architecture as agency
.
Relationality is the subject of agency. Agency is not a property, but a process that causes and effects material transformations of the world through constant 'enactment.' Agency is "doing" or "being" in its intra-activity. Agency arises through entanglements. Political subjectivity is a form of ethical agency. Ecological subjectivity is a form of performative agency. Architecture is a form of spatial agency. Architecture as agency is unifying. It encourages spatial, performative, and ethical relationality to connect things, matters, human, non-human, subjects, objects and their myriad kinds of entangled components.
birth of being
.
Letting happen the ones who we are does not only mean letting our being appear but allowing our ‘to be’ to exist, opening a place in which it can take place and enter into presence. It is to give back our ‚to be’ to life. This cannot amount to merely inciting it to become apparent but rather asks us to gather our selves together, to be in communion with ourselves in order to remember the ‘to be’ that we are and to ensure a collecting of our selves starting from which this ‘to be’ may become present— also to the other. To be present to one another requires us to let our ‘to be’ be present in each—as a question, a mystery, a life of which we must take care and bring into the world. ︎︎︎ Luce Irigaray
co-operative production
.
Co-production reframes the way traditional public services are recognized: people are no longer only passive consumers and beneficiaries of public or private products, but are active agents who conceive, design and manage services together with the public authorities. Expanding the notion of participatory practices, co-production is not just a phase of a consultation process, but is truly embedded in everyday lives by engaging communities and authorities to provide, steer and deliver services in a mutual, longterm relationship.
diffraction
.
According to classical physics, diffraction is a physical phenomenon that comes into being when a multitude of waves encounter an obstacle upon their path, and/or when these waves themselves overlap. Waves in fact always already overlap and extend into one another, so even in the classical rendering, when pushed to an extreme, “we can understand diffraction patterns – as patterns of difference that make a difference – to be the fundamental constituents that make up the world” (Barad, 2007, p.72). Seen through the perspective of quantum physics, however, we are invited to think about the inherent diffractivity of sets of waves, of single waves, and of single particles, under the right (experimental) conditions. In the tradition of new (feminist) materialism, diffraction is taken figuratively, to denote a more critical and difference-attentive mode of consciousness and thought. ︎︎︎ Diffraction & Reading Diffractively
ecology
.
Egology is the beautiful uncertainty of coexisting. Ecology is welcoming a stranger, and that stranger becomes more and more strange the more you know them. Ecology is being in love. The certain uncertainty. The way ambiguity is a signal of acuracy. The way irony is a signal of reality. The way you’re almost you, this cat on my glass table is almost a cat, the table is almost a table, you might almost say I’m living in a world. You might almost say I’m alive. You might almost say I’m a person. You might almost want to put your arms around someone and almost tell them almost everything – you can’t quite say everything, but you almost do. ︎︎︎Timothy Morton
feminist urbanism
.
The feminist urban critique starts from the fundamental question: What kind of spatial theory, and especially spatial practice, would have emerged if women's activism and voices had not been silenced and excluded from the canon of spatial theory? The voices of Christine de Pizan, Emma Goldman, Sojourner Truth and Mother Jones, Simone de Beauvoir, Gloria Anzaldia, Bell Hooks, Paula Gunn Allen, Valerie Matsumoto, Audre Lorde, Luce Irigaray, Teresa de Lauretis, Gayatri Spivak - to name just a few who nevertheless succeeded in making their voices heard, not to mention those who had to keep their wisdom to themselves? The answer to this question is crucial, for it is precisely this void, the authentic non-being in discourse, that feminist urban theory addresses at its core. Material feminist urbanism calls for a different form of politics, a different form of urbanism, in short, a completely different society to be spatially enacted.
governance of commons
.
The commons, in its most general sense, is a system of shared management of resources. A commons is not managed by government or corporations; the aim is not to increase production or maximize profit. A commons is a clearly defined community of communal members who act as responsible custodians of the resources available to them. They work to distribute the resources under their governance fairly among those who rely on them for their daily subsistence needs. Direct transfer of powers to an authoritative agency is one way to manage the commons, but usually commoners organize themselves to manage the resource collectively according to very specific rules, social boundaries, and norms, including measures against abuse. Ideally, they maintain this practice over long periods of time, even generations. Moreover, they affirmatively engage in community participation through democratic consensus and with mutual respect for each other and for the very resources they steward. What is unique about commons is their independency from the market and the state, and the significant degree of self-sufficiency that it implies.
housing question
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150 years have passed since Engels denounced that “the housing question” will remain unsolved as long as exploitation and class struggle, i.e. unequal power relations prevail. Engels does not propose architectural or urban planning improvements, instead, he locates the problem within the structures of capitalist politics and its social order. Beyond ideologies, this means that economic and political structures shape the housing conditions of any given society. While that is certainly true and largely known, it is on us architects, to propose architectural and urban solutions that, today, have reached unprecedented urgency. For that, we must question, counter-act, counter-design, and retaliate against the neoliberal housing anti-solution in the 21st century.
intra-action
.
Karen Barad defines the notion of Intra-action to substitute ‘interaction,’ as inter-action assumes already defined and pre-determined entities that enter into action with one other. Intra-action on the other hand describes the coming into being of entities through the very coming into action with one another. According to Karen Barad inter-action cannot take place, since there is no existent being before any intra-action. Inter-action assumes separation. Intra-action assumes synthesis. Every connection and action result in becoming matter. Nothing exists before intra-action. Therefore, intra-action designates the impossibility of the absolute separation that foregrounds the classical notion of objectivity. For Barad, the apparatus – which is technology, medium, or intervention in attempt to analyze or measure a property – cannot be detached from the process that it deals with. The apparatus becomes equally constitutive of the reality that it intra-actively engages with.
joy
.
The ethics of joy is at heart a process of becoming. Because such a becoming is not contained in present conditions, and cannot emerge from them, it has to be brought about creatively by a qualitative leap of collective praxis and ethical imagination. To accomplish an ethics of joy, ‘we’ need to compose a community and produce a qualitative leap that breaks productively with the present. The first step consists in reaching an adequate cartography of the conditions of bondage. The ethics of joy proposes an alternative way of extracting knowledge from pain, that starts with and is conveyed by the quest for an adequate understanding of power. The analysis of power as a complex and multi-layered situation subjects are caught in is consequently the beginning of ethical wisdom. ︎︎︎ Rosi Braidotti
localities
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In order to understand territories, mobility, geopolitical relations, and nomadic subjectivities the reflection on locality is particularly relevant. Two phenomena oppose one another these days: the serialized stratification of capitalist subjectivity and the emergence of resistant subjects organized in social movements. Simultaneously, spaces are being homogenized all over the globe, while resistant networks constantly reorganize in differential social-cultural mechanisms responding to disruptive discontinuities. It becomes increasingly difficult to map movements of subjective resistance in coherently mapped cartographies. They surface beyond the reference of temporal linearity and traceable spatial orientation. Heterotopies are disappearing from the maps which does not mean that the movements of difference also are. To encounter and comprehend them, absolute Cartesian spaces and nested geographical scales (global-national-local) must be substituted by relational spatial reflections where maps turn into diagrams of perceptions, closeness, distance, density or scarcity, openness, or secrecy which are connected by ‚lines of flight‘ and vectorial forces. Their relational aspects blur their precise locality, they are nonetheless real. They occur as events in intra-connected, inseparable, unmeasurable scales, partaking in all scales at once. The body becomes the first locality of pre-individual subjective expressions which create resonant, singular spaces of collective assemblages. The gravity of space bounds these motions to perception. Our built space is more and more engaged in disguising and prohibiting such emergent spaces of affective manifestations. Architecture must reclaim its power to manifest agential ‚concepts of difference‘ instead of representing infinite ‚conceptual differences‘ of sameness occupying physical locality with abstract non-local illusions of reality.
micropolitical co-operation
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Co-operative practice is built on the idea that participation forms the very basis for a democratization process from below. Negotiating between collective and singular interests, the formation of a co-operative therefore implies to build networks through active involvement of each member as a shareholder with one voice and one vote. Transformative micropolitics enables the expression and negotiation of individual desires in the social field, thereby introducing flexible subjectivities into political processes in order to foster new forms of socio-political engagement. Co-operation thus relies on micro-political mobilization, as it claims that collective livelihoods should be co-produced and co-managed by each of the members of a group.
narratives
.
It matters which stories tell stories, which concepts think concepts. Mathematically,
visually, and narratively, it matters which figures figure figures, which systems systematize systems.
All the thousand names are too big and too small; all the stories are
too big and too small. As Jim Clifford taught me, we need stories (and theories) that are just big enough to gather up the complexities and keep the edges open and greedy for surprising new and old connections. One way to live and die well as mortal critters in the Chthulucene is to join forces to reconstitute refuges, to make possible partial and robust biological-cultural-political-technological recuperation and recomposition, which must include mourning irreversible losses.
︎︎︎ Donna Haraway
oryngham
.
Oryngham means thank you for listening in the language of the plants. It is not a word, as we humans understand it, because its meaning cannot be spoken—nor can it be heard. However, we can experience it by feeling with our bodies and listening to what our ears cannot hear. When we learn to listen to plants without the need to hear them speak, a language that we have forgotten emerges; it is a language beyond words, one that does not wander or pretend or mislead. It is a language that conveys its rich and meaningful expression by bypassing the household of our mind and directly connecting one spirit to another. ︎︎︎ Monica Gagliano
performativity
.
A performative understanding of discursive practices challenges the representationalist belief in the power of words to represent preexisting things. Unlike representationalism, which positions us above or outside the world we allegedly merely reflect on, a performative account insists on understanding thinking, observing, and theorizing as practices of engagement with, and as part of, the world in which we have our being. Performativity, properly construed, is not an invitation to turn everything (including material bodies) into words; on the contrary, performativity is precisely a contestation of the excessive power granted to language to determine what is real. Hence, in ironic contrast to the misconception that would equate performativity with a form of linguistic monism that takes language to be the stuff of reality, performativity is properly understood as a contestation of the unexamined habits of mind that grant language and other forms of representation more power in determining our ontologies than they deserve.︎︎︎ Karen Barad
queer cohabitation
.
Cohabitation confronts us with rather conflictual encounters of disruptive contradictions. It exposes us to asymmetrical power relations, unchosen communities of people, critters, species, unknown objects and subjects. It requires to take risk. How to navigate cohabitation without surrendering to rejection, violence, or oppression? Queering is one possible answer. Queer has always refused normalization and fixed identities. It fought politically for sexual difference which is not to be confused with the deceitful neoliberal politics of sexual recognition and its hegemonic normative pluralist agenda where sexual liberation comes with the full assimilation of capitalist freedom, remaining yet the exclusive reward and privilege for system conformity. The core political queer claim is the right to the freedom of desires which does not reduce to sexual desires but is rather an expression of a fully embodied openness to other’s singularities from which lively unforeseen connections arise. Openness to encounters, to complexities, to staying with our collective engendered troubles to ultimately break with the vicious circle of oppressive enactments. Openness to heterogeneous affections and transformations are queering feminist practices and attitudes that permit and affirm cohabitation.
right to the city
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The World Charter for the Right to the City defines the right to the city as the equitable usufruct of cities within the principles of sustainability, democracy, equity, and social justice. It is the collective right of the inhabitants of cities, in particular of the vulnerable and marginalized groups, that confers upon them legitimacy of action and organization, based on their uses and customs, with the objective to achieve full exercise of the right to free self-determination and an adequate standard of living. The Right to the City is interdependent of all internationally recognized and integrally conceived human rights, and therefore includes all the civil, political, economic, social, cultural and environmental rights which are already regulated in the international human rights treaties.
sympoiesis
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We will need all our senses for the exercise of tentacular thinking. The spider Pimoa Cthulhu is the point of departure for Haraway’s imaginaries on new worldings where the tentacular ‚chthonic powers of Terra‘ — from Latin tentaculum, meaning ‚feeler,’ from the verb tentare, to feel and to try — becomes the capacity and potential of Chthulucene, the neologism to describe the period, the place, the story, and possibly history, that escapes the Anthropocene and Capitalocene. Tentacular agencies, with their ‚feelers’ and senses, must come together to sense and tell another story and to try, from now on, to make happen another history. Tentacular creatures are of all kinds, more-than-human and human alike, mostly they are embodied, however, to various degrees, some have bodies that we must learn to sense, made out of air, frequencies, water. But one thing is clear, tentacular creatures live under sympoietic conditions, that is, under collectively-produced systems. Sympoiesis is the exact opposite of the distorted neoliberal, individual translations of Gaia’s autopoiesis. It relates to the question of accountability, response-ability to assert the dignity of one’s conscious presence in the body, the mind, and the community.
territorial justice
.
Urban inequality remains the most visible expression of economic and social injustice. Territorial injustice relates to an increasingly acute form of environmental injustice due to the effects of climate change. Here, the dynamic relationship between poverty, ecosystem services, and pollution emphasizes the fact that vulnerable and poor urban dwellers suffer disproportionately from environmental impacts. It leads back to the housing question, whose solution requires from urbanists and architects political consciousness, literacy, attitude, and most importantly, transdisciplinary skills.
urban commons
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Commons were traditionally defined as the elements of the environment (forests, atmosphere, rivers, fisheries or grazing land) that were shared, used and enjoyed by all. Today, the commons can also include public goods, such as public space, public education, health and the infrastructure that allows our society to function.
vernacular vivacity
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The original principle of the vernacular is linguistic. Vernacular is the informal language tied to regional dialects and local linguistic traditions, in contrast to the lingua franca. Vernacular literature is the written speech of ‚common people.‘ Similarly, vernacular culture, dance, and rituals are defined as informal simple street arts, crafts, and native habits that contrast with high culture. Vernacular architecture refers to popular local pre-industrial building practices that stand outside of the academic cultural tradition. Famously introduced to academia in its positive connotation, architecture without architects celebrates non-pedigreed architecture and architects. In contrast, pedigreed architects are trained to master the lingua franca of design, which pertains to high culture, as building culture, Baukultur. The superior-dialectical devaluation of vernacular expressions reflects the modernist paradigms of universal progress that vernacularity contradicts and opposes. A posthumanist perspective appreciates vernacular vibrancy essentially as a form of radical resilience. How can we think of, and empower future practices of epistemological vernacular vitality as biocultural forms of singularities?
worlding
.
Worlding is an ontological, activity-based process. Worlding does not occur by simply living in, or passively attending to, particular environments, circumstances, events, or places. Worlding is shaped by our conscious attentiveness to a particular experience, place, or encounter, and by our engagement with the materiality and context in which events and intra-actions take place. It is, most importantly, an embodied and performative sense-making process - a mode of being in the world - that involves the very act of paying close attention to the world. In fact, to the various worlds we may wanna manifest as affirmative reality.
xapiripë
.
The xapiripë spirits have danced for shamans since primordial times and so they continue to dance today. They look like human beings but they are as tiny as specks of sparkling dust. To be able to see them you must inhale the powder of the yãkõanahi tree many, many times. It takes as much time as Whites take to learn the design of their words. The yãkõanahi powder is the food of the spirits. Those who don’t ‚drink’ it remain with the eyes of ghosts and see nothing. The xapiripë dance together on huge mirrors which descend from the sky. They are never dull like humans. They are always magnificent: their bodies painted with red annatto dye and enveloped in black designs, their heads covered with white vulture plumes, their bead armbands adorned with the feathers of parrots, piping guans and red macaws, their waists wrapped in toucan tails… Thousands of them arrive to dance together, waving fresh palm fronds, letting out whoops of joy and singing without pause. Their paths look like spider-webs shining like moonlight and their plume ornaments sway gently to the rhythm of their steps. It thrills you to see how beautiful they are! ︎︎︎ Eduardo Viveiros de Castro
youth
.
This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you all come to us young people for hope? How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you! You are failing us... But the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us, I say: We will never forgive you.︎︎︎Greta Thunberg
zwischen
.
Präposition; kennzeichnet das Vorhandensein von jemandem, einer Sache innerhalb eines durch zwei Begrenzungen markierten Raumes; kennzeichnet eine Erstreckung von etwas innerhalb von zwei begrenzenden Punkten; kennzeichnet das Vorhandensein inmitten einer Anzahl, Menge o. Ä.; mitten in; mitten unter; etwa in der Mitte von; kennzeichnet die Hinbewegung auf einen Bereich, eine Stelle inmitten einer Anzahl; kennzeichnet einen Zeitpunkt etwa in der Mitte von zwei zeitlichen Begrenzungen; kennzeichnet eine Wechselbeziehung; kennzeichnet eine Beziehung, in die Unterschiedliches zueinandergesetzt wird. Grammatik: räumlich und zeitlich. ︎︎︎ Duden
Quotes:
︎︎︎ Karen Barad. Meeting the universe halfway (Duke University Press, 2007), 133.
︎︎︎ Rosi Braidotti, Posthuman glossary (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018), 223.
︎︎︎
Luce Irigaray, Sharing the Fire: Outline of a Dialectics of Sensitivity (Springer Nature, 2019), 7.
︎︎︎
Monica Gagliano, Thus Spoke the Plant: A Remarkable Journey of Groundbreaking Scientific Discoveries and Personal Encounters with Plants, (North Atlantic Books, 2018),
21.
︎︎︎ Donna Haraway, Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucene (Duke University Press, 2016), 101.
︎︎︎
Timothy Morton, "Ecology," in Connectedness: An Incomplete Encyclopedia of the Anthropocene, ed. Marianne Krogh (Strandberg Publishing, 2020), 161.
︎︎︎ Greta Thunberg, Speech at the United Nations Climate Action Summit. 2019.
︎︎︎ Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, The Crystal Forest: Notes on the Ontology of Amazonian spirits