" width="670" height="461" width_o="1135" height_o="781" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-30 at 11.52.35 AM_o.png" data-mid="15878385" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-30 at 11.53.01 AM.png" width="670" height="487" width_o="1151" height_o="838" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-30 at 11.53.01 AM_o.png" data-mid="15878387" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-30 at 11.53.11 AM.png" width="670" height="425" width_o="1218" height_o="774" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-30 at 11.53.11 AM_o.png" data-mid="15878390" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-30 at 11.53.21 AM.png" width="670" height="438" width_o="1196" height_o="783" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-30 at 11.53.21 AM_o.png" data-mid="15878399" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-30 at 11.53.50 AM.png" width="670" height="370" width_o="1248" height_o="691" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-30 at 11.53.50 AM_o.png" data-mid="15878407" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-30 at 11.54.08 AM.png" width="670" height="428" width_o="1180" height_o="754" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-30 at 11.54.08 AM_o.png" data-mid="15878409" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-31 at 11.46.18 AM.png" width="670" height="379" width_o="1273" height_o="721" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-31 at 11.46.18 AM_o.png" data-mid="15916328" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-31 at 11.46.55 AM.png" width="670" height="371" width_o="1137" height_o="630" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-31 at 11.46.55 AM_o.png" data-mid="15916329" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-30 at 11.54.21 AM.png" width="670" height="439" width_o="1224" height_o="803" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-03-30 at 11.54.21 AM_o.png" data-mid="15878412" border="0" align="left"/> MS_DR STUD10 Critical Conversation 3 December, 2011 <img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-15 at 10.54.55 AM.png" width="670" height="424" width_o="1281" height_o="812" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-15 at 10.54.55 AM_o.png" data-mid="13199209" border="0" align="left"/> MS_DR critical conversation photographs courtesy of Jonathan Lejune. 11.12.15 Let Them Eat Pancake a breakfast Launch dinner for SCAPEGOAT Architecture | Landscape | Political Economy Issue 02: Materialism Thursday, 15 December 2011, 9pm TCAUP 3rd Floor, East Review Space FREE PANCAKES FREE MAPLE SYRUP MATERIALISM $5 Issue Editors: Adam Bobbette & Jane Hutton Editorial Board: Adrian Blackwell, Adam Bobbette, Jane Hutton, Marcin Kedzior, Chris Lee, Christie Pearson, Etienne Turpin Designer: Chris Lee Publisher: SCAPEGOAT Publications Issue 02 Contributors: AK Thompson, Andrew Payne, David Graeber, Curt Gambetta, Kirsty Robertson, Eric Cazdyn, Alex Livingston, Jane Bennett, Una Chadhuri, werker magazine, Societe Realiste, LAAC, Stiefel Kramer, Thilo Folkerts, Rodney Latourelle, Kika Thorne, Owen Hatherley, James Khamsi, Wayward Plant Registry, Catie Newell, Dan Handel, Justin Fowler, Byron White, Jeff Powers, Francesco Gagliardi, James Macgillivray, Scott Sorli <img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-15 at 1.37.51 AM.png" width="570" height="849" width_o="570" height_o="849" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-15 at 1.37.51 AM_o.png" data-mid="13193198" border="0" align="left"/> Let Them Eat Pancakes photographs Jonathan Lejune. <img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-15 at 1.33.44 AM.png" width="670" height="443" width_o="1283" height_o="849" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-15 at 1.33.44 AM_o.png" data-mid="13193025" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-15 at 1.33.16 AM.png" width="670" height="439" width_o="1284" height_o="843" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-15 at 1.33.16 AM_o.png" data-mid="13193014" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-15 at 1.34.46 AM.png" width="670" height="478" width_o="1189" height_o="849" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-15 at 1.34.46 AM_o.png" data-mid="13193056" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-15 at 1.35.08 AM.png" width="670" height="550" width_o="1034" height_o="850" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-15 at 1.35.08 AM_o.png" data-mid="13193086" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-15 at 1.36.05 AM.png" width="670" height="444" width_o="1279" height_o="848" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-15 at 1.36.05 AM_o.png" data-mid="13193130" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-15 at 1.36.56 AM.png" width="568" height="654" width_o="568" height_o="654" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-15 at 1.36.56 AM_o.png" data-mid="13193151" border="0" align="left"/> 11.11.22 Contestation A Studio Talk with Visiting Critic Ricardo Dominguez, Associate Professor in the Visual Arts Department at UC San Diego East Review Space Art + Architecture Building <img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-15 at 11.02.46 AM.png" width="670" height="136" width_o="1582" height_o="323" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-15 at 11.02.46 AM_o.png" data-mid="13199331" border="0" align="left"/> Professor Dominguez was the Visiting Critic for TCAUP's workshop with students in the Master of Science_Design Research (MS_DR) for one week. He shared some of his current work with students in Taubman College in a studio talk that was intended to promote dialog around Prof. Dominguez's work, which attempts to engender "a geo-aesthetics that can construct ethical and performative complexities for the new earths to come, touching new geographies for new bodies." <img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-16 at 7.18.50 AM.png" width="670" height="868" width_o="700" height_o="907" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-16 at 7.18.50 AM_o.png" data-mid="13228200" border="0" align="left"/> Ricardo Dominguez is a co-founder of The Electronic Disturbance Theater (EDT), a group who developed Virtual-Sit-In technologies in 1998 in solidarity with the Zapatista communities in Chiapas, Mexico. He is co-Director of Thing an ISP for artists and activists. His recent Electronic Disturbance Theater project with Brett Stabaum, Micha Cardenas and Amy Sara Carroll the *Transborder Immigrant Tool* (a GPS cellphone safety net tool for crossing the Mexico/U.S border was the winner of "Transnational Communities Award", this award was funded by *Cultural Contact*, Endowment for Culture Mexico - U.S. and handed out by the U.S. Embassy in Mexico), also funded by CALIT2 and two Transborder Awards from the UCSD Center for the Humanities. Ricardo is an Associate Professor at UCSD in the Visual Arts Department, a Hellman Fellow, and Principal/Principle Investigator at CALIT2. He also co-founder of *particle group* with artists Diane Ludin, Nina Waisman, Amy Sara Carroll a gesture about nanotechnology entitled *Particles of Interest: Tales of the Matter Market* that was presented in Berlin (2007), the San Diego Museum of Art (2008), Oi Futuro, and FILE festivals in Brazil (2008). Find a recent video: (nano_Garage(s): Speculations about (Open Fabbing). <img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-15 at 11.02.22 AM.png" width="670" height="475" width_o="1196" height_o="849" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-15 at 11.02.22 AM_o.png" data-mid="13199341" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-15 at 11.02.07 AM.png" width="670" height="514" width_o="1149" height_o="883" src_o="http://payload15.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2608466/Screen Shot 2012-01-15 at 11.02.07 AM_o.png" data-mid="13199344" border="0" align="left"/> STUD10 MS_DR studio work can be found here. PLEASE NOTE: The MS_DR program or 2012-2013 has been cancelled. For urgent inquiries regarding the MS_DR and other MS programs, please contact Associate Dean and... http://anexact.org/ARCHITECTURE-ADAPTATION http://anexact.org/following/anexact.org/ARCHITECTURE-ADAPTATION Sun, 08 Jan 2012 11:09:36 +0000 www.anexact.org 2565052 <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/2013 A-A Letterhead_sm.png" width="310" height="318" width_o="310" height_o="318" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/2013 A-A Letterhead_sm_o.png" data-mid="25098564" border="0" align="left"/> _ _______________________________________ INTRODUCTION to RESEARCH “How can you design spaces of transaction which facilitate the possibility of enhanced translatability of people’s sentiments, their perspectives, their affect, their ways of seeing things?” - AbdouMaliq Simone The Architecture + Adaptation: Design for Hypercomplexity Research Initiative examines the intersections of extreme environmental circumstances and creative architectural production. Focusing on highly-dense urban locations that face the regular and damaging occurrence of inundation, the project will document the constituent forces and effects that pose challenges to normative architectural production. Relying heavily on situated research and observation through visual production, we conduct intensive site-based research and produce visual documentation and analysis of inundation effects on urban and architectural compositions. The primary aim for the research initiative is to locate potential moments for architecture to intervene, as a mediation, adaptation, or coordination with ecological circumstances that operate at such a large scale and level of complexity that architecture tends to be disregarded as a potential agent of influence. As architecture struggles to find ways to exercise agency through socially and environmentally responsible practices, and as the discipline attempts to reorganize its commitments in the face ecological collapse, Architecture + Adaptation mobilizes collaborative, engaged, situated research to advance the pedagogical model of architecture education beyond the studio, and to build new connections for architecture research today. In general terms, this research will work to define architecture’s agency within metropolitan and environmental hypercomplexities, seen as the compound instability brought about by climate change, human migration, failing infrastructure, population, and capitalist political economic forces, among other factors. Our research initiative is driven by primary site specific research, seminar and studio course development, publications and exhibitions. The first in a series of research courses - INUNDATION Jakarta/Bangkok - is described in greater detail below. INUNDATION 1 Jakarta + Bangkok research and design proposals are on Tumblr INUNDATION 1 Jakarta + Bangkok documentation of the studio and site research on our Flickr _ _______________________________________ INUNDATION 2 Course Brief <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2013-01-05 at 12.31.16 PM.png" width="670" height="434" width_o="1037" height_o="672" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2013-01-05 at 12.31.16 PM_o.png" data-mid="25082728" border="0" align="left"/> The INUNDATION 2 Spring Travel Course presentation will take place on 28 January, 2013, 12PM, at the Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning. As Southeast Asia’s most populous and most dense metropolitan conurbation, and the second largest urban footprint in the world, JAKARTA, Indonesia, is a city of hypercomplexity. Recent trends in weather intensification, sea level rise, extreme river pollution, river flooding, and coastal inundation, through multiplicative effects, make it one of the key sites for researching architecture’s agency among 21st century hypercomplexities. Following the success of the 2012 INUNDATION 1 research studio, JAKARTA’s shifting coastline will again be the primary site of investigation during our collaborative design research workshop with Hong Kong University and Universitas Indonesia, where our goal is to identify the localized effects of inundation and to produce proposals among the megacity’s unstable geography of water. Prior to this design research workshop, students will participate in a design charrette with StudioMake and intervening critic, François Roche in BANGKOK, Thailand. This one-week project in collaboration with students from Rangsit University, will introduce comparative urbanisms for the studio’s collective research into inundation and its ecological, social, and spatial consequences in Southeast Asian cities. Additional site visits during the research studio include: BOGOR, KRAKATOA, YOGYAKARTA, PRAMBANAN, and BOROBUDUR. What can architecture do – as a method for research and as a practice of intervention – among the complicated compositions that shape the experience of climate change in Southeast Asian megacities? How will architecture adapt to respond to 21st century metropolitan ecologies? How can architecture find renewed purpose and meaning among current transdisciplinary efforts to confront the environmental and social consequences of the anthropocene? _ _______________________________________ PUBLICATIONS & PRESENTATIONS of RESEARCH _ Adam Bobbette, Meredith Miller, and Etienne Turpin, editors. Jakarta: Architecture + Adaptation (Depok: Universitas Indonesia Press, forthcoming 2013). _ Etienne Turpin and Meredith Miller, "On the Informal Urban-Archive: Precarity, Design Research, and Tendentious Practice," lecture for the Woodbury School of Architecture, Los Angeles, forthcoming 7 February, 2013. _ Adam Bobbette, Meredith Miller, and Etienne Turpin, “Jakarta: Design Research and the Futures of Hypercomplexity,” in MONU #17 – Next Urbanisms, Fall 2012, 56-63 [pdf] <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2013-01-22 at 10.30.28 AM.png" width="518" height="714" width_o="518" height_o="714" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2013-01-22 at 10.30.28 AM_o.png" data-mid="25758041" border="0" align="left"/> <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-10-16 at 12.20.29 PM.png" width="519" height="698" width_o="519" height_o="698" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-10-16 at 12.20.29 PM_o.png" data-mid="22501272" border="0" align="left"/> A review of the issue is available at Archinect. _ Etienne Turpin with Meredith Miller and Adam Bobbette, “Inundation Jakarta: Designing for Hypercomplexity,” presentation to the 49th International Federation of Landscape Architecture World Congress – Landscapes in Transition, Cape Town, South Africa, September 2012. _ Meredith Miller and Etienne Turpin, “Architecture + Adaptation: Emergent Territories of Inquiry,” lecture for the Faculty of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong, May 2012. _ _______________________________________ EXHIBITIONS of RESEARCH _ Smart City: The Next Generation, Focus South-East Asia A project by Aedes East - International Forum for Contemporary Architecture e.V. curated by Ulla Giesler 18 May - 4 July 2013 Aedes am Pfefferberg Christinenstr. 18-19 D-10119 Berlin Phone +49 (0)30 282 70 15 aedes@BauNetz.de <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/SC-Karte-Bild.jpg" width="600" height="286" width_o="600" height_o="286" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/SC-Karte-Bild_o.jpg" data-mid="30485195" border="0" align="left"/> The N.P.O. Aedes East, under the direction of the curator Ulla Giesler, presents an exhibition as part of the Asia-Pacific Weeks Berlin 2013, with the title ‘Smart City.' For the first time, the regional focus will be on South-East Asia. with particular emphasis on the formative up-and-coming generation. The exhibition concentrates on the search for intelligent solutions within an urban context. The project is exciting and highly relevant not only for architects and urban planners but also for 'city makers' in the widest sense: urbanites, artists, activists, environmentalists, but also institutions, universities, policy makers, investors, engineers and scientists. The exhibition discusses innovative “smart city” projects from South-East Asia: buildings, planning, urban interventions, initiatives and visions for the future from internationally known experts as well as young architects from Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Vietnam, who are making the cities more intelligent, effective and above all improving the quality of life for their citizens. More information about the exhibition is available here. _ Futures of Hypercomplexity 24 Jan – 28 Feb 2013 A. Alfred Taubman Gallery, Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2013-01-03 at 6.44.20 PM.png" width="670" height="434" width_o="1216" height_o="788" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2013-01-03 at 6.44.20 PM_o.png" data-mid="25029093" border="0" align="left"/> <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2013-01-25 at 10.38.16 AM.png" width="670" height="408" width_o="1203" height_o="734" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2013-01-25 at 10.38.16 AM_o.png" data-mid="25892293" border="0" align="left"/> <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2013-01-26 at 4.22.14 PM.png" width="670" height="360" width_o="955" height_o="514" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2013-01-26 at 4.22.14 PM_o.png" data-mid="25933937" border="0" align="left"/> The exhibition – Futures of Hypercomplexity – responds to several urgent questions: What is the agency of architecture in megacities that are facing severe inundation? In what forms do architecture and design “appear” within compositions of hypercomplexity? And, what are the variations of architecture and its operations among cities with a common crisis? The exhibition argues for tendentious solidarities and new strategic alliances between designers and the urban poor. Our contention is that the future of hypercomplexity in Southeast Asian megacities will witness either a reification of political economic divisions between the extremely affluent and the neglected urban poor, or, as our work suggests, begin to develop new affinities between urban researchers, architects, landscape architects and the urban poor to challenge the inequalities of resource availability, unequal exposure to environmental risks and benefits, and urban health and well-being. Organized by Meredith Miller and Etienne Turpin Exhibition design by Sara E. Dean with Jono Sturt Exhibition production by Sara E. Dean, Jono Sturt, and the students of INUNDATION 1 studio Funding Support Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan International Institute, University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan A Press Statement for the exhibition is available here. Future of Hypercomplexity - EVENTS - Friday, 15 February, 2013 Design and Spatial Politics in Southeast Asia A Workshop with Dr. Abidin Kusno 2-4PM, Taubman College Gallery Jakarta and the Dilemma of Our Time A Lecture by Dr. Abidin Kusno (free and open to the public) 6PM, Taubman College Lecture Theatre Space is a social and ideological apparatus which has the capacity to influence social change. Such change is related to the ways in which time is represented, understood, experienced. This time-space coordination is central to the question of spatial and environmental justice. In this lecture, Dr. Kusno considers the question of "spatial justice" by analyzing three interrelated layers of times that historically structured the space of Jakarta: the time of everyday life; the time of memory; and the longue duree of historical capitalism. Abidin Kusno is Associate Professor at the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia where he holds Canada Research Chair in Asian Urbanism and Culture. He is the author of Behind the Postcolonial: Architecture, Urban Space and Political Cultures in Indonesia (Routledge, 2000) and The Appearances of Memory: Mnemonic Practices of Architecture of Urban Form in Indonesia (Duke, 2010). Futures of Hypercomplexity Exhibition Reception (free and open to the public) Following the lecture, Taubman College Gallery <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2013-01-28 at 6.46.34 PM.png" width="670" height="333" width_o="1256" height_o="626" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2013-01-28 at 6.46.34 PM_o.png" data-mid="26014247" border="0" align="left"/> <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2013-01-28 at 7.24.24 PM.png" width="670" height="394" width_o="1273" height_o="750" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2013-01-28 at 7.24.24 PM_o.png" data-mid="26014342" border="0" align="left"/> <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2013-01-28 at 7.28.28 PM.png" width="670" height="430" width_o="1266" height_o="814" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2013-01-28 at 7.28.28 PM_o.png" data-mid="26014550" border="0" align="left"/> <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2013-01-28 at 6.45.51 PM.png" width="670" height="391" width_o="1277" height_o="747" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2013-01-28 at 6.45.51 PM_o.png" data-mid="26014555" border="0" align="left"/> <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2013-02-18 at 3.12.07 PM.png" width="670" height="342" width_o="1141" height_o="583" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2013-02-18 at 3.12.07 PM_o.png" data-mid="26840422" border="0" align="left"/> <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2013-02-18 at 2.08.48 PM.png" width="670" height="281" width_o="1356" height_o="569" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2013-02-18 at 2.08.48 PM_o.png" data-mid="26840425" border="0" align="left"/> _ Navigating the Postnatural 17 November – 10 December, 2012 Salt & Cedar 2448 Riopelle St. Eastern Market Detroit organized by Etienne Turpin, Meredith Miller and Farid Rakun, with the students of INUNDATION 1 studio <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-11-09 at 8.34.38 PM.png" width="670" height="401" width_o="1271" height_o="762" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-11-09 at 8.34.38 PM_o.png" data-mid="23367212" border="0" align="left"/> The INUNDATION Bangkok/Jakarta research studio was organized through the tool of the field guide, originally produced during a workshop at Salt & Cedar in Detroit. With this tool, our research aimed to develop an image of both city’s hypercomplexities and unstable geographies of water, while specifying the localized effects of the problem to act on them through design.

 The exhibition – Navigating the Postnatural – returns the field guides, along with additional visual documentation and artifacts, to the Salt & Cedar Gallery as a means to reconsider the role of the field guide as an open-source/book-tool and to share some the research collected. Read more about the show by Farid Rakun on Archinect. <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-12-15 at 6.43.28 PM.png" width="670" height="334" width_o="1279" height_o="639" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-12-15 at 6.43.28 PM_o.png" data-mid="24566261" border="0" align="left"/> Farid Rakun and Sigrid Espelien during install at Salt & Cedar. <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/pan 7.jpg" width="670" height="215" width_o="768" height_o="247" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/pan 7_o.jpg" data-mid="24030739" border="0" align="left"/> Exhibition ready for opening; image courtesy of Farid Rakun. OPENING EVENT Saturday 17 November, 6-8PM Emergent Navigation Techniques: Operating Among Postnatural Ecologies a conversation with RICHARD PELL Director, Center for Postnatural History ROBB DRINKWATER Adjunct Professor, Sound Department, School of the Art Institute Chicago DOUGLAS PANCOAST Associate Professor, Architecture, School of the Art Institute Chicago moderated by MEREDITH MILLER Salt & Cedar 2448 Riopelle St. Eastern Market Detroit cheap & good food & drink <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-11-18 at 6.33.05 PM.png" width="670" height="305" width_o="1282" height_o="585" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-11-18 at 6.33.05 PM_o.png" data-mid="23678754" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-11-21 at 12.12.59 AM.png" width="670" height="374" width_o="1280" height_o="716" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-11-21 at 12.12.59 AM_o.png" data-mid="23746063" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-11-21 at 12.13.38 AM.png" width="670" height="330" width_o="1278" height_o="631" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-11-21 at 12.13.38 AM_o.png" data-mid="23746055" border="0" align="left"/> _ Bangkok + Jakarta: Cities of Hypercomplexity 14 September - 15 October, 2012 Center for Southeast Asian Studies, International Institute, University of Michigan. The exhibition – Bangkok + Jakarta: Cities of Hypercomplexity – responds to the urgent issue of inundation in Southeast Asian megacities by provoking the question: what is the agency of architecture within megacities and their various compositions of hypercomplexity? The exhibition presents research from the INUNDATION Bangkok/Jakarta studio which aims to produce an image of both city’s hypercomplexities and unstable geographies of water, while specifying the localized effects of the problem to act on them through design.
 <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-08-31 at 7.25.52 PM.png" width="519" height="826" width_o="519" height_o="826" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-08-31 at 7.25.52 PM_o.png" data-mid="20975370" border="0" align="left"/> _ _______________________________________ INUNDATION 1 Bangkok/Jakarta Research Studio _ Principal Investigators Assistant Professor Meredith Miller Sanders Research Fellow Etienne Turpin _ Research Coordinator Farid Rakun _ Student Research Team David De Cespedes Jared Heming Joshua Kehl Catharine Pyenson Andrew Kaczmarek Allen Gillers John David Ewanowski Geoffrey Salvatore Lucas Peter Bartosiewicz John R Hilmes Elizabeth Nichols Nathan Oppenheim _ Research Funding Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan International Institute, Experiential Learning Fund, University of Michigan _ Research Partners and Affiliates in Thailand Professor Danai Thaitakoo (Chulalongkorn University) Dr. Waew Chittawadi Chitrabongs (Chulalongkorn University) and Chusak Voraphitak Matthew Maudin, Assistant Vice President, Sales and Marketing Department, PACE David Schafer and Im Schafer, StudioMake Professor Nilay Mistry (Chulalongkorn University) Chuta Sinthuphan, Site-Specific/E.A.T _ Research Partners and Affiliates in Indonesia ruangrupa artists' initiative Kemas Ridwan Kurniawan, PhD, Chair of Department & Herlily, M.U.D., Vice-Chair of Department Universitas Indonesia, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Architecture Professor Rina Priyani, Institut Technologi Bandung <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/bp31.jpg" width="670" height="471" width_o="990" height_o="696" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/bp31_o.jpg" data-mid="17342365" border="0" align="left"/> Photograph of submerged Honda car factory in the Rojana industrial district, Ayutthaya province, central Thailand, during 2011 flood; courtesy of the Big Picture (Sakchai Lalit/AP). _ _______________________________________ BACKGROUND to INUNDATION RESEARCH STUDIO For architecture students to advance an understanding of hypercomplexities, they cannot be treated as abstractions or experienced through mediated means; in order to begin to apprehend the material and spatial reality of Bangkok and Jakarta’s ongoing negotiations within an ecological and political economic contexts seemingly so distant from our own, this project positions situated research as its key methodology. The INUNDATION Bangkok/Jakarta studio places architecture students from Taubman College into an interdisciplinary exchange with Assistant Professor Adam Bobbette and his landscape architecture students from Hong Kong University, as well as colleagues and students from the University of Indonesia. Collectively, we will be studying the hydrological infrastructure of Bangkok and Jakarta’s metropolitan regions. The objectives of this collaboration is to produce an image of the city’s hypercomplexity and unstable geography of water and secondly, to specify the localized effects of the problem to act on them through design. What is the agency of architecture in cities that fighting inundation? In what forms do architecture and design “appear” within compositions of hypercomplexity? And what are the variations of architecture and its operations among cities with a common crisis? <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 5.39.00 PM.png" width="670" height="330" width_o="1283" height_o="632" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 5.39.00 PM_o.png" data-mid="17343162" border="0" align="left"/> Photograph of Jakarta courtesy of Adam Bobbette. _ Site-based Learning The site of the research is the dual construct of the city and its ecological milieu. Differing from environmental science or ecology, architectural research in this area emphasizes the particular and synthetic interactions of built form, social patterns, and natural systems. In general terms, this research will work to define architecture’s agency within metropolitan and environmental hypercomplexities, seen as the compound instability brought about by climate change, human migration, failing infrastructure, population concentration, among other factors. In this regard, the research initiative is designed to achieve two important aims: first, to analyze the circumstances of impending disaster through inundation that make this problem central to South East Asian coastal cities; second, to render this condition explicit and spatially specific to sites in Bangkok, Thailand, and North Jakarta, Indonesia, that will be experienced first-hand. The ability to apprehend this these emergent forms of hypercomplexity is a precondition for architecture to have agency within and among them. Working with NGOs, specialists, and researchers at sites along the shorelines of Bangkok and North Jakarta, students will create a conceptual and spatial armature along which we will organize our daily interactions and site visits. As a single line on the map, students will examine how the shoreline represents a complicated fiction in that its reality is much less clearly defined and demands closer engagement. Along this organizing structure, we have identified particular sites of interest such as the flood-control infrastructures and a new large-scale land reclamation project. We’ve also engaged various individuals and organizations to consult (from local NGOs such as the Delta Alliance and Jakarta Water Advocacy), as well as representatives of private interests (developers from the Cipta Cakra Murdaya company and builders in the flood-prone and affluent Pluit neighborhood). These are a few examples that represent the wide range of perspectives that will contribute in distinct ways to our larger picture of the inundation and adjacent water-related issues in Bangkok and Jakarta. Notably, the problems of inundation have general features, but are also highly specified according to the history of cities and their resource use practices, waste water management, environmental issues, cultural practices, illegal settlement patterns, etc. Understanding these consequential difference is a key goal for the research studio. INUNDATION Bangkok/Jakarta will begin to introduce these aspects of comparative urbanism with site visits organized to parallel research in both cities. Working with researchers, water specialists, municipal planners and NGOs in Bangkok will allow students to develop an understanding of the complexity and specificity of inundation through a comparative urbanism approach. Future phases of the research initiative will alternate between Jakarta, Indonesia, Bangkok, Thailand, and Manila, Philippines. <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 5.39.26 PM.png" width="670" height="329" width_o="1286" height_o="632" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 5.39.26 PM_o.png" data-mid="17343163" border="0" align="left"/> Photograph of Jakarta courtesy of Adam Bobbette. _ Course Philosophy With an emphasis on observation as an active design methodology, a large component of this work is the result of collaborative research design with the student team. Through the structure of the Spring Travel Courses offered by Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning, the student research will be led by Professor Miller and Dr. Turpin, but the research and design effort with be one of collaborative and mutual dependence – each student will rely on each other to produce base maps, core research components, and site models. As architects, observation is an active practice, closely linked to visual representation. Throughout our fieldwork in Bangkok and Jakarta, we will use the production of various visual artifacts (maps, drawings, diagrams, photographs) as tools for documentation and analysis. But the nature of our research topic and the “sites” of inundation are in themselves resistant to fixed representations, such that our work will invent new methods of recording and classifying our observations. This aspect of the work is not simply a creative exercise but an important means to remaining open to new arenas of architectural concern that do not fit easily within conventions of drawing and other familiar forms of spatial representation. The students will come to value drawings not just as visual artifacts or conclusions to a conceptual process, but as an important tool for “seeing.” In this case drawing are a means of “seeing” the circumstances of inundation that could only be produced from an architectural standpoint. Students cannot learn about the potential agency of architecture from studio course work or lecture theatres alone. The impact of field research, on the ground collaborations, site-based and intensive analysis, and first hand site investigations cannot be overstated for the improvement of student learning. While architecture has recently witnessed the emergence of incredibly powerful computational tools for modeling, scripting and projective design research, these tools cannot replace immersive, experiential, and collaborative learning practices. <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 5.39.58 PM.png" width="670" height="332" width_o="1285" height_o="638" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 5.39.58 PM_o.png" data-mid="17343164" border="0" align="left"/> Photograph of Jakarta courtesy of Adam Bobbette. _ Course Production In addition to the immersive, site-based pedagogy, the INUNDATION Bangkok/Jakarta studio encourages engaged student learning through the practice of collaborative exhibition and catalogue. The development of material for publication and exhibition, in addition to the engaged, on the ground approach, enables students to have a direct connection with both the site and the results of their research, making a tremendous impact on both the overall value of the course for students and the pedagogical commitments the course advances. As the repository for field observations, the field guide is an invaluable form for the dissemination of research. As the product of Phase I of the Architecture + Adaptation Research Initiative, we will work with students to produce the A Field Manual for Postnatural Inundation: Jakarta. This research document will consolidate the constituent forces of inundation into a legible visual project, making this research available to our colleagues Taubman College, as well as to those whom we worked with in the field. A Field Manual will serve as both a record for the urban investigations but also as a source of information and conceptual basis for subsequent research in the Architecture + Adaptation sequence. <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 5.41.39 PM.png" width="670" height="322" width_o="1260" height_o="607" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 5.41.39 PM_o.png" data-mid="17343166" border="0" align="left"/> Photograph of Jakarta courtesy of Adam Bobbette. _ Preliminary Readings METHODS OF INQUIRY AbdouMaliq Simone, “Towards an Anticipatory Politics: Notes from the North of Jakarta,” City Life from Jakarta to Dakar: Movements at a Crossroads (London: Routledge, 2009), 61-116. Michel Foucault, “Space, Knowledge, Power,” in Power: Essential Works of Michel Foucault, edited by James D. Faubion, translated by Robert Hurley et. al., (London and New York: New Press, 2001), 349-364. Thomas Markussen, “The disruptive aesthetics of design activism: Enacting design between art and politics,” Nordic Design Research Conference, Helsinki (www.nordes.org), 1-8. Yates McKee, “Haunted Housing,” in Grey Room 30 (Winter 2008), 84-113. Isabelle Stengers, “A Cosmopolitical Proposal,” in Making Things Public, edited by Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (MIT Press, 2005) 994-1003. ‘Understanding Urban Risk: An Approach for Assessing Disaster and Climate Risk in Cities,’ Urban Risk Assessment: Jakarta, World Bank, 2011. COLONIAL + POSTCOLONIAL AbdouMaliq Simone, “Securing the Majority: Living through Uncertainty in Jakarta,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (2011), 1-21. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 80-170. Johannes Nieuhof, Voyages and Travels to the East Indies, 1653-1670. NATION + CULTURE Rudolf Mrázek, “Bypasses and Flyovers: Approaching the Metropolitan History of Indonesia,” from Social History Vol. 29, No. 4 (Nov., 2004), 425-443. Abidin Kusno, The Appearance of Memory (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010). FORMAL + INFORMAL Mike Davis, “Planet of Slums,” New Left Review Vol. 26 (March-April 2004), 5-36. AbdouMaliq Simone, “On Intersections, Anticipations, and Provisional Publics: Remaking District Life in Jakarta,” 2009 Urban Geography Plenary Lecture, Urban Geography 31.3 (2010), 285-308. Rudolf Mrázek, Engineers of Happy Land: Technology and Nationalism in a Colony (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002).   MANIFOLD ECOLOGIES Matthew Gandy, “Rethinking urban metabolism: Water, space and the modern city,” in City, Vol. 8, No. 3, Dec. 2004, 363-379. Peter Brosius, Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, and Charles Zerner, “Representing Communities: Histories and politics in community-based natural resource management,” Society & Natural Resources: An International Journal 11 (1998), 157-168. Tim Forsyth, “Industrial Pollution and Social Movements in Thailand,” in Liberation Ecologies (Second Edition), edited by Richard Peet and Michael Watts (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), 383-398 . ADDITIONAL READINGS Indonesia in the Soeharto Years: Issues, Incidents and Images (Lontar/KITLV, 2007). AbdouMaliq Simone, City Life from Jakarta to Dakar: Movements at a Crossroads (London: Routledge, 2009). Ann Danaiya Usher, Thai Forestry: A Critical History (Silkworm Books, 2009). Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” in Critical Inquiry 35 (Winter 2009), 197-222. Denis Cosgrove, “An Elemental Division: Water Control and Engineered Landscape,” in Water, Engineering, Landscape, edited by Denis Cosgrove and Geoff Petts (London: Belhaven Press, 1990), 1-11. Yates McKee, “Spectres of Art,” Art & Education Papers, available online. John McPhee, “Los Angeles Against the Mountains,” in The Control of Nature (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999), 183-272. Eyal Weizman, “Political Plastic,” Collapse: Philosophical Research and Development Vol. VI, Geo/philosophy, edited by Robin MacKay (January, 2010), 257-303. <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 5.41.59 PM.png" width="670" height="356" width_o="1283" height_o="682" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 5.41.59 PM_o.png" data-mid="17343167" border="0" align="left"/> Photograph of Jakarta courtesy of Adam Bobbette. Confronting Colonial HIstory As we engage in the research, we are confronted with Indonesia's colonial history and the role of representation in the dissemination of Batavia as a Dutch settlement. <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 3.17.04 PM.png" width="565" height="877" width_o="565" height_o="877" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 3.17.04 PM_o.png" data-mid="17336945" border="0" align="left"/> Portrait of Nieuhof from Johannes Nieuhof, Voyages and Travels to the East Indies, 1653-1670. <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 3.17.35 PM.png" width="503" height="825" width_o="503" height_o="825" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 3.17.35 PM_o.png" data-mid="17336946" border="0" align="left"/> Image from Johannes Nieuhof, Voyages and Travels to the East Indies, 1653-1670. <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 3.20.32 PM.png" width="670" height="536" width_o="975" height_o="781" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 3.20.32 PM_o.png" data-mid="17337106" border="0" align="left"/> Map of Batavia from Johannes Nieuhof, Voyages and Travels to the East Indies, 1653-1670. <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 3.25.45 PM.png" width="670" height="521" width_o="1101" height_o="857" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 3.25.45 PM_o.png" data-mid="17337324" border="0" align="left"/> Images below from Johannes Nieuhof, Voyages and Travels to the East Indies, 1653-1670. <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 3.25.32 PM.png" width="670" height="515" width_o="1113" height_o="856" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 3.25.32 PM_o.png" data-mid="17337326" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 3.25.12 PM.png" width="670" height="544" width_o="1057" height_o="859" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 3.25.12 PM_o.png" data-mid="17337328" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 3.25.01 PM.png" width="670" height="523" width_o="1091" height_o="853" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 3.25.01 PM_o.png" data-mid="17337335" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 3.24.49 PM.png" width="670" height="537" width_o="1065" height_o="854" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 3.24.49 PM_o.png" data-mid="17337343" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 3.24.35 PM.png" width="670" height="530" width_o="1082" height_o="857" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 3.24.35 PM_o.png" data-mid="17337350" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 3.25.59 PM.png" width="670" height="536" width_o="1071" height_o="857" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 3.25.59 PM_o.png" data-mid="17337360" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 3.26.17 PM.png" width="670" height="551" width_o="1043" height_o="858" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2565052/Screen Shot 2012-05-09 at 3.26.17 PM_o.png" data-mid="17337363" border="0" align="left"/> _ _______________________________________ INTRODUCTION to RESEARCH “How can you design spaces of transaction which facilitate the possibility of enhanced... http://anexact.org/RUN-__-DET-projects http://anexact.org/following/anexact.org/RUN-__-DET-projects Sun, 18 Dec 2011 19:42:33 +0000 www.anexact.org 2477253 RUN__DET is a platform for Researching Unvalues Through Occupation and Experimentation RUN__DET EVENTS _ ___________________________________ MOSTLY WHAT IS UNSAID Andrew Herscher's The Unreal Estate Guide to Detroit launches at Art Metropole Mostly What is Unsaid presents: Andrew Herscher - The Unreal Estate Guide to Detroit Talk: Thursday, March 21, 7-9pm Art Metropole, 1490 Dundas Street West Mostly What is Unsaid (a collective project of Art Metropole + FUSE Magazine + Scapegoat: Architecture/Landscape/Political Economy) is excited to host a talk by Andrew Herscher, author of The Unreal Estate Guide to Detroit (2012). The audience is invited to join a discussion afterwards. Intense attention has been paid to Detroit as a site of urban crisis. This crisis, however, has not only yielded the massive devaluation of real estate that has so often been noted; it has also yielded an explosive production of seemingly valueless urban property that has facilitated the imagination and practice of alternative urbanisms. The first sustained study of Detroit's alternative urban cultures, The Unreal Estate Guide to Detroit initiates a new focus on Detroit as a site not only of urban crisis but also of urban possibility. The Unreal Estate Guide to Detroit will be available for purchase at the event and online at www.artmetropole.com. Mostly What Is Unsaid is an open structure of public conversations initiated by Art Metropole, FUSE and Scapegoat, motivated by our shared conception of publishing as a political praxis, rather than a form of publicity or mere representation. Engaging in conversation amidst the monologue of the neoliberal status quo demands that we attend to gestures, hesitations and omissions as much as words. Through this programming series, we will pursue the critical role of the unspoken and the unspeakable across a spectrum running from the macro- to the micro-political. Within our respective practices, we construct publicly accessible, yet still precarious spaces of conversation. The series Mostly What Is Unsaid curates occasions to bring these discussions into a shared physical space, in order to bridge the gap between locations such as a shop, a magazine, or a journal and spaces of everyday life in the city. _ ___________________________________ The UNREAL ESTATE GUIDE TO DETROIT Andrew Herscher's The Unreal Estate Guide to Detroit is now available. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477253/Screen Shot 2012-11-22 at 8.18.54 AM.png" width="670" height="489" width_o="1006" height_o="735" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477253/Screen Shot 2012-11-22 at 8.18.54 AM_o.png" data-mid="23794969" border="0" align="left"/> From the book: "Relinquishing the desire to repair the shrinking city may thus present excruciating challenges to architecture and planning. It might compel the humbling realization that these disciplines might have more to learn from the shrinking city than the shrinking city has to learn from them. It might also compel the even more humbling realization that any specialized kind of knowledge production, whether disciplinary or interdisciplinary, is inadequate to grasp the contemporary city, and that this grasp would have to lead towards new transdisciplinary knowledge production with a necessarily hybrid, experimental and indeterminate form." - Andrew Herscher To hear an interview with Andrew about The Unreal Estate Guide on Michigan Radio's program Stateside, follow this link. _ ___________________________________ LOST & FOUND DETROIT Saturday, 29 September, 2012, 7PM Film maker and archivist Rick Prelinger is in Detroit for a screening of his film Lost Landscapes of Detroit and a discussion with Andrew Hersher of the Detroit Unreal Estate Agency. The design collective 1/X will also discuss their curatorial project for the Detroit Design Festival - Anecdoted City - which created a collection of objects in/of/from Detroit, on view at the Salt & Cedar Letterpress Gallery and re-curated for a one night exhibition by Rick Prelinger. Please check out Kate Abbey-Lambertz's review of Anecdoted City in the Huffington Post. All are welcome. Suggested donation $5, pay what you can. Seating is limited - get your ticket online here. Salt & Cedar, 2448 Riopelle St., Eastern Market, Detroit Photographs from the Anecdoted City opening at Salt & Letterpress Gallery are now online; courtesy of Jonathan LeJune. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477253/Screen Shot 2012-09-19 at 7.48.19 PM.png" width="376" height="759" width_o="376" height_o="759" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477253/Screen Shot 2012-09-19 at 7.48.19 PM_o.png" data-mid="21670282" border="0" align="left"/> <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477253/Screen Shot 2012-09-30 at 11.33.27 PM.png" width="670" height="296" width_o="1121" height_o="496" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477253/Screen Shot 2012-09-30 at 11.33.27 PM_o.png" data-mid="21952901" border="0" align="left"/> Lost & Found Detroit, courtesy of Salt & Cedar. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477253/Screen Shot 2012-10-04 at 5.35.15 PM.png" width="670" height="315" width_o="720" height_o="339" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477253/Screen Shot 2012-10-04 at 5.35.15 PM_o.png" data-mid="22104281" border="0" align="left"/> Lost & Found Detroit, courtesy of Salt & Cedar. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477253/Screen Shot 2012-10-04 at 5.35.45 PM.png" width="657" height="328" width_o="657" height_o="328" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477253/Screen Shot 2012-10-04 at 5.35.45 PM_o.png" data-mid="22104283" border="0" align="left"/> Lost & Found Detroit, courtesy of Salt & Cedar. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477253/Screen Shot 2012-09-27 at 10.18.34 AM.png" width="670" height="342" width_o="793" height_o="405" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477253/Screen Shot 2012-09-27 at 10.18.34 AM_o.png" data-mid="21858226" border="0" align="left"/> 1/X installing the Anecdoted City collection table at the Salt & Cedar Gallery, courtesy of Salt & Cedar. This event is generously supported by Corktown Cinema, 1/X, Salt & Cedar, anexact.org, and the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan. _ ___________________________________ VALUE + RUIN Friday, 14 September 2012 Flint, MI 7PM 555 S. Saginaw Street, at the corner of 2nd Street. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477253/Screen Shot 2012-09-07 at 10.43.25 AM.png" width="670" height="446" width_o="672" height_o="448" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477253/Screen Shot 2012-09-07 at 10.43.25 AM_o.png" data-mid="21173545" border="0" align="left"/> “If they do not give you work or bread …” – Counter-Memory and Militant Labor in America As part of Value + Ruin, Etienne Turpin presents research from his exhibition and attendant publication Stainlessness, which considers the role of militant labor history in the U.S. as means to confront and prevent the erasure of this history by contemporary processes of urbanization. Organized by Stephen Zacks of the Institute for Applied Reporting and Urbanism, the event includes presentations by Andrew Herscher, Andrew Perkins, and video installation artists from District VII. For William Ketchum's review of the event, please click here. _ ___________________________________ HOW TO RECUPERATE AN URBAN CRSIS Wednesday, 29 August 2012 The first publication of the Detroit Unreal Estate Agency - Vol. 00 - "How to Recuperate an Urban Crisis" - by Andrew Herscher, is now available at the La Biennale di Venezia, August, 2012. The publication, a critical glossary of Detroit, is also available online for free - please download your copy here. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477253/Screen Shot 2012-08-31 at 4.22.13 PM_10.png" width="670" height="449" width_o="1169" height_o="785" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477253/Screen Shot 2012-08-31 at 4.22.13 PM_10_o.png" data-mid="20962263" border="0" align="left"/> Image courtesy of Catie Newell _ ___________________________________ RUN__DET BACKGROUND <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477253/Screen Shot 2012-08-23 at 11.17.16 AM.png" width="670" height="345" width_o="1286" height_o="663" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477253/Screen Shot 2012-08-23 at 11.17.16 AM_o.png" data-mid="20704798" border="0" align="left"/> Image courtesy of Catie Newell As Detroit completes its collapse from precocious industrial engine into a spectacular ruin-pornographic representation, one can't help but imagine that it is finally freed from the guest that not everyone wanted at the party, capital. As my colleague Andrew Herscher explains in issue 00 of SCAPEGOAT, if we look at the agency of Detroit through a condition of Unreal Estate, we can begin to understand that when capital leaves, many other things become possible. There is nothing naive about this position; in fact, Andrew develops a theory of what he calls UNVALUE to suggest how we might begin to view Detroit today. Andrew asks, “what if what has also been lost in Detroit is the capacity to understand new urban conditions, conditions in which value is no longer structured economically, in the terms of free-market capitalism, but in wholly other terms? What if Detroit has not only fallen apart, emptied out, disappeared and/or shrunk, but has also transformed, becoming a novel urban formation that only appears depleted, voided or abjected through the lens of conventional urbanism? What if property in Detroit has not only lost one sort of value but has also gained other sorts of values, values whose economic salience is absent or even negative?” From the point of view of capitalism, certain important values simply do not register. They are, from this perspective, unreal, or simply unvalue. According to his analysis, “Unreal estate” is a conceptual framework for exploring new, “unreal” propositions, and thereby reconsidering the cultural agency of art and architecture in moments of urban crisis. That is, “Unreal estate is a name for urban territory that has slipped through the literal economy, the economy of the market, and entered other structures of value, including but not limited to those of survival, invention, imagination, play, desire and mourning.” Andrew's new book, The Unreal Estate Guide to Detroit is out now. RUN__DET is an itinerant research platform, inspired by Andrew's work, that looks to practices of autonomy and self-determination to make inhabitable and pleasurable the places abandoned or destroyed by the malfeasance of capitalism. The question is not whether or not to occupy, but how to occupy, cultivate, and defend. RUN__DET is a platform for Researching Unvalues Through Occupation and Experimentation RUN__DET EVENTS _ ___________________________________ MOSTLY WHAT IS UNSAID... http://anexact.org/TERRIBLE-IS-THE-EARTH http://anexact.org/following/anexact.org/TERRIBLE-IS-THE-EARTH Sun, 18 Dec 2011 19:12:33 +0000 www.anexact.org 2477192 TERRIBLE IS THE EARTH continues ... Yes, there is hope, infinite hope. But not for us. - Franz Kafka <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477192/DSC_0266.jpg" width="670" height="445" width_o="2048" height_o="1361" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477192/DSC_0266_o.jpg" data-mid="12785512" border="0" align="left"/>Image courtesy of Catie Newell The manuscript (currently in production) develops research from my doctoral thesis on the morality of aesthetics in Kant, Georges Bataille, and Robert Smithson - all read in relation to the anthropocene thesis - and expands the scope of the reading to analyze other relations among geology, political economy, and philosophy to advance a theory of the anthropocene in the all-too-human epoch. The book contends that the theory of the sublime, and the aesthetic infrastructure upon which is depends, require a reexamination of the theory of the earth in the wake of the anthropocene thesis. TERRIBLE IS THE EARTH For the Humanities in the Age of the Anthropocene Table of Contents 1 Who Does the Earth Think It Is, Now? 2 Stoppani's New Force 3 Benjamin's Cosmic Labor Struggle 4 Bataille's Aesthetic Premonition 5 Marx's Earth, Lyotard's Revenge 6 Intensive Origins of the Anthropocene By developing a reading of the I = PxAxT equation (seen below) through the theoretical humanities, the book contests the aesthetics of the sublime by demonstrating that it is, in fact, the accumulation of human artifacts that outscale and thus terrify the human as one among many agents in the anthropocene's great acceleration. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477192/IPAT2-02.png" width="670" height="902" width_o="1881" height_o="2535" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477192/IPAT2-02_o.png" data-mid="28739533" border="0" align="left"/> Courtesy of Linch-pin.org. _ ___________________________________ Terrible is the Earth research recently included in Making the Geologic Now Elizabeth Ellsworth and Jamie Kruse of Smudge Studio have released their edited volume Making the Geologic Now: Responses to the Material Conditions of Contemporary Life. You can read the book online, or order or download it through Punctum Books. Included in the volume are two essays from my recent research for TERRIBLE IS THE EARTH. I collaborated with Italian architect Valeria Federighi to select excerpts and edit her translation of Antonio Stoppani's Corso di Geologia (Miliano: G. Bernardoni, E G. Brigola, Editori, 1873), with photographs by Lisa Hirmer. From the essay: "The Italian geologist Antonio Stoppani is a remarkable but little known figure in the history of science and the theoretical humanities. Recently, following debates about the Anthropocene initiated by the Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen, some scholars have returned to Stoppani’s writing for its eloquent argument regarding the appearance of human activity in the archive of deep time – the earth. Born in Lecco in 1824, the young Stoppani studied to become a priest of the order of the Rosminiani, and was ordained in 1848. In the same year, Stoppani participated in the resistance during the Cinque giornate di Milano (Siege of Milan), where he both fought on the barricades and, fantastically, invented and fabricated aerostats that were used to communicate with the periphery and the provinces, sending revolutionary messages to the countryside from inside a barricaded Milano. In this endeavor, he was helped by the typographer Vincenzo Guglielmini, who worked with Stoppani to ensure that the aerostat balloons would travel from the Seminario Maggiore di Porta Orientale over the walls erected around the city (and the Austrians trying to shoot them from the sky) to encourage Italians to revolt against the Austrian Empire." <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477192/Screen Shot 2012-12-11 at 2.46.44 AM.png" width="670" height="427" width_o="671" height_o="428" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477192/Screen Shot 2012-12-11 at 2.46.44 AM_o.png" data-mid="24413401" border="0" align="left"/> Photograph of Antonio Stoppani, 1824. The second text included in the volume, Robert Smithson's Abstract Geology: Revisiting the Premonitory Politics of the Triassic, considers Robert Smithson's anticipation of the discourse of the anthropocene. From the essay: "But, these reptilian figures, while popularly associated with the legacy of the Jurassic period, also witnessed events corresponding to the politics of the earlier Triassic age (250-210 million years ago). They saw the slow but decisive break-up of Pangaea into the two supercontinents, Laurasia and Gondwana, evidence that any form of stable unity is a fiction undone by the viscous earth. And they observed the morphological emergence of ceratitida, the order of nearly all ammonoid cephalopod genera, whose planispiral shells suggest a coiling figuration that would later be rescaled in Smithson's most well-known earthwork." <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477192/Screen Shot 2012-05-30 at 7.52.46 AM.png" width="670" height="242" width_o="1280" height_o="463" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477192/Screen Shot 2012-05-30 at 7.52.46 AM_o.png" data-mid="24271892" border="0" align="left"/> Image of emergent form of the certatitda (bottom right) in the 'remote times' of the Triassic, courtesy of Anexact.org. _ ___________________________________ Notes from the Icelandic Edition We're all going to be dirt in ground. - Tom Waits While cycling the ring road highway in Iceland during July, 2012, I managed to edit and develop several chapters, including a substantial reappraisal of the value of an "intensive genealogy." Below are some images taken by Multiplicative along the way. Drafts of chapters 1, 2, 5, and 6 will be posted and published in 2013. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477192/Screen Shot 2012-12-11 at 2.56.48 AM.png" width="670" height="309" width_o="1285" height_o="593" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477192/Screen Shot 2012-12-11 at 2.56.48 AM_o.png" data-mid="24413536" border="0" align="left"/> No place like home, courtesy of Multiplicative. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477192/Screen Shot 2012-09-01 at 11.54.58 AM.png" width="670" height="302" width_o="1284" height_o="580" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477192/Screen Shot 2012-09-01 at 11.54.58 AM_o.png" data-mid="20977608" border="0" align="left"/> Icelandic comment on architecture and urbanism, courtesy of Multiplicative. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477192/Screen Shot 2012-09-01 at 11.54.16 AM.png" width="670" height="357" width_o="1289" height_o="687" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477192/Screen Shot 2012-09-01 at 11.54.16 AM_o.png" data-mid="20977617" border="0" align="left"/> Eastern Fjords, courtesy of Multiplicative. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477192/Screen Shot 2012-12-11 at 2.51.46 AM.png" width="670" height="335" width_o="1289" height_o="645" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477192/Screen Shot 2012-12-11 at 2.51.46 AM_o.png" data-mid="24413482" border="0" align="left"/> Barn in the mountain, courtesy of Multiplicative. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477192/Screen Shot 2012-12-11 at 2.58.46 AM.png" width="670" height="339" width_o="1287" height_o="653" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477192/Screen Shot 2012-12-11 at 2.58.46 AM_o.png" data-mid="24413759" border="0" align="left"/> Remains of a house, courtesy of Multiplicative. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477192/Screen Shot 2012-12-11 at 2.58.06 AM.png" width="670" height="313" width_o="1285" height_o="602" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477192/Screen Shot 2012-12-11 at 2.58.06 AM_o.png" data-mid="24413750" border="0" align="left"/> Grain in foreground, glacier in background, courtesy of Multiplicative. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477192/Screen Shot 2012-12-11 at 3.00.28 AM.png" width="670" height="337" width_o="1280" height_o="644" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477192/Screen Shot 2012-12-11 at 3.00.28 AM_o.png" data-mid="24413784" border="0" align="left"/> Landslide-intensified passage, courtesy of Multiplicative. TERRIBLE IS THE EARTH continues ... Yes, there is hope, infinite hope. But not for us. - Franz Kafka Image courtesy of Catie Newell... http://anexact.org/RECENT-WORK http://anexact.org/following/anexact.org/RECENT-WORK Sun, 18 Dec 2011 19:04:24 +0000 www.anexact.org 2477198 RECENT WORK _ ___________________________________ 2013.05.12 CURRENCY = TERRITORY Sunday 12 May 2013 7–9PM 16 Beaver Street, New York, NY Scapegoat: Architecture / Landscape / Political Economy presents a launch of issue 04—Currency w/ issue editors: Adrian Blackwell Chris Lee & contributors: Steven Chodoriwsky Jack Henrie Fischer Christina Goberna Urtzi Grau Andrew Herscher Alessandra Renzi Paige Sarlin <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/130512_16BeaverPanorama_sm.jpg" width="670" height="158" width_o="1400" height_o="332" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/130512_16BeaverPanorama_sm_o.jpg" data-mid="30242463" border="0" align="left"/> This launch event is a gathering of past and present contributors and friends of Scapegoat to discuss the question of currency's relationship to the production (and design) of space. At our recent Cambridge launch, the anthropologist of finance Anush Kapadia suggested that currency was fundamentally relational, in such a way that any attempt to ground it in things – such as labor or land – was nostalgic. In response to this proposition, we would like to use this event to continue to explore the issue’s hypothesis that currency has a special relationship to territory. We see this at both the origin of the capitalist money form and in the present moment. Modern currencies were founded in three intertwined spatial dimensions of primitive accumulation: first in the capital accumulated through the forcible seizure of labour and resources in colonialism, second in the construction of sovereign territories as the guarantee of new national currencies, and finally in the private enclosures of common lands. Today, we are witnessing the becoming currency of territory within our neoliberal period of financialization. So what interests us is not that the value of currency is firmly based in land, but rather the way in which the increasing immateriality and relationality of property has provoked our current financial and existential insecurities. To approach this question and unfold its implications for design practice, we are asking a number of contributors to reflect on this question through their own contributions to Scapegoat. In preparation for the meeting please read the issue’s “Editorial Note” and the opening feature, “Fabrica Mundi: Making the World by Drawing Borders”, by Sandro Mezzadra & Brett Nielson, which we hope will serve as a background and foundation to our discussion. These texts are available for free here. The event is a pot-luck, please bring food or beverages to share. A special thanks to Paige Sarlin for suggesting this launch and to 16 Beaver for hosting it. _ ___________________________________ 2013.05.10 Stainlessness -- On View Now! convenience gallery exhibition runs 10 May - 7 July, 2013 58 Lansdowne Avenue, Toronto M6K 2V9 (at Seaforth Avenue, one block North of Queen) <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-04-16 at 5.29.38 PM.png" width="670" height="443" width_o="1242" height_o="822" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-04-16 at 5.29.38 PM_o.png" data-mid="29193169" border="0" align="left"/> Detail of Chicago plate during printing process. convenience is a window gallery that provides an opening for art that engages, experiments, and takes risks with the architectural, urban, and civic realm contact: conveniencegallery@gmail.com * in concern with the exhibition of the printing plates, a limited number of prints will be for sale at Art Metropole Read more about the exhibition at convenience gallery here. _ ___________________________________ 2013.05.07 CURRENCY ~ REVOLUTION: spatial strategies of resistance MIT Program in Art, Culture, and Technology Wiesner Building (E15-001), 20 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA Tuesday May 7 2013 6:30-8PM Free and open to the public Please join Thresholds 41 REVOLUTION! editor Ana María León and Scapegoat: Architecture/Landscape/Political Economy: 04 CURRENCY issue editor Adrian Blackwell for short presentations on the overlapping contents of their journals’ latest issues and the objectives that inform their respective structures. What spatial strategies have been deployed to resist the political and economic repressions of past and present? How can journals function as research vehicles? The ensuing discussion will be moderated by Rebecca Uchill and introduced by Gediminas Urbonas and Antoni Muntadas. Ana María León is an architect, a teacher, and a historian. She is a PhD candidate in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art group at MIT. Adrian Blackwell is an artist, designer, and urban theorist. He teaches at the University of Waterloo and is a visiting assistant professor at the Harvard’s GSD. Rebecca Uchill is an activist, writer, and curator. She is a PhD candidate in the History, Theory, and Criticism of Architecture and Art group at MIT. _ ___________________________________ 2013.04.29 Reflections on Stainlessness: Urbanization and Erasures of Political Struggle a lecture & discussion at Pro QM Berlin, Germany More information is online at Pro QM <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-10-14 at 6.34.47 PM.png" width="670" height="296" width_o="1195" height_o="528" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-10-14 at 6.34.47 PM_o.png" data-mid="29192728" border="0" align="left"/> Image of Stainlessness print making, Detroit, MI. _ ___________________________________ 2013.04.25 Even the Dead Will Not Be Safe: Memory, Labor, and Political Struggle in the Anthropocene a lecture & discussion at Halle 14 Liepzig, Germany More information is online at Halle 14 (English version below): Etienne Turpins Buch- und Ausstellungsprojekt „Stainlessness“ („Makellosigkeit“) ist eine Auseinandersetzung mit der Geschichte des Arbeiterkampfes in den USA und dessen verloren gegangenen Spuren in nordamerikanischen Großstädten. Das Projekt verweist auf die zentrale Rolle der Arbeit als eine Macht, die das Wesen von Städten verändert, Kulturen prägt und entscheidend Einfluss auf Natur und Umwelt nimmt. Ausgangspunkt seines Vortrags am heutigen Abend ist die Erinnerung an den brutalen Versuch der Industriellen Andrew Carnegie und Henry Clay Frick, während der Homestead-Aussperrung 1892 die US-amerikanische Arbeiterbewegung zu zerschlagen. Der Streik, der in einer Revolte mit Feuergefechten zwischen Arbeitern, Staatsmiliz und Werkschutz-Kommandos gipfelte, zählt zu den größten Streiks der US-amerikanischen Geschichte und hatte die teilweise Militarisierung der Arbeiterbewegung zu Folge. Turpin spannt den Bogen ins Hier und Heute. Er sucht nach Parallelen zu aktuellen Widerstands- bewegungen und zeigt auf, wie die neoliberale Kapitalmaschine und die sie begleitenden Urbanisierungsprozesse fortfahren, jede Spur von Protest mithilfe brachialer, makelloser Architektur wegzuwischen. Der Vortrag wird an Walter Benjamins Warnung erinnern: „... auch die Toten werden vor dem Feind, wenn er siegt, nicht sicher sein. Und dieser Feind hat zu siegen nicht aufgehört“. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-04-16 at 5.24.19 PM.png" width="670" height="681" width_o="838" height_o="853" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-04-16 at 5.24.19 PM_o.png" data-mid="29192901" border="0" align="left"/> Image of Pittsburg print from Stainlessness. Etienne Turpin’s book and exhibition project, “Stainlessness”, examines militant labor movements in the history of North America and the erasure of their physical traces in four exemplary metropolises. The project asserts the centrality of labor as a force capable of transforming the nature of cities, the culture of America, and that furthermore leaves a decisive impact on the environment. The lecture opens by recalling the brutal attempt of Industrialists Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick to annihilate the U.S. labor movement during the 1892 Homestead lockout. The strike, which culminated in gunfight between workers, private security, and the city militia, remains the second largest strike in US history and is a harbinger of militarized labor movements. Turpin further relates the events of these strikes to today, seeking parallels to contemporary resistance movements, and thereby reveals how Neoliberalism, the capitalist machine and the accompanying processes of urbanization erase these struggles from our cities, leaving behind only ambivalent monuments and an aesthetic characterized stainless, mechanical efficiency. Turpin ultimately reminds us of Walter Benjamin’s warning that “even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.” An interview with Halle 14 about the project is available online here. _ ___________________________________ 2013.04.22 SCAPEGOAT Currency Launch Urban Theory Lab Harvard Graduate School of Design Stubbins 48 Quincy Street Cambridge 6-7PM Copies of Scapegoat's latest issue, 04 - Currency, will be for sale at the event. Join Jane Hutton (LA faculty) and Adrian Blackwell (visiting LA/UP faculty), SCAPEGOAT editorial board members, and Neil Brenner, director of the Urban Theory Lab, for a conversation about Scapegoat as a collective project and its latest issue on Currency. SCAPEGOAT is an independent journal focusing on the relationship between architecture, landscape architecture, and political economy. The journal examines the links between capitalism and the built environment, addressing the power relations that structure space, the exploitation of labor and resources, and the uneven distribution of environmental risks and benefits. Since 2009, Scapegoat has addressed the foundations of spatial design practice in its issues: PROPERTY, SERVICE, MATERIALISM, REALISM and CURRENCY. CURRENCY is structured by the contradiction between its necessary circulation and its stubborn connections to the specific geographies of sovereign and private properties. The diverse contributions to Scapegoat’s fifth issue, CURRENCY, investigate this apparent contradiction to argue that currency is land that has become mobile and urbanization is driven by financialization. The issue presents ways that the relationship between spatial design and money can be rethought through local currencies, recovered spaces, informal exchanges, new currents of information, and affective circuits. CURRENCY issue editors: Chris LEE and Adrian BLACKWELL; contributors include: Brett NEILSON & Sandro MEZZADRA, Emily GILBERT, Keith HART, Emilio MORENO, Peter NORTH, Georgios PAPADOPOULOS & Jack Henrie FISHER, Rob KOVITZ, Robert FISHMAN, Abbas AKHAVAN, Srdjan LONCAR, Marcelo VIETA, Emanuele BRAGA, Roberta BUIANI, EXROTAPRINT, Peter MÖRTENBÖCK & Helge MOOSHAMMER, Steven CHODORIWSKY, Matthieu BAIN & Andrew PERKINS, AbdouMaliq SIMONE, Claire PENTECOST, Rosten WOO, Jordan GEIGER, Ricardo DOMINGUEZ, Alessandra RENZI, Paige SARLIN, Suriya UMPANSIRIRATANA, Adam SMITH, Ajahn KENG, Robert ADAMS, Brendan BAYLOR & Heath SCHULTZ, FAKE INDUSTRIES ARCHITECTURAL AGONISM and Alan ANTLIFF <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/130422_UTL_ScapegoatLaunchPoster.jpeg" width="394" height="640" width_o="394" height_o="640" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/130422_UTL_ScapegoatLaunchPoster_o.jpeg" data-mid="29274152" border="0" align="left"/> Currency is also available for purchase online. All content is open access and available here. _ ___________________________________ 2013.04.13 Dispatches Radical Geographers and Anticapitalist Politics _ dispatches on research & action <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-04-12 at 10.56.47 PM.png" width="609" height="205" width_o="609" height_o="205" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-04-12 at 10.56.47 PM_o.png" data-mid="29049186" border="0" align="left"/> Saturday April 13, 2013 The Public School Los Angeles 951 Chung King Road, 90012 http://thepublicschool.org/ Organized and facilitated by Colectivo Acratas Los Angeles & Llano Del Rio Collective Curated by the Protest Camp Research Collective and the AAG Subconference with visiting international scholars and activists http://protestcamps.org/ & http://subconference.org/ Protest Camp Research Collective “Protest Camps & Experiments in Alternative Worlds” The Protest Camps Research Collective came together around our interests in protest camps, autonomous organising, direct action and alternative world making. The project came out of our own participation and interests in protest camping. Meeting in tents, training sessions and by conference coffee tables, our network has grown to include scholars from different countries, disciplines and stages in their careers. Together, we work to create a welcoming and nurturing research environment, building some of the changes we want to see in university life and beyond. http://protestcamps.org/about/the-research-collective/ Sam Halvorsen “Occupy London Research Collective” Sam Halvorsen has been actively involved in the Occupy movement, and is also undertaking a PhD in geography at UCL looking at how Occupy London is part of autonomous social movements centred on the subversion of space. More broadly he is a militant researcher inspired by and involved in diverse projects to create the worlds we want to live in. http://occupyresearchcollective.wordpress.com/ Etienne Turpin “Dual City: Kota-Kampung” Etienne Turpin is, itinerantly, a teacher, writer, editor and curator. He is a principal investigator of Architecture + Adaptation: Design for Hypercomplexity at the University of Michigan's Center for Southeast Asian Studies and a contributing editor of the journal SCAPEGOAT: Architecture | Landscape | Political Economy. Through these and other collaborative efforts, Etienne works to assemble worlds that can sustain passion, pleasure, and conviction. His project for inquiry and assembly is ANEXACT.org. http://www.anexact.org/ http://www.scapegoatjournal.org/ Lisa Hirmer “Marginalia” Lisa Hirmer is an artist/writer based in Guelph, Ontario. She is co-founder (along with Andrew Hunter) and current principal of DodoLab, an experimental research collective that engages and responds to the public's relationship with contemporary issues. She is also a photographer and writer producing work that emerges from her background in architecture. Fabian Frenzel “Value Struggles in the City” Fabian Frenzel is a lecturer in political economy and organisation at Leicester University, School of Management. His interest in protest camp stems from research on the role of leisure and travel in social movement activism. He is a co-author of the forthcoming book Protest Camps (Zed). Anja Kanngieser “Voicing Worlds” Anja Kanngieser is a researcher in political geography, holding an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship in Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. With a background in performance and communication/sound studies her interests intersect contemporary labour, voice, technology, collaboration and social movements. Her first monograph, Experimental Politics and the Making of Worlds, will be released by Ashgate in Summer 2013. She works extensively in community and DIY radio in London and Australia and facilitates workshops within social movements on listening and communication. http://crrn.wordpress.com/ http://transversalgeographies.org/ Mara Ferreri “QMary Countermapping Project” Mara Ferreri is affiliated with Queen Mary University of London. She researches practices of temporary vacant space occupation. The QMary Countermapping was set up in 2010 by a group of students, staff and researchers at Queen Mary University, together with members of the Counter-Cartography Collective, to map the ways in which migration, border technologies, surveillance and monetary flows intersect with the university as our place of work and study. http://countermappingqmary.blogspot.com/ http://lateral.culturalstudiesassociation.org/issue1/map.html Anna Feigenbaum “Mapping Tear Gas” Anna Feigenbaum is a fellow at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis and a Lecturer in Media and Politics at Bournemouth University in the UK. She researches and writes about technological innovation and communication in social movements. She is co-author of the forthcoming book Protest Camps (Zed) and leads training workshops on creative resistance & collaboration. http://crrn.wordpress.com/ @drfigtree Morgan Buck and Malav Kanuga “Common Notions” Drawing from a variety of autonomist political traditions, Common Notions is a publishing and programming project that aims to aid in our collective reading of contemporary social struggles as they formulate new directions for living autonomy in our everyday. In NYC, they work closely with Bluestockings Bookstore and 16 Beaver, as well as nationally with publishers such as PM Press, AK Press, Autonomedia, and artist cooperative Justseeds. As a publisher, they seek to translate, produce and circulate the tools of knowledge-production utilized in movement-building practices in an effort to generalize common notions about the creation of other worlds beyond capitalism. http://commonnotions.org _ ___________________________________ 2013.04.11 Aesthetics in Abeyance For the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geography in Los Angeles, I will be presenting my paper "Cumulus Landscapes, or, Aesthetics in Abeyance," with Lisa Hirmer. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-04-05 at 5.30.10 PM.png" width="670" height="437" width_o="1016" height_o="663" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-04-05 at 5.30.10 PM_o.png" data-mid="28755195" border="0" align="left"/> Image courtesy of Lisa Hirmer. _ ___________________________________ 2013.04.05 Reading Catalytic Force For the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association in Toronto, Canada, I will be presenting my paper "Reading Catalytic Force: On the Aesthetics of Human Impact in Stoppani, Deleuze, and Guattari," during the Aesthetic Turn panel organized by Robert Hughes and John Paul Ricco. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-03-30 at 1.48.19 PM.png" width="670" height="364" width_o="1656" height_o="902" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-03-30 at 1.48.19 PM_o.png" data-mid="28496662" border="0" align="left"/> Abstract In his Corso di Geologi of 1873, the Italian geologist Antonio Stoppani wrote, “Rival of the potent agents of the internal world, man undoes what nature has done. Nature has worked for centuries at agglomerating in the bowels of the earth oxides and metallic salts; and man, tearing them out of the earth, reduces them to native metals in the heat of his furnaces.” It was in this same text that Stoppani made the argument for humans as geological agents and called for a new epoch of the “Anthropozoic.” Drawing from my research on the anthropocene, its history in the theoretical humanities and empirical sciences, and its defining catalytic process – mineralization – this paper argues that the evidence (from Latin, videre, “to see”) regarding the significance and consequence of anthropogenic changes to the earth’s land, oceans, biosphere and climate cannot be seen without a radical reorientation of our reading in aesthetics. To this end, I excerpt several key moments from my book Terrible is the Earth to foreground the premonitory role of philosophy in approaching the Anthropocene, while suggesting that the most fecund conversation within this discourse is the articulation of an intensive genealogy of mineralization and its aesthetics. _ ___________________________________ 2013.04.03 A Stroll Through the Bubbles of Chemicals and Men in Volume 35 - "Everything Under Control" Read a pdf of the article here. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-04-03 at 9.37.05 AM.png" width="670" height="887" width_o="702" height_o="930" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-04-03 at 9.37.05 AM_o.png" data-mid="28641554" border="0" align="left"/> From the editor: In flipping through the future shock images of biosynthetic speculation, it’s easy to miss the historical trajectory to which biosynthetic practices belong. Etienne Turpin takes a look at the long twentieth century of ‘bubble-expanding’ invention and the underlying drive to maintain our sphere of seven billion people, in order to understand this trajectory. He regards proto-biosynthetic techniques like the Haber-Bosch process, which produced the agrarian revolution by synthetically introducing ammonia-based fertilizer to farm Felds, as a key to understanding the dynamics of living in this brave new biosynthetic world. _ ___________________________________ 2013.03.21 Mostly What Is Unsaid Andrew Herscher's The Unreal Estate Guide to Detroit launches at Art Metropole Mostly What is Unsaid presents: Andrew Herscher - The Unreal Estate Guide to Detroit Talk: Thursday, March 21, 7-9pm Art Metropole, 1490 Dundas Street West <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/UnrealDET.png" width="670" height="489" width_o="670" height_o="489" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/UnrealDET_o.png" data-mid="27987856" border="0" align="left"/> Mostly What is Unsaid (a collective project of Art Metropole + FUSE Magazine + Scapegoat: Architecture/Landscape/Political Economy) is excited to host a talk by Andrew Herscher, author of The Unreal Estate Guide to Detroit (2012). The audience is invited to join a discussion afterwards. Intense attention has been paid to Detroit as a site of urban crisis. This crisis, however, has not only yielded the massive devaluation of real estate that has so often been noted; it has also yielded an explosive production of seemingly valueless urban property that has facilitated the imagination and practice of alternative urbanisms. The first sustained study of Detroit's alternative urban cultures, The Unreal Estate Guide to Detroit initiates a new focus on Detroit as a site not only of urban crisis but also of urban possibility. The Unreal Estate Guide to Detroit will be available for purchase at the event and online at www.artmetropole.com. Mostly What Is Unsaid is an open structure of public conversations initiated by Art Metropole, FUSE and Scapegoat, motivated by our shared conception of publishing as a political praxis, rather than a form of publicity or mere representation. Engaging in conversation amidst the monologue of the neoliberal status quo demands that we attend to gestures, hesitations and omissions as much as words. Through this programming series, we will pursue the critical role of the unspoken and the unspeakable across a spectrum running from the macro- to the micro-political. Within our respective practices, we construct publicly accessible, yet still precarious spaces of conversation. The series Mostly What Is Unsaid curates occasions to bring these discussions into a shared physical space, in order to bridge the gap between locations such as a shop, a magazine, or a journal and spaces of everyday life in the city. _ ___________________________________ 13.03.16 TELL: DETROIT In poker, a “tell” is a change in a player’s behavior that gives clues about their assessment of the situation. In the city of Detroit, such clues from residents about the deal they have been dealt are often ignored and misrepresented. Tell: Detroit brings together a group of documentary film makers and Detroit residents to create a collaborative documentation of urban resilience. Come tell Detroit about your experiences of vulnerability, solidarity, community, and courage. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/telldetroit_0316.jpg" width="670" height="337" width_o="1471" height_o="742" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/telldetroit_0316_o.jpg" data-mid="27487675" border="0" align="left"/> Tell: Detroit brings together a group of documentary film makers and Detroit residents to create a collaborative documentary of urban resilience. Tell: Detroit will produce an open access, free archive to document the experiences of the people of Detroit following the declaration of the city’s fiscal emergency by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder on 1 March, 2013. Anyone can contribute an anecdote to Tell: Detroit. We want to collect and disseminate short stories about vulnerability, solidarity, community, fear, and courage. We are committed to documenting the neglected reality that Detroit is much more than a financial crisis. Tell: Detroit asks what else we need to know, remember, imagine or construct to accumulate different images of the city together? Tell: Detroit will be filming at the Detroit Mercantile Co. on Saturday, March 16, from 10am – 4pm. Artists, film makers and community activists will greet you and find the right setting for your story. We can record your anecdote in public, in private, on video or audio. Come share your story and be part of this open archive. For more information, visit our website: www.improbableporomechanics.org/TellDetroit For questions, suggestions, or donations, email us: info@improbableporomechanics.org Because Tell: Detroit is a crowd-sourced archive, we are relying on people to contribute by spreading the word – so, please tell anyone you think would be interested in sharing their stories. Tell: Detroit is sponsored by: Institute of Improbable Poromechanics—Enthusiasts of Urban Leakage (Detroit) Broken City Lab—Artist Collective & Civic Space (Windsor) SCAPEGOAT—A Journal of Architecture, Landscape, and Political Economy (Toronto) With producers: Paige Sarlin (The Last Slide Projector, Buffalo) Alessandra Renzi (Infrastructure Critical, Milwaukee) Stephen Zacks (Flint Public Art Project, Flint) Scott Sørli (Convenience: gallery, Toronto) Andrew Herscher (Detroit Unreal Estate Agency, Detroit) <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-03-20 at 9.35.54 AM.png" width="670" height="406" width_o="1285" height_o="780" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-03-20 at 9.35.54 AM_o.png" data-mid="28080020" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-03-20 at 9.36.38 AM.png" width="670" height="376" width_o="1277" height_o="718" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-03-20 at 9.36.38 AM_o.png" data-mid="28080027" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-03-20 at 9.38.08 AM.png" width="670" height="402" width_o="1279" height_o="768" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-03-20 at 9.38.08 AM_o.png" data-mid="28080047" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-03-20 at 9.37.17 AM.png" width="670" height="350" width_o="1278" height_o="668" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-03-20 at 9.37.17 AM_o.png" data-mid="28080052" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-03-30 at 2.14.53 PM.png" width="670" height="392" width_o="965" height_o="565" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-03-30 at 2.14.53 PM_o.png" data-mid="28498143" border="0" align="left"/> Images courtesy of IIP.org. _ ___________________________________ 13.03.06 Review of The Least of All Possible Evils by Eyal Weizman in 'Palestine-Palestine,' FUSE 36-2 Spring 2013 <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-03-05 at 8.49.43 PM.png" width="670" height="295" width_o="1207" height_o="533" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-03-05 at 8.49.43 PM_o.png" data-mid="27487126" border="0" align="left"/> Beginning with an agile reading of the sequence of disasters that constitute the narrative of Voltaire’s Candide (1759), the Israeli architect Eyal Weizman has, in his latest monograph, The Least of All Possible Evils, initiated another productive foray into our optimized “humanitarian present. Read more ... This review would not have been possible without the support of FUSE editor Gina Badger and 'Palestine-Palestine' guest-editors Nasrin Himada and Reena Katz. In this issue, the editors of FUSE highlight the shared structures and contemporary effects of settler colonialism brought to bear on communities in Palestine and on Turtle Island. You can read more about FUSE here. _ ___________________________________ 13.03.01 Another Atlas RAW: Gallery of Architecture and Design Exhibition 1 March - 1 April, 2013 290 McDermot Ave. Winnipeg, Manitoba rawgallery.ca info@rawgallery.ca Opening reception - March 1st 8 pm <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-03-18 at 6.59.21 PM.png" width="670" height="448" width_o="714" height_o="478" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-03-18 at 6.59.21 PM_o.png" data-mid="28078742" border="0" align="left"/> About the work: Another Atlas builds on the work of Lize Mogel and Alexis Bhagat’s 2007 compendium of cartographic investigations into power, networks and social justice. The book and subsequent touring exhibition brought together work from artists, designers, geographers and activists all focusing on the role mapping has in our shared social structures. The different works lead to questions of; Who has the right to map? What do they have the right to map? How mapping changes our world. Each of the artists selected represent ways information can be gathered and how forms of mapping can be challenged. Artists: Etienne Turpin – Ann Arbour, USA Simon Elvins – Londn, UK Caroline Blaise – Montreal, Canada Jeanette Johns – Montreal, Canda Sotirios Kotoulas – Winnipeg, Canada Lawrence Bird – Winnipeg, Canada & selected pieces from the touring exhibit An Atlas for Radical Cartography Accompanying the exhibition in RAW:Books will be copies of "An Atlas for Radical Cartography," "Space Out" by Sotirios Kotoulas and limited edition prints of "Stainlessness" by Etienne Turpin. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/ANOTHER_ATLAS_JCY_72DPI 19 of 31.jpg" width="480" height="720" width_o="480" height_o="720" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/ANOTHER_ATLAS_JCY_72DPI 19 of 31_o.jpg" data-mid="28078756" border="0" align="left"/> Images courtesy of RAW gallery. _ ___________________________________ 13.03.01 For Immediate Release— SCAPEGOAT: Architecture | Landscape | Political Economy Issue 04—Currency is Now Available in our new book format! <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-02-20 at 8.04.15 PM.png" width="670" height="434" width_o="1396" height_o="906" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-02-20 at 8.04.15 PM_o.png" data-mid="27487478" border="0" align="left"/> SCAPEGOAT issue editors Chris Lee and Adrian Blackwell are proud too announce the release of Issue 04—Currency, now available for purchase here. Contributors include: Brett NEILSON & Sandro MESSADRA, Fabrica Mundi: Producing the World by Drawing Borders Emily GILBERT, Currency in Crisis Keith HART, Why the Euro Crisis Matters to Us All Emilio MORENO, Other Issues: Currency Delimiting Sovereignty Peter NORTH, Money as Anticapitalist Praxis Georgios PAPADOPOULOS & Jack Henrie FISHER, Grexit: Notes towards a Speculative Archaeology of the European Crisis Rob KOVITZ, Capital of the World Robert FISHMAN, Foreclosure and the American City Abbas AKHAVAN, Islands Srdjan LONCAR, The Fine Art of Repair in New Orleans Marcelo VIETA, Recuperating a Workplace, Creating a Community Space: The Story of Cooperativa Chilavert Artes Gráficas Emanuele BRAGA, Messages of Rupture: On the MACAO Occupation in Milan, translated by Roberta BUIANI ExRotaprint, There is No Profit to be Made Here! Peter MÖRTENBÖCK & Helge MOOSHAMMER, Informal Market Worlds: Instruments of Change Steven CHODORIWSKY, From the needle and thread, all the way up to the hat Matthieu BAIN & Andrew PERKINS, Rust Belt Vernacular: Harvesting Unnatural Resources AbdouMaliq SIMONE, Water, Politics and Design in Jakarta Claire PENTECOST, Notes from Underground Rosten WOO, Big Pictures Jordan GEIGER, Maximal Surface Tension: Very Large Organizations and Their Apotheosis in Songdo Ricardo DOMINGUEZ interviewed by Alessandra RENZI, On the Currency of Somatic Architectures of Exchange Paige SARLIN, Vulnerable Accumulation: A Practical Guide Suriya UMPANSIRIRATANA interviewed by Adam SMITH, Bangkok to Chonburi, translated by Ajahn KENG Robert ADAMS, Making a Scene: A Vivid Genealogy of the Asclepius Machine Brendan BAYLOR & Heath SCHULTZ review The Art of Not Being Governed FAKE INDUSTRIES review the 2012 Venice Biennale of Architecture Alan ANTLIFF reviews Commerce by Artists From the editorial note: Currency is structured by a fundamental contradiction between its necessary circulation and its stubborn foundation in sovereign territories. On the one hand, it is designed to represent value and facilitate its exchange in standardized, fungible units; on the other, its relative scarcity generates a strong incentive to hoard it, withdrawing and storing its value, converting it into fixed assets such as property whose existence relies on the same institutions of coercion that maintain national borders. Fiat currencies, the current hegemonic form of money, while not backed by material commodities, derive their legitimacy primarily from the power of states over and within national territories. Société Réaliste remind us that the word mark, in the Deutschemark, has roots in the Gothic word marka, for “sign of a frontier.” This suggests that the national currencies that we are familiar with are at once completely abstract—special commodities containing only exchange value providing a perfect break between spheres of production and consumption—and coextensive with the very material space that the state’s military force secures. Today’s globalized capitalism only exacerbates this paradox. The ascendency of finance capital in North Ame­rica and Europe has created a condition where the accumulation of capital is based almost purely on speculation, and money is multiplied through its circulation. At the same time, the struggle to secure the territories and bodies that guarantee it has become ever more desperate as civilian spaces have been more and more militarized. The result has been an increasingly complex space of value, where the borders that produce its distinctions are no longer located at a nation’s edges, but rather lie both within and beyond it. The diverse contributions to Scapegoat’s fifth issue, Currency, investigate these contradictory tendencies within the spa­tiality of currency and present ways that they can be resisted. We follow a line that runs from the material to the immaterial, exploring divergent scales and topologies in the process. _ ___________________________________ 13.02.24 Chinese Launch of Scapegoat 04—Currency “Stock Market Urbanism” Sunday, 24 February, 3pm HKU/Shanghai Study Centre 298 Bei Suzhou Lu (Close to Sichuan Bei Lu) Shanghai Bubbles and speculation are of all times. The 2008 financial crisis was largely caused by the subprime loan disaster in the United States. It turned out that housing was not anymore about community, living or emotions. Housing became about value, and investment. With a lot of money in the market, for many years, it was incredibly easy to get a mortgage. One the one hand, prices increased, on the other, access to money was made even easier. The implosion of this system was comparable to the crash of the 1930’s. The biggest difference, however, was the lack of intervention by the government this time. What actually happened in the US foreclosure crisis? What happens when buildings are no longer places to live, work or shop in, but a mere objects of investment? What is the role of the government? What can we learn from it? And could the same happen in China as well? Speakers are Scapegoat editors Adam Bobbette and Adrian Blackwell, and Shanghai-based real estate developer Robert Chen. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-03-20 at 9.52.54 AM.png" width="633" height="691" width_o="633" height_o="691" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-03-20 at 9.52.54 AM_o.png" data-mid="28079423" border="0" align="left"/> To celebrate their launch in China, SCAPEGOAT have included a Mandarin translation of Robert Fishman’s feature interview, “Foreclosure and the American City,” conducted by Etienne Turpin. For more about the Shanghai launch, visit the HKU’s Shanghai Study Center page here. You can purchase a copy of SCAPEGOAT Issue 04—Currency here or visit our website for open access articles online. _ ___________________________________ 13.01.10-13.01.20 Politics in/as Visual Culture Working Group As a founding editorial board member of the journal SCAPEGOAT: Architecture | Landscape | Political Economy, I am participating in the 8th Annual Encuentro of New York University’s Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The Encuentro – Cities | Bodies | Action: The Politics of Passion in the Americas – examines the broad intersections between urban space, performance and political/artistic action in the Americas. From the critical poetics of body art to the occupation of public space by social movements, the event invites participants to explore the borders, identities and practices through which subjectivities, hegemonies and counter-hegemonies are constructed in the spaces of the city and beyond. During the Encuentro, I will be a part of the “Politics in/as Visual Culture” working group, convened by Nicholas Mirzoeff and Carmen Oquedo-Villar. Read more about NYU’s Hemispheric Institute and the Encuentro model here. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/ViewFromMyApartmentinSP.png" width="670" height="446" width_o="1283" height_o="855" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/ViewFromMyApartmentinSP_o.png" data-mid="24975521" border="0" align="left"/> Brasil antes de dormir, cortesia de Anexact.org. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-01-08 at 10.55.08 PM.png" width="670" height="295" width_o="946" height_o="417" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-01-08 at 10.55.08 PM_o.png" data-mid="25220807" border="0" align="left"/> <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-01-09 at 1.32.41 AM.png" width="670" height="441" width_o="983" height_o="648" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-01-09 at 1.32.41 AM_o.png" data-mid="25346263" border="0" align="left"/> FAU USP, cortesia de Anexact.org. _ ___________________________________ 12.12.22 Art After the Nostalgia for Belonging in Big, Red & Shiny, Vol. 2, Issue 3. The article is available online. Thanks to BR&S editor John Pyper. The essay is dedicated to John Paul Ricco, without whom I would have never thought to take up the hyperstitial relation between Jimmie Durham and Paleolithic painting, and with whom I have enjoyed the pleasures and provocations of this friendship. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-11-19 at 11.07.32 AM.png" width="670" height="395" width_o="1251" height_o="738" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-11-19 at 11.07.32 AM_o.png" data-mid="23677362" border="0" align="left"/> Settler Nation Rocks; digital photograph (2012), courtesy of Anexact.org. _ ___________________________________ 12.12.11 Jimmie Durham in Lascaux --- A Parable for Art in the Anthropocene A lecture co-sponsored by the Cranbrook Academy of Art Critical Studies Program and the University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture 6PM Cranbrook Academy of Art Cranbrook Art Museum’s de Salle Auditorium 39221 Woodward Avenue Bloomfield Hills, MI 48303 <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-12-22 at 11.23.54 AM.png" width="670" height="406" width_o="1207" height_o="732" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-12-22 at 11.23.54 AM_o.png" data-mid="24755395" border="0" align="left"/> Jimmie Durham, Stoning the Refrigerator, 1996; from Galerie Michel Rein, Paris. The lecture is also available online thanks to Cranbrook's Critical Studies Program. _ ___________________________________ 12.12.05 Making the Geologic Now - Now Available! Elizabeth Ellsworth and Jamie Kruse of Smudge Studio have released their edited volume Making the Geologic Now: Responses to the Material Conditions of Contemporary Life. You can read the book online, or order or download it through Punctum Books. Included in the volume are two essays from my recent research: A New Force, A New Element, A New Input: Antonio Stoppani's Anthropozoic I collaborated with Italian architect Valeria Federighi to select excerpts and edit her translation of Antonio Stoppani's Corso di Geologia (Miliano: G. Bernardoni, E G. Brigola, Editori, 1873), with photographs by Lisa Hirmer. The text is available online; or, you can download the pdf here. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/31 Abate Antonio Stoppani stampa d epoca Pezzo da Gaeta.jpg_20101212224810_31 Abate Antonio Stoppani stampa d epoca Pezzo da Gaeta.jpg" width="670" height="961" width_o="811" height_o="1164" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/31 Abate Antonio Stoppani stampa d epoca Pezzo da Gaeta.jpg_20101212224810_31 Abate Antonio Stoppani stampa d epoca Pezzo da Gaeta_o.jpg" data-mid="24272777" border="0" align="left"/> Photograph of Antonio Stoppani, 1824. Robert Smithson's Abstract Geology The second text included in the volume, Robert Smithson's Abstract Geology: Revisiting the Premonitory Politics of the Triassic, considers Robert Smithson's anticipation of the discourse of the anthropocene through a reading of what he referred to as the 'politics of the Triassic.' <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-05-30 at 7.52.46 AM_41.png" width="670" height="242" width_o="670" height_o="242" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-05-30 at 7.52.46 AM_41_o.png" data-mid="30188832" border="0" align="left"/> Image of emergent form of the certatitda (bottom right) in the 'remote times' of the Triassic, courtesy of Anexact.org. _ ___________________________________ 12.11.17 The Architecture + Adaptation: Design for Hypercomplexity research initiative presents the exhibition: NAVIGATING THE POSTNATURAL Salt & Cedar 2448 Riopelle St. Eastern Market Detroit 6-8PM <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-11-09 at 8.34.38 PM.png" width="670" height="401" width_o="1271" height_o="762" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-11-09 at 8.34.38 PM_o.png" data-mid="23366950" border="0" align="left"/> _ BRIEF BACKGROUND The Architecture + Adaptation: Design for Hypercomplexity research initiative examines the intersection of extreme environmental circumstances and creative architectural production. The first research studio of this initiative - INUNDATION Bangkok/Jakarta - placed architecture students from Taubman College into an interdisciplinary exchange with landscape architecture faculty and students from the University of Hong Kong University, and faculty and students from the Universitas Indonesia Faculty of Engineering. Through a Joint Design Research Workshop, we studied the hydrological infrastructure and attendant social consequences in Bangkok and Jakarta. Our site-based research was organized through the tool of the field guide, originally produced during a workshop at Salt & Cedar Letterpress in Detroit. With this tool, our research aimed to develop an image of both city’s hypercomplexities and unstable geographies of water, while specifying the localized effects of the problem to act on them through design.

The exhibition – NAVIGATING THE POSTNATURAL – returns the field guides, along with much of our visual documentation and analysis, to the Salt & Cedar Gallery as a means to reconsider the role of the field guide as a book-tool and share some the research and analysis collected from the field. Read more about the show by Farid Rakun on Archinect. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/pan 7.jpg" width="670" height="215" width_o="768" height_o="247" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/pan 7_o.jpg" data-mid="24040973" border="0" align="left"/> _ EXHIBITION RUNS 17 Nov – 10 Dec 2012 Salt & Cedar 2448 Riopelle St. Eastern Market Detroit _ also FORTHCOMING from Architecture + Adaptation Futures of Hypercomplexity Exhibition at the Taubman College Gallery, University of Michigan 21 Jan - 15 Feb 2013 Water, Urbanism, and Spatial Justice in Southeast Asia A Workshop Dr. Abidin Kusno 15 February, 2013 2-4PM Guest Lecture at Taubman College by Dr. Abidin Kusno Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning 15 February, 2013 6PM _ ___________________________________ 12.10.13 An Archaeology of the Showroom: This Model Society published in WOOD TWO, edited by Christof Migone As part of a recently released collection of work from and about Toronto’s Blackwood Gallery, directed and curated by Christof Migone, I published my research on the political economy of the model showroom. The essay An Archaeology of the Showroom: This Model Society, initiates an archaeology of the showroom, with specific regard to the peculiar space of presentation that contains both the model suite and the model building in relative proximity, as a speculative provocation regarding the presentation space of model domesticity and model urbanism in contemporary mass culture. The intention of this a preliminary investigation is to delimit the role of the model in the political-economic reproduction of our current social reality. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/WOOD TWO_coverSM.jpg" width="578" height="711" width_o="578" height_o="711" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/WOOD TWO_coverSM_o.jpg" data-mid="24305627" border="0" align="left"/> _ ___________________________________ 12.10.12 The Working Committee on Architecture and Politics Presents: ARCHITECTURE, IMAGE, ACTION 1-3PM West Review Space, 3rd floor, Art + Architecture Building, North Campus, University of Michigan <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-09-30 at 9.45.51 PM.png" width="670" height="335" width_o="1363" height_o="683" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-09-30 at 9.45.51 PM_o.png" data-mid="21950481" border="0" align="left"/> _ ___________________________________ 12.09.29 Lost & Found Detroit Anexact.org, in collaboration with 1/X and Salt & Cedar Letterpress, presents a screening of film maker and archivist Rick Prelinger's Lost Landscapes of Detroit and a discussion with Andrew Hersher of the Detroit Unreal Estate Agency. The design collective 1/X will also discuss their curatorial project for the Detroit Design Festival - Anecdoted City - which created a collection of objects in/of/from Detroit, on view at the Salt & Cedar Letterpress Gallery and re-curated for a one night exhibition by Rick Prelinger. Please check out Kate Abbey-Lambertz's review of Anecdoted City in the Huffington Post. All are welcome. Pay what you can; suggestion donation $5. Seating is limited - get your ticket online here. Salt & Cedar 2448 Riopelle St., Eastern Market, Detroit 7PM <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-09-27 at 10.18.34 AM.png" width="670" height="342" width_o="793" height_o="405" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-09-27 at 10.18.34 AM_o.png" data-mid="21850718" border="0" align="left"/> 1/X installing the Anecdoted City collection table, courtesy of Salt & Cedar. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-09-30 at 10.06.34 PM.png" width="670" height="373" width_o="1121" height_o="625" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-09-30 at 10.06.34 PM_o.png" data-mid="21952799" border="0" align="left"/> Photographs of the Anecdoted City opening at Salt & Cedar are available online; courtesy of Jonathan LeJune. This event is generously supported by Corktown Cinema, 1/X, Salt & Cedar, anexact.org, and the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-10-30 at 8.20.48 PM.png" width="670" height="244" width_o="1016" height_o="371" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-10-30 at 8.20.48 PM_o.png" data-mid="23004365" border="0" align="left"/> _ ___________________________________ 12.09.20 Stratophysical Approximations: A Conversation with Seth Denizen on the Urban Soils of the Anthropocene published in Organs Everywhere, September 2012 Recent research regarding the significance and consequence of anthropogenic changes to the earth’s land, oceans, biosphere and climate have demonstrated that, from a wide range of scientific research positions, it is probable to conclude that humans have entered a new geological epoch, their own. First labeled the Anthropocene by the Dutch chemist Paul Crutzen, the consideration of the merits of the new epoch by the International Commission on Stratigraphy and the International Union of Geological Sciences has started to garner the attention of philosophers, artists and designers, legal scholars, as well as an increasing number of researchers from a range of scientific backgrounds. Recently, I curated the symposium, The Geologic Turn: Architecture’s New Alliance, as a way of bringing architects and landscape architects more thoroughly into this conversation. Among the participants invited for the symposium, the designer and landscape architect Seth Denizen brought up several key issues regarding the relationship between evidence, design, and taxonomy that arose from his recent research. Following an invitation from Organs Everywhere editor Simone Ferracina to contribute to this issue, I asked Seth to have a conversation that would further explain his recent project, The Eighth Approximation, as well as its relationship to the history of land use practices, and its orientation among other research on the Anthropocene. Issue No. 04 of Organs Everywhere - Material Shifts - is now available online here. A pdf of the interview, including more of The Eighth Approximation drawings, is also available here. And, you can read more from Seth Denizen about soil science in the Anthropocene here. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-09-22 at 10.37.50 AM.png" width="670" height="228" width_o="1305" height_o="446" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-09-22 at 10.37.50 AM_o.png" data-mid="21668629" border="0" align="left"/> Detail from The Eighth Approximation, courtesy of Seth Denizen. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-09-24 at 9.37.48 AM.png" width="670" height="451" width_o="1233" height_o="830" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-09-24 at 9.37.48 AM_o.png" data-mid="21722311" border="0" align="left"/> OE No.4 - Material Shifts _ ___________________________________ 12.09.14 “If they do not give you work or bread …” – Counter-Memory and Militant Labor in America As part of the Flint Public Art Project's event Value + Ruin , Etienne Turpin presents research from his exhibition and attendant publication Stainlessness, which considers the role of militant labor history in the U.S. as means to confront and prevent the erasure of this history by contemporary processes of urban- ization. Organized by Stephen Zacks of the Institute for Applied Reporting and Urbanism, the event includes presentations by Andrew Herscher, Andrew Perkins, and video installation artists from District VII. Inside the SpaceBuster Flint, MI 7PM <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-08-31 at 4.39.23 PM_21.png" width="670" height="390" width_o="670" height_o="390" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-08-31 at 4.39.23 PM_21_o.png" data-mid="30190722" border="0" align="left"/> Production of Stainlessness exhibition "March 7, 1932" plate; image courtesy of Catie Newell _ ___________________________________ 12.09.14 Bangkok + Jakarta: Cities of Hypercomplexity exhibition by Architecture+Adaptation: Design for Hypercomplexity Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan opening event 11am-12:30pm The Architecture + Adaptation: Design for Hypercomplexity Research Initiative, organized by Professor Meredith Miller and Dr. Etienne Turpin, examines the intersection of extreme environmental circumstances and creative architectural production. The first research studio of this initiative - INUNDATION Bangkok/Jakarta - placed architecture students from Taubman College into an interdisciplinary exchange with landscape architecture faculty and students from the University of Hong Kong University, and faculty and students from the Universitas Indonesia Faculty of Engineering. Through a Joint Design Research Workshop, we studied the hydrological infrastructure and attendant social consequences in Bangkok and Jakarta’s metropolitan regions. The research aims to produce an image of both city’s hypercomplexities and unstable geographies of water, while specifying the localized effects of the problem to act on them through design.

The exhibition – Bangkok + Jakarta: Cities of Hypercomplexity – responds to the urgent issue of inundation in Southeast Asian megacities by provoking the question: what is the agency of architecture within megacities and their various compositions of hypercomplexity? <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-08-31 at 7.25.52 PM.png" width="519" height="826" width_o="519" height_o="826" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-08-31 at 7.25.52 PM_o.png" data-mid="20965651" border="0" align="left"/> _ ___________________________________ 12.09.07 Postnatural Inundation: Designing for Hypercomplexity Presentation for the World Congress of the International Federation of Landscape Architecture - 'Landscapes in Transition,' Cape Town, South Africa Introduction. As Southeast Asia’s most populous and most dense metropolitan conurbation, and the second largest urban footprint in the world, Jakarta, Indonesia, is already a city of hypercomplexity. However, recent trends in weather intensification, sea level rise, extreme river pollution, river flooding, and coastal inundation have helped create, through multiplicative effects, one of the key sites for researching the combined effects of ecological and urban transformation as they influence 21st century Southeast Asian metropolitan existence. Similarly, since the devastating flooding experienced in Bangkok, Thailand, in 2011, numerous organizations, designers, government agencies, and citizens have been working to understand and to design greater resilience into the city. Bangkok is an important site for a comparative methodology to research the ecological, social, and spatial consequences of inundation in Southeast Asian Cities. The Architecture + Adaptation: Designing for Hypercomplexity Research Initiative, founded by Etienne Turpin and Meredith Miller, examines the intersections of extreme environmental circumstances, especially the problematic of inundation, and creative architecture and landscape architecture production. Focusing on highly-dense urban locations that face the regular and damaging occurrence of inundation, the project documents the constituent forces and effects that pose challenges to normative architectural production and the operations of ‘natural landscapes.’ The presentation for IFLA 2012 – POSTNATURAL INUNDATION: DESIGNING FOR HYPERCOMPLEXITY – will explain our research studio in Bangkok and Jakarta and develop the themes of the postnatural and hypercomplexity in relation to potential landscape architecture practices today. Methods. Relying heavily on situated research and observation through visual production, the primary aim of the research initiative is to locate potential moments for architecture and landscape architecture to intervene, as a mediation, adaptation, or coordination with ecological circumstances that operate at such a large scale and level of hypercomplexity that human-scale design tends to be disregarded as a potential agent of influence. As architects and landscape architects struggle to find ways to exercise agency through socially and environmentally responsible practices, and as the design disciplines attempt to reorganize their commitments in the face of ecological collapse, the Architecture + Adaptation: Designing for Hypercomplexity Research Initiative mobilizes collaborative, engaged, situated research to advance the pedagogical model of architecture education beyond the studio, and to build new connections for architecture research today. For architecture students to advance an understanding of these hypercomplexities, they cannot be treated as abstractions or experienced through mediated means; in order to apprehend the material and spatial reality of Jakarta and Bangkok, this project positions situated, collaborative research as its key methodology. Results + Conclusions. Our results and conclusions will be presented to the IFLA 2012 Landscapes in Transition World Congress following our research in Jakarta in May and June, 2012. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-08-31 at 7.27.31 PM.png" width="670" height="431" width_o="1214" height_o="782" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-08-31 at 7.27.31 PM_o.png" data-mid="20965704" border="0" align="left"/> <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-08-31 at 7.29.03 PM.png" width="670" height="363" width_o="1283" height_o="697" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-08-31 at 7.29.03 PM_o.png" data-mid="20965705" border="0" align="left"/> Images courtesy of Geoff Salvatore _ ___________________________________ 12.08.01 The Anus is the Night in the DIRT issue of No More Potlucks edited by Heather Davis This short essay contends that the writing of Georges Bataille allows for a rereading of the philosophical problematic of production and its relation to excessive states of being-expended. We revisit Bataille’s ‘Solar Anus’ and other early writings on the poromechanics of decay to consider how an unbecoming image of prolapsed excess - the solar anus inside out - undermines the patrilineality of Gilles Deleuze's image of philosophy as 'making monsters from the back.' <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-08-02 at 9.36.49 AM.png" width="670" height="333" width_o="1145" height_o="570" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-08-02 at 9.36.49 AM_o.png" data-mid="20089650" border="0" align="left"/> Detail from Decomposing Territory, by Meredith Miller, 2012. Image courtesy of the artist. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-10-04 at 9.51.42 AM.png" width="670" height="391" width_o="1124" height_o="656" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-10-04 at 9.51.42 AM_o.png" data-mid="22092405" border="0" align="left"/> Detail from Homage to Georges Bataille, by Jumana Manna, 2007. Image courtesy of the Jumana Mana project page. _ ___________________________________ 12.06.26 Conceptual Persona Non Grata: On Deleuze's Gratuitous Reading of Bataille lecture by Etienne Turpin during the Postnatural Deleuze panel at the 5th International Deleuze Studies Conference at Tulane University, New Orleans, United States For liberal readers of Deleuze, one secret must forever be repressed: Deleuze hated. While his work teems with affirmation, even by way of his less than consensual but favored philosophical analogy of ‘making children/monsters from the back,’ there is one thinker too reviled for even Deleuze to thoroughly penetrate: Georges Bataille. While sparse, his remarks on Bataille betray the image of Deleuze as a perpetual affirmation machine. For this reason, Bataille, as the Deleuzian conceptual persona non grata, invites us to consider a state of delirious contamination that was too dangerous to be taken on (from behind). The paper contends that Deleuze’s gratuitous hatred of Bataille allows for a rereading of the philosophical problematic of ressentiment and a reassessment of the power of death in Deleuze’s own philosophy. We will revisit Bataille’s ‘omnidirectional acephalic revolution’ to save Deleuze’s dark side from the Enlightenment get-along-gang of necrophobic affirmatons. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-06-28 at 6.07.45 PM.png" width="670" height="432" width_o="759" height_o="490" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-06-28 at 6.07.45 PM_o.png" data-mid="19040886" border="0" align="left"/> Presented as part of the panel "POSTNATURAL DELEUZE: Sensation, Annihilation, and the Ends of Desire" The panel seeks to address the current aporia of the affirmative in Deleuze Studies (DS) by examining the limits of the body, the resilience of the negative, and the potency of political economic analysis that asks not what a body can do or how it can be read, but how it is distended, exploited, and exterminated. Drawing from recent work among the speculative realist readings of the ‘dark’ Deleuze, especially Reza Negarestani's Cyclonopedia, the panel asks what, for Deleuze, are the ends of desire? How might the negative, which haunts the cult of affirmation in current DS, extend the vulnerability of thought to include the captive, the terminal, the mutilated, and the acephalic? Can DS be resuscitated from the dead end of the purely affirmative through a more decisive analysis of death? We will distend Deleuze through analyses of the annihilations of inhuman collectivity, the perverse hybrid machines of anorganic sensation, and the gratuitous refusal postmortem organization. _ ___________________________________ 12.05.31 Repositioning Mineralization: Ecotechnical Landscape Aesthetics lecture by Etienne Turpin at the School of Architecture, Planning, and Policy Development of the Institute Technologi Bandung, Bandung, Indonesia During Assistant Professor Meredith Miller and Lecturer Etienne Turpin's research studio INUNDATION Bangkok/Jakarta, Etienne was invited by Vice Dean Widjaja Martokusumo and Professor Rina Priyani to lecture at the School of Architecture, Planning, and Policy Development of the Institute Technologi Bandung (ITB), in Bandung, Indonesia. Etienne's lecture – Repositioning Mineralization: Ecotechnical Landscape Aesthetics – discusses research on Sudbury, Ontario, and Detroit, Michigan, that was conducted as part of his Walter B. Sanders Research Fellowship at Taubman College. In the lecture, Etienne argues for a repositioning of aesthetic commitments in response to neo-industrial processes that have left cities like Sudbury and Detroit in ecological crisis and economic despair. The lecture also addresses the role of the Anthropocene in relation to North American ecotechnical landscapes, and in relation to current design research at ITB, including the ITB and University of Florida joint cultural heritage studio on postindustrial mining towns in Sumatra province, Indonesia. _ ___________________________________ 12.05.15 Architecture + Adaptation: Emergent Territories of Inquiry Lecture by Etienne Turpin & Meredith Miller at the Hong Kong University Faculty of Architecture On route to their spring research studio in Bangkok and Jakarta, Architecture + Adaptation: Design for Hypercomplexity Principal Investigators Etienne Turpin and Assistant Professor Meredith Miller were invited by The Hong Kong University Faculty of Architecture to lecture about the background, methods, and ambitions for their research initiative in Southeast Asia. Their lecture, Architecture + Adaptation: Emergent Territories of Inquiry, addresses Professor Miller's research on Other Environmentalisms and Etienne's research on the Anthropocene as the back-formation of their Inundation studio in Bangkok and Jakarta, and sets up the research methods and provocations regarding the agency of architecture for the studio. _ ___________________________________ 12.03.30 Design Vulnerability Panel organized and moderated by Etienne Turpin for RISK: Present Predicaments in Architecture and Urban Planning Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan, Friday, March 30, 2012, Rackham Auditorium 5:05pm (Video recordings of presentations are linked to speaker names below.) <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Histogrammes09.jpg" width="670" height="478" width_o="900" height_o="643" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Histogrammes09_o.jpg" data-mid="16990824" border="0" align="left"/> Image courtesy of SYN-Atelier d'exploration urbaine From the perspective of design research, the laboratory is a model for investigating urban scenography, interstitial space, transient icons, and the political economies which shape architecture and the city. The lab is not, in this model, the hygienic space partitioned from the world to afford a distanced observation; the lab is instead a platform for embedded forms of inquiry, intervention, speculation, and experimentation. These precarious forms of practice are affirmed through design strategies that embolden our experiences of vulnerability at the level of the city, the social, and the ecological. These practices do not attempt to erase vulnerability through design but instead leverage design research and performative experimentation by collaborating with and among various vulnerabilities. The panel considers how practices of accumulating vulnerability offer new models of courage and conviction for post-heroic architecture and design. Speakers: Introduction by Etienne Turpin Ricardo Dominguez Associate Professor, University of California, San Diego; Co-Founder, Electronic Disturbance Theater Justin Langlois Senior Research Fellow, Broken City Lab; Assistant Professor, University of Windsor Jean-Maxime Dufresne & Jean-François Prost Principals, SYN - Atelier d'exploration urbaine Fernando Fuentes & Lorena Méndez Co-founders, La Lleca Colectiva Response by Etienne Turpin Walter B. Sanders Fellow, Taubman College <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/2012_risk_poster_large.jpg" width="670" height="867" width_o="695" height_o="900" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/2012_risk_poster_large_o.jpg" data-mid="15778732" border="0" align="left"/> All RISK events are available online. _ ___________________________________ 12.03.06-08 SIEGE: at table, within and without Intermedia performance and locally-sourced pop up restaurant with Leon Johnson, Justin Novak, Catie Newell, Ksenya Samarskaya, Etienne Turpin, and Anca Trandafirescu organized by Detroit Emergent Futures Lab hosted by the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit A sequence of three meals, SIEGE traces the original footprint of the city and offers it as a sustained allegory. The dinners bring together a culinary history drawn from the ribbon farms with formal echoes of the fortification of occupied land, tactical posture, and the ethos of retrenchment, withdrawal and attrition. Detroit, originally sited at Fort Ponchartrain, then relocated to Fort Shelby, witnessed three historical sieges over the span of a century. This year marks the 300th anniversary of the first siege, the 200th of the last. At table, within and without. Detroit Emergent Futures Lab presents three dinners at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit on March 6, 7 and 8th at 7 pm. The project features custom stoneware table settings by Justin Novak, glass lighting systems, carafes and wine glasses by Catie Newell, table fabrics by Anca Trandafirescu, spoken word performances by Etienne Turpin, and Tokyo cold-pour coffee by Anthology. A book of the project is in preparation, designed by Ksenya Samarskaya, to be published at Signal-Return Press, Detroit. Each dinner seats just 12 guests for a meal sourced, foraged and grown locally—prepared by Leon Johnson. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-03-24 at 9.23.20 PM.png" width="670" height="444" width_o="1287" height_o="853" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-03-24 at 9.23.20 PM_o.png" data-mid="15673643" border="0" align="left"/> <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-03-24 at 9.24.53 PM.png" width="670" height="444" width_o="1292" height_o="857" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-03-24 at 9.24.53 PM_o.png" data-mid="15673630" border="0" align="left"/> <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-03-24 at 9.24.43 PM.png" width="670" height="443" width_o="1287" height_o="852" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-03-24 at 9.24.43 PM_o.png" data-mid="15673626" border="0" align="left"/> <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-03-24 at 9.23.30 PM.png" width="670" height="445" width_o="1291" height_o="858" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-03-24 at 9.23.30 PM_o.png" data-mid="15673621" border="0" align="left"/> <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-03-24 at 9.24.05 PM.png" width="670" height="443" width_o="1288" height_o="852" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2012-03-24 at 9.24.05 PM_o.png" data-mid="15673659" border="0" align="left"/> All images of SIEGE courtesy of Catie Newell. _ ___________________________________ 11.11.11 Drawing-Architecture: On the Line as Lived Abstraction a lecture-performance by Etienne Turpin Gendai Gallery, Toronto, Canada <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/6145890716_5584912957.jpg" width="500" height="333" width_o="500" height_o="333" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/6145890716_5584912957_o.jpg" data-mid="12620452" border="0" align="left"/> Image courtesy of Gendai Gallery To draw is to produce conceptual reflection and experiential sensation with, or perhaps more precisely, on the line; thus, the practice of drawing-architecture might be considered as a peculiar mode of 'lived abstraction.' To develop these concepts, the lecture will first consider the question of measurement, and its persistent premise of calculative value, in relation to the practice of drawing-architecture. Then, through an engagement with architectural historians Hubert Damisch and Claudia Brodsky, we will sketch the legacy of the line within the hegemonic context of perspectival representation. Our attempt is then to map the problem of correlationism (in the conceptual sense given by Quentin Meillassoux) that arises through the lived abstractions of drawing-architecture, particularly through an analysis of the picket line as a form of confrontation that collapses a field of interest into a vector of force. _ ___________________________________ 11.11.05 Aberrant Architecture: Typologies of Practice National Art Gallery, Vilnius, Lithuania Following our interview with Gedeminas and Nomeda Urbonas about the Cinema Lietuva, I joined SCAPEGOAT journal editor Adam Bobbette to deliver a lecture at the National Art Gallerty of Lithuania, in Vilnius, where we were graciously hosted by Sabina Grincevičiūtė and Aurimas Sasnauskas, curators of the ARCHITECTURE [discussion] FUND. The fifth session was named “THE CITY. Breakpoints,” and we addressed questions of the city as follows: Drawing inspiration from figures as diverse as Auguste Blanqui and Aldo Rossi, we ask: how can typology embolden design practices today? We look to recent design projects published in the journal Scapegoat: Architecture, Landscape, Political Economy to argue for a reappraisal of practice within the design disciplines. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-01-05 at 9.18.53 PM.png" width="670" height="369" width_o="1442" height_o="796" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/Screen Shot 2013-01-05 at 9.18.53 PM_o.png" data-mid="25096143" border="0" align="left"/> Image of Cinema Lietuva courtesy of Adam Bobbette The video of the lecture is here; additional images and response are here. _ ___________________________________ 11.10.29 The Pleasure of Poromechanics a lecture-performance by Etienne Turpin during "What is a Zone of Offensive Opacity? An Horror Encounter" ZOO 2011, Montreal, QC <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/CowDummy.jpg" width="670" height="573" width_o="1535" height_o="1315" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477198/CowDummy_o.jpg" data-mid="12620597" border="0" align="left"/> Image from Rob Kovitz's Pig City Model Farm Following from the poromechanical provocations in Reza Negarestani's Cyclonopedia, the lecture-performance considers various sensitivities and excitements of contemporary labiality, looking particularly at the distribution potentials of slaughter, the controlled propagation of animal protein, and the poroelasticity of distention as a means to enhance flow of pestilential (i.e. non-productive from the perspective of Capital) fluids. The body will be drained of its capacity for instrumentalization and converted to the insurrectionary project of an omnidirectional acephalic revolution. We will pursue Negarestani’s imperative: “Be a hydro-leak engineer; make things leak out.” RECENT WORK _ ___________________________________ 2013.05.12 CURRENCY = TERRITORY Sunday 12 May 2013 7–9PM 16 Beaver Street, New York, NY Scapegoat:... http://anexact.org/NORTH-of-ARCHITECTURE http://anexact.org/following/anexact.org/NORTH-of-ARCHITECTURE Sun, 18 Dec 2011 18:51:00 +0000 www.anexact.org 2477162 NORTH of ARCHITECTURE An Inquiry Concerning Localized Misery, Cosmic Contingency, and Unintentional Aesthetics in collaboration with Lisa Hirmer of Dodo Lab As part of the North of Architecture project, Lisa and I have been publishing aspects of the research to date. Excerpts below are taken from "The Unintentional Aesthetics of the Anthropocene: A Textual-Photographic Precis," published in Horizonte: Zeitschrift fur Architekturdiskurs No. 5, FETISCH (June, 2012), available as a free pdf here. A very special thanks to Jason Young for his comments and advice on the essay in preparation. We will present additional research at the Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, California, in April 2013, on the panel "Re-cycling, or The Afterlives of Processes, Policies and Artifacts Past," organized by Jordan Howell (Michigan State University) and Kerri Jean Ormerod (University of Arizona). Our presentation for this session - Cumulus Landscapes, or, Aesthetics in Abeyance - will consider the role of the pile in the contemporary meso-space north of architecture. All images below courtesy of Lisa Hirmer. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/010slag.jpg" width="670" height="558" width_o="2048" height_o="1706" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/010slag_o.jpg" data-mid="14922067" border="0" align="left"/> The most beautiful world is like a heap of rubble tossed down in confusion. — Heraclitus <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/001.jpg" width="670" height="446" width_o="2000" height_o="1334" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/001_o.jpg" data-mid="14922023" border="0" align="left"/> INTRODUCTION TO THE ANTHROPOCENE Our major cultural artefacts, or at least those endorsed by dominant culture, such as museums, monuments, statues and the like, suggest through their passive advocacy of stainlessness a paradoxical commitment to both permanence and progress. Not unlike their iron predecessors in the late-nineteenth century, whose Jugendstil organicism created a metallic imaginary that provided Baudelaire with the title for his most well known collection of verse, Les Fleurs du Mal, the evils of our shiny, contemporary wish images remain obscure, not least because their capacity to reflect cultural values is necessarily distorted. Whether one is pacing the promenade leading to Frank Gehry’s Walt Disney Music Hall in Los Angeles, cautiously approaching Ned Kahn’s undulating kinetic façade that skins the Technorama Science Centre in Zurich, or finding one’s bearings among the gluttonous consumption of Michigan Avenue beneath Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate in Chicago’s Millennium Park, we witness how our current epoch reiterates a pernicious but pervasive value: metallic surfaces are synonymous with progress. The more polished, refined, expansive and contiguous these metallic surfaces, the greater the representational carrying capacity for our most lauded but least considered civilizational fetish—stainlessness. What force compels this aesthetic of mineralization? How did our proliferation of stainlessness (as a quality) take place so rapidly, reaching an almost unthinkable ascendancy in its contemporary ubiquitous dispersion? Most importantly, what precedents within a materialist history of the Anthropocene could help orient our attempt to think the force of the human species, which has proven itself more than capable of antagonizing the vast scale of the earth through the mineralization of its surface? To answer these questions, we examine the remains of the architecture of extraction as it persists in the Sudbury Basin, where the world’s most strategic nickel deposit is mined along the irruptive rim of a massive astrobleme to be converted into stainless steel. (1) Through our reading of the denuded landscape of the Basin and its toxicosis, we discover questions of cosmic contingency, labour unrest, and aesthetic meditation (in the sense Georges Bataille, following Nietzsche, gives to the term). As we are entangled in these questions, we try to imagine, with both text and image, the history of this most pernicious fetish – stainlessness – by reading the remainders of its refinement. In order to do so, we need to first locate the site of our inquiry within the broader arc of modern industrial activity. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/002.jpg" width="670" height="446" width_o="2000" height_o="1334" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/002_o.jpg" data-mid="14922031" border="0" align="left"/> The pseudonymously named force known most commonly as Homo sapiens is expanding its territory of influence, or, perhaps more correctly, that force is beginning to recognize its reflection within the expanded field of its operations. No longer confined to the organic register of biology – although by no means freed from it as a limit condition – humans are a geologic force with an impact now comparable to the asteroid that ended the Cretaceous period by annihilating the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago. To grasp this force of the human, to be capable of understanding the consequence for our biological species-being as it manifests a geologic reformation, the International Commission on Stratigraphy and the International Union of Geological Sciences are currently debating the relevant scientific merits of the Anthropocene, which would allow them to recognize a geo-diachronic shift from the epoch of the Holocene (since the last Ice Age receded almost twelve millennia ago), to our current “epoch of man.” To determine whether or not the Anthropocene satisfies the necessary criteria, stratigraphers and geologists consider various anthropogenic effects, that is, those changes most precisely associated with so-called Homo sapiens. These changes include, but are certainly not limited to: the rise of agriculture and attendant deforestation; coal, oil and gas extraction, and their consequences; the combustion of carbon-based fuels and attendant emissions; coral reef loss producing so-called “reef gaps” similar to those of the past five major extinction events on the planet; a rate of extinction on Earth happening at tens of thousands of times higher than in most of the last half billion years; and, perhaps most significantly, a rate of human propagation—an unrestrained explosion in population growth—which, according to the biologist E.O. Wilson, is “more bacterial than primate.” Even from this truncated list, the evidence suggests a dramatic human impact; still, among the various processes that most emphatically characterize the Anthropocene, the most consequential for its role in the proliferation of positive feedbacks that continue to expand exponentially, is the process we call mineralization. While the exo-skeletal mineralization of the earth’s surface – most especially the production of steel as a form of building material – is the decisive process of the Anthropocene, this process is preceded, as the philosopher of science Manuel DeLanda has noted, by the endo-skeletal mineralization that allowed organisms to achieve locomotion (more than mere movement) at the end of the Ediacaran period millions of years ago. Just as bones, teeth, claws and shells allowed soft, fleshy plantlike animals to free themselves from the constraints of localized photosynthesis, the exo-skeletal mineralization of steel allows human actors to achieve new possibilities in building types, transport, the mass production of goods, and the development of nearly all subsequent forms of technology, including the processes which later allow for the introduction of plastics and other synthetic materials. In the long parade of human activity that incessantly transforms mineral deposits into redistributed qualities of surface level stainless steel, we are just beginning to comprehend the impact of these human labors as they intrude on geologic processes; it is precisely for this reason that we must reconsider the ‘purpose’ of these activities and interrogate the driving force which modulates the mineralization of our exo-skeletal projections. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/007slag.jpg" width="670" height="558" width_o="2048" height_o="1707" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/007slag_o.jpg" data-mid="14922037" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/008slag.jpg" width="670" height="558" width_o="2048" height_o="1707" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/008slag_o.jpg" data-mid="14922050" border="0" align="left"/> PURPOSIVE ACTIVITY Humanity is, at the same time — through industry, which uses energy for the development of the forces of production — both a multiple opening of the possibilities of growth, and the infinite faculty [facilité infinie] for burn off in pure loss. — Georges Bataille At least since Vitruvius’s treatise in the first century BCE, architecture has been defined as more than mere building, and architecture as a practice is uniquely placed on the cultural horizon between purposeful activity and ambiguous ornamentation. Yet, the act of distinguishing between these two sides – building as utility and architecture as more than just utility – requires a set of the criteria imported from outside the building or architecture under consideration. “Because all things are equally material,” writes Keith Mitnick, “the notion that one form of architecture may appear more abstract, immaterial, or neutral than another is a consequence of how it is discussed rather than a property of its material features.” (2) Culture conditions aesthetic commitments. As an aesthetic construction that exceeds the requirements of building, architecture seems to retains the enigmatic connection between an aesthetic pleasure and a purposive end. In the Sudbury Basin, aesthetic inversions undermine the logic that distinguishes purpose and ornament, leading into a vertiginous aesthetics of confusion. But, before we consider the site and its visual sleights, several brief remarks regarding Kant’s aesthetic regime are necessary. In his Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant considers the relation between aesthetic experience and the possibility of these experiences becoming meaningful. It is precisely this consideration which allows him to reintroduce Man’s capacity for Moral reason as the end or telos of Nature. In his analysis, the non-conceptual apprehension of aesthetic beauty (the beautiful) and natural force (the sublime) is given an a priori principle by the very fact that it is incapable of subsuming empirical experience under any conceptual rubric; that is, our ambiguous aesthetic relations suggest, for Kant, the necessity of meaning that would make them possible. This meaning can only be, for Kant, the purposiveness of nature which, by way of each individual organism and by way of their multitudinous expression, returns us back to Man and his Moral reason as the necessary and ultimate end of Nature. The a priori principle at stake in the analysis of reflective judgment is thus the necessity of or the insistence on purposive existence. (3) While this incredibly expedited summary must here suffice, our point is nonetheless clear: Kant makes a fetish out of the assumed natural ascendancy of Man over Nature; Man is literally the supernatural iteration of purpose that makes Nature meaningful by the very act of not being capable of understanding his experience of it. This fetish of Man as the meaning of Nature is the prerequisite for the second order fetishization, namely, Man’s capacity to transform the world, to render it beyond the changing, physical cycle of birth and decay, and instead arrest his constructions with quality the stainlessness. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/003.jpg" width="670" height="446" width_o="2000" height_o="1333" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/003_o.jpg" data-mid="14922040" border="0" align="left"/> TO BE DONE WITH THE SUBLIME Stricken with the malediction attached to acts, the violent man does not force his nature, does not go beyond himself, except to furiously re-enter, as aggressor, followed by his enterprises, which come to punish him for having raised them. There is no work that does not return against its author: the poem crushes the poet, the system the philosopher, the event the man of action. – E.M. Cioran From our reading of Kant’s overestimation of Man as the purpose of Nature, it becomes evident that invoking the sublime as a condition of aesthetic apprehension – when we encounter a natural force incommensurate with our own ‘scale,’ or, in a relation of magnitude inconceivable by the human mind – can only be deployed as a means of reinscribing the human as the purposeful outcome of nature. While this reinscription is philosophically problematic, it also leads to a shorthand thinking about allegedly natural processes. More than this, however, the concept of the sublime simply cannot bear the force of the human and its tremendous, unintended aesthetic consequences. We offer two complimentary and especially instructive examples examined during our preliminary research on the Sudbury Basin; these examples are suggestive not least for the way they indicate the two aesthetic poles of the Anthropocene: fantastically-scaled diversions and partially-sorted detritus. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/004.jpg" width="670" height="448" width_o="2000" height_o="1339" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/004_o.jpg" data-mid="14922047" border="0" align="left"/> Thrusting skyward from the irruptive rim of the Sudbury Basin, the exaggerated monumentality, minimal geometry, and specious utility of the Superstack – a 380-metre high industrial chimney completed in 1972 in an attempt to disperse the pollution produced in the refinement processes – defies any reinscription by way of the aesthetics of the sublime. Despite its magnitude as an object, what is most confounding about its presence throughout the city is its peculiar inability to achieve its purpose; it haunts the Basin, its unsettled accounts a testament to its object-life as a diversion. A brief history of the chimney helps us clarify its defiance of purpose. The architecture historian Kenneth Hayes has noted that the Superstack was constructed to address the industrial malfeasance and widespread denudation of the landscape resultant from the practice of opening bed roasting, a practice that, according to Hayes, “seems almost unbelievable now that it is obsolete.” He explains, “The pentlandite or iron-nickel sulphide ores found in Sudbury contain as much as 25 per cent sulphur, and this level must be reduced as the first step in smelting.” (4) During the first forty years of Sudbury’s mineralizing activity, “at least seven roast yards with a total of up to 65 beds were used in the initial processing of ore. The primitive procedure consisted essentially of building a wood pyre the size of a city block and up to a couple of meters tall. Pulverized ore was piled on top and the whole mass ignited. The roasting lasted from 35 to 40 days for an 800-1,000 ton heap, and could run well beyond a hundred days for a heap of 2,500 tons. The wood was simply tinder to ignite the ore itself.” (5) Because of this, Hayes reports, “The four decades from 1890 to 1930 saw an estimated 11.2 million tons of sulphur released into the immediate environment at ground level,” and the Superstack can thus be seen as “the last major effort to ameliorate emissions by the traditional expedient of dispersing them.” (6) The Superstack here presents the exemplary condition of the fantastically-scaled diversion, one of the two aesthetic poles orienting the visual economy of the Anthropocene. Significantly, the taste of ground level sulphur that still fills the mouths and nostrils of the city’s inhabitants suggests that this instrumental structure, in its failure, passes beyond mere building into the ornamented canon of architecture proper. In the meso-space north of architecture, where aesthetic inversions call attention to the unintended consequences of the aggregation of human activity and its anthropogenic effects through the unintended aesthetics of mineralization, the civilizational fetish for stainlessness finds its other exemplary state in the heaps of detritus that dutifully accompany its production. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/009.jpg" width="670" height="558" width_o="2048" height_o="1706" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/009_o.jpg" data-mid="14922057" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/010slag.jpg" width="670" height="558" width_o="2048" height_o="1706" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/010slag_o.jpg" data-mid="14922067" border="0" align="left"/> Because it would be unbecoming to merely eject our waste from industrial processes into just any haphazard form, industrialized human societies have developed the compositional trope of the pile, or heap, to both preserve the semblance of order of materials, in the even they could be reinscribed with utility at a later moment, and to hint at this possibility of reinscription as an imminent order to come. Neither disturbingly disordered nor perceptibly punctilious, the heap operates at the aesthetic limit of purpose: heaps and piles take on the mechanical dimensions of their becoming-piled (the size of the train car that dumps them, the capacity of the loader that pushes them, etc.), but in so doing they outstrip there instrumentality by revealing the strange mobility and stalled momentum of the earth itself. As Lisa Hirmer has written in a recent essay about piles, “There is a fickleness to the surface of the earth. It is something that can be opened up, turned inside out, piled up.” She continues, noting that “here, in the contemporary world, the ground plane is not a stable reference point” because the pile, a partially-sorted heap of yet-to-be-completed anthropogenic process, “is a de-formed landscape, a landscape that has been taken apart and reassembled into a heap. A sense of disorientation, even an ungroundedness, surrounds it.” (7) The Sudbury Basin, despite the epeirogenic connotations of its name, is a slag heap, its condition a much closer cousin to the orogenic diastrophism of mountain building, even if the mountains of slag produced have now been redirected, by common commercial usage, from their pile forms toward such mundane tasks as driveway and parking lot surfacing, as well as other ubiquitous landscape strategies commonly reserved for gravel or other relatively fine granular material. If slag is re-appropriated into a condition of instrumental utility, then its standing-in-reserve as pure aesthetic objects or processes – partially-sorted detritus piles that occupy an ambiguous relation to value and purpose – suggest the other aesthetic pole of the Anthropocene. The promise of purpose, signalled by the orderly disorder of the heap, holds in abeyance any judgment regarding the consequences of mineralization. If the fantastically-scaled diversion suggests a spatial deferral, the partially-sorted heap operates as a promissory temporal signal; in this regard, perhaps more than poles, these exemplary aesthetic compositions intersect by way of an orthogonal articulation, creating the perplexing space-time matrix of Anthropocene aesthetics as we witness them today. Still, heirs to Kant that we are, our aesthetic biases persist; and, we get the feeling that to escape this reified condition of aesthetics and enable art practice to advance toward an unrestricted general economy of the Anthropocene, it is not enough to reconsider the pile and the parking lot as a new aesthetic repository; the museum too must be re-sited. To help think the necessity of a terrible (post-sublime) aesthetic of the Anthropocene, we turn now to several premonitory practices that evince the human as tellurian hyperforce through their singular assaults on the visual economy of the unseen. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/005.jpg" width="670" height="446" width_o="2000" height_o="1333" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/005_o.jpg" data-mid="14922052" border="0" align="left"/> <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/006.jpg" width="670" height="446" width_o="2000" height_o="1333" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/006_o.jpg" data-mid="14922054" border="0" align="left"/> ANONYMOUS NONSITES In this book we show objects predominantly instrumental in character whose shapes are the results of calculation and whose processes of development are optically evident. They are generally buildings whose anonymity is accepted to be the style. Their peculiarities originate not in spite of, but because of the lack of design. – Bernhard and Hilla Becher, Anonyme Skulpturen Among the premonitory practices that anticipate the Superstack and the slag heap as the aesthetic poles of the Anthropocene, we could surely do worse than to return to the work of Robert Smithson and Bernd and Hilla Becher. This is not least because Smithson’s array of nonsite works, produced in the final years of the 1960s, have as their point of aesthetic departure a field trip in December, 1968, with Bernd Becher and gallery owner Konrad Fischer, who took the visiting American artist to Oberhausen, twenty miles outside of Düsseldorf where Fisher’s gallery had recently opened. According to the curator and critic James Lingwood, in his magisterial essay “The Weight of Time” (composed for the catalogue of his Field Trips exhibition), Oberhausen was “one of the largest industrial complexes in the Ruhr district, itself some of the most concentrated areas of industrial production in Western Europe at that time.” (8) As suggested in the epigraph above, Bernd and Hiller Becher’s practice was concerned with addressing the industrial aesthetics that dominated the landscape with their peculiar, instrumental yet somehow aesthetic forms. Their photographic practice captured the decisive images of this aesthetic, yet the question of anonymity remains paradoxical because ‘artist’ of these anonymous sculptures is both no one and everyone; Oberhausen is an instrumentality pushed to such a degree of assertion that it crosses the threshold of the aesthetic. (9) Following his field trip with Bernd Becher, Smithson, for his part, developed a sculptural installation addressing the illusion of the discrete object (the art) and a sealed container (the gallery), while simultaneously indicating the complicity of production and waste. With the aid of an industrial manufacturer, Smithson constructed a series of five steel containers, each increasing in height by linear geometrical intervals toward the wall of the gallery, accompanied by five identical maps with varying photo-documentation of the industrial sites from which the contents of the containers were retrieved. The contents of the linearly perforated stainless steel bins are chunks of slag – the waste product of the refining process. According to Lingwood, “Different kinds of evidence rubbed up against each other – hard geological facts, photographic impressions and cartographic description – in a display which mirrors Smithson’s own restless mind as it oscillates between microcosm and macrocosm, scientific specimen and imaginative projection.” (10) This is because, in Lingwood’s analysis, “The sequences of prosaic black and white snapshots do more than describe an industrial wasteland. They conjure up an almost apocalyptic vision of an exhausted world. Oberhausen isn’t so much documented as it is subjected to a temporal transformation, characteristic of Smithson’s penchant for dramatic mental leaps in time and space, from the prehistoric (before anything had emerged from the primordial soup) to the post-historic (where everything would return to a similarly undifferentiated state).” (11) For Smithson, the creation of stable systems of meaning is always gratuitous because these systems are constantly plagued by a loss of order – a condition known as entropy. The futility of systems of organization (i.e. differentiation) is concentrated in Smithson’s Nonsite [Oberhausen] where the aesthetic relationship – the tension between use and ornament – offers a semblance of the interminable burning of sulphur and pouring of slag that constitute the smelting process of pentlandite in the fetishized campaign against corrosion in the Sudbury Basin. As in Smithson’s Nonsite, in the Basin refinement and entropy are just two sides of the same coin; the lauded coin that commemorates this aporia is, in Sudbury at least, a nickel. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/noplace02.jpg" width="670" height="448" width_o="2000" height_o="1339" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/noplace02_o.jpg" data-mid="14922063" border="0" align="left"/> END Human life is exhausted from serving as the head of, or the reason for, the universe. To the extent that it becomes this head and this reason, to the extent that it becomes necessary to the universe, it accepts servitude. – Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess Produced from the smelting and refinement of Nickel sulphide, the addition of the Ni – nickel is represented in Dmitri Medeleev’s Periodic Table of the Elements with the letters Ni and the atomic number 28 – to the composition of steel adds a higher corrosion resistance and a greater overall strength to the final product. Stronger and more resistant steel is an indicator of a cultural fetish that can be mapped across the diverse materiality of our world and its objects, but these indicators also bleed through the social field of the Anthropocene. Because rust never sleeps, operating relentlessly by way of corrosive contagion on the fabric of our built world, the positive feedbacks of mineralization are enlisted in the moral struggle for a stainless civilization. Stainlessness becomes, within this arms race of endurance and decay, the fetishized image of our civilizational capacity to order the world in our own image, where architecture and infrastructure organize the elemental properties of Ni in a war against corrosion that has left us exhausted. <img src="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/noplace01.jpg" width="670" height="446" width_o="2000" height_o="1333" src_o="http://payload8.cargocollective.com/1/5/180415/2477162/noplace01_o.jpg" data-mid="14922064" border="0" align="left"/> In the Sudbury Basin, where the slag heaps constitute the horizon of industrial modernity as consistently as the Superstack delivers up a properly global dispersion of fantastically-scaled malfeasance, we find a place to pause and consider the aesthetics of the Anthropocene. Whether or not the acephalic human species will endure its self-identity as the meaning of Nature and the attendant remaking of the world as a metaphysical project of arrest in keeping with this identification, the ultimate consequences of an industrially rapacious mineralization remain to be seen. As geologists and stratigraphers debate the science of the Anthropocene, what is evident for us is that despite our credulous pseudonym Homo sapiens, the aggregate hyper-force that we are is a long way from any twee reference to or recuperation of the aesthetic of the sublime. Anonymous and unintentional, the aesthetics of the Anthropocene allow us to glimpse the our own force which, like the work necessary to recognize, if not entirely mitigate the consequences of our fetish for refinement, is tremendous. NOTES (1) My reading of the astrobleme – a tellurian formation created as the result of the impact of a massive asteroid – is largely indebted to the work of architecture historian Kenneth Hayes, especially in his essay, “Be Not Afraid of Greatness, or, Sudbury: A Cosmic Accident,” Sudbury: Life in a Northern Town (Guelph and Sudbury: Musagetes Foundation and Laurentian Architecture, 2011), 16-25. Although I fundamentally disagree with Hayes’ unfortunate reading of the Basin through the aesthetic of the “sublime,” I nevertheless attempt to refashion several aspects of Hayes’ inquiry regarding the astrobleme in what follows. Contrary to Hayes, I argue that the force of the human is tremendous, that is, a force beyond the recuperative logic of the sublime. For the most potent explanation of the imbecility of the “sublime” as an aesthetic category, see Nick Land, The Thirst for Annihilation (New York and London: Routledge, 1992); and, more recently, Nick Land, Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007 (Windsor Quarry and New York: Urbanomic, 2011), especially “Kant, Capital, and the Prohibition of Incest,” 55-80. (2) Keith Mitnick, Artificial Light: A Narrative Inquiry into the Nature of Abstraction, Immediacy, and other Architectural Fictions (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), 53. (3) For a prescient analysis of both Kant’s separation of the noumenal and phenomenal registers as required by his aesthetic analytics and the consequences of this philosophical parsing, see Iain Hamilton Grant, “Prospects for Post-Copernican Dogmatism: The Antinomies of Transcendental Naturalism,” Collapse V, edited by Damian Veal (Falmouth, UK: Urbanomic, 2009), 415-454; for an analysis of the problematic division between natural and human history, see Dipesh Chakrabarty, “The Climate of History: Four Theses,” Critical Inquiry 35 (Winter 2009), 197-222. (4) Hayes, “Be Not Afraid of Greatness.” (5) Ibid. (6) Ibid. (7) Lisa Hirmer, "Dirt Piles: Collected Thoughts on the Landscape of Construction,” On Site 26: Land Reservations (November, 2011), 18. (8) James Lingwood, “The Weight of Time,” in Benrd & Hilla Becher and Robert Smithson: Field Trips, edited by James Lingwood (exhib. cat. Museu de Arte Contemporanea de Serralves, Porto, 2002), 70. (9) Bernhard and Hilla Becher, Anonyme Skulpturen (Avtverlag Press, Düsseldorf, 1970). (10) Lingwood, 70. (11) Lingwood, 71. (12) Robert Carleton Hobbs, Robert Smithson: Sculpture, edited by Robert Carleton Hobbs (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1981), 25. (13) Hobbs, 113. (14) Hobbs, 115. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This essay would not have been possible without the generous support of the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, University of Michigan, through the Walter B. Sanders Research Fellowship (2011-2012). Thanks also to Assistant Professors McLain Clutter and Claire Zimmerman for allowing me to develop this argument in conversation with their graduate seminars. NORTH of ARCHITECTURE An Inquiry Concerning Localized Misery, Cosmic Contingency, and Unintentional Aesthetics in collaboration with Lisa Hirmer of Dodo Lab ...