16th December 2009, 15:00 – 17:00. Crookesmoor Building, top seminar room, 4th floor
Open seminar with: Can Altay.
Can Altay is an artist who works in relation to architecture and the idea of the city. This seminar will be focusing on notions of spatial practice, discussed through a range of projects that had observed situations of counter-spatialization, fleeting forms of “working” the city; along with more propositional, process oriented architectural actions that took place in the realm of art. The key question will be whether the hierarchies that define work and practice as in and out of disciplinary formations can be surpassed, while maintaining issues of responsibility and agency.
Altay will also be discussing his recent curatorial work with Philipp Misselwitz where they looked into the fragmented and segregated urban condition especially in the Middle East and proposed possible models of working for architects and planners, beyond disciplinary confinement yet using knowledge from within the field. Their work resulted in the “refuge” exhibition as part of the International Architecture Biennial of Rotterdam 2009.
Optional Reading:
- Lefebvre, H. “Spectral Analysis” and “Right to the City” from Writings on Cities. Blackwell, 1996.
- Guattari, F. “The Object of Ecosophy” from ECO-TEC (ed. A. Marras). Princeton Architectural Press, 1999.
- Latour, B. “Making Things Public” from Making Things Public (eds. B.Latour and P.Weibel). MIT Press, 2005.
- Altay, C. and D. Altay “Counter-Spatialization of Power in Istanbul” from Urban Makers (ed. E. Guidi) bbooks, 2008.
Session notes: Seminar 12: In Search of Spatial Practice
16th December 2009 – Sheffield University, School of Architecture linesofflight.wordpress.com
Presentation: Can Altay, in discussion with lines of flight members. Research to date deals with the following:
- Spatialisation and counter-spatialisation of power
- tensions between the mechanisms of power and those who occupy space
- ‘everyday practices as revolutionary tools’ (de Certeau) but perhaps this is too ‘polite’ in the global context, this does not necessarily mean that these practices will become ‘counter- spatial.
- Counter-spaces are more like spaces that ‘go-between’, are ‘fleeting’.
- ‘working the city’
The Papermen
- Clandestine, organised, territorial manner of working
- They work against the system but also for it by increasing the recycling rates
- The research is about ‘recycling and reconfiguration of paper and spaces’
- conceptualises the city as ‘layered network’
- the need to have a critical distance to the self-organisation of the papermen – there is a definite organisation to how they parcel space between themselves
- Access to garbage is also access to information
Installation of the Papermen
- an 8 month diary that gave a personal account of the attempts to establish a dialogue with the papermen, including own observations
- video of papermen
- slides of objects related to the papermen
‘Setting a setting’
- Installations that propose a performative relation to them
- Can an art context make a simulation of the ‘public-ness’ of a space
- Invited contributors to write a text on spatial practice and displayed as separate pamphlets, allowing visitors to choose the ones they want to make their own publication
- Name of publication project is ‘Ohalyan…?’ an Arabic/Turkish word whose meaning is in between ‘community’ and ‘public’ — relates this to Agamben’s concept of the ‘whatever community’.
Refuge (project with Philip Misselwitz)
- Looking at everyday spatial practices to propose different ways for architectural practice
- Based in Turkey and Middle-East within the context of the neo-liberal city and segregation
- Unresolved conflict, boundaries
- Dealing with notions of refugee-hood, safe-haven, or the seeking of refuge
- Emergence of new behavioural norms and how they feed systems of governance. Agamben’s concept’s of: ‘state of exception’, ‘extra-territoriality’, ‘the camp’ – spaces or states where the extreme becomes the norm
- ‘state of suspension’ – the suspension of civic norms
- What is architecture in such a context? What is the ‘habitus’ of the profession
- How to carve out a public or civic space in such a context?
Positions on this:
- ‘Providing Refuge’ – protection and actively making boundaries when required
- ‘Preventing Refuge’ – against processes of gentrification etc.
- ‘Improving Refuge’ – when the position of refuge is unbreakable but there is a possibility to work within
- ‘Dismantling Refuge’ – to subvert, transform or transcend such spaces
Free Laundries (providing refuge)
Set up in Diyabakir (eastern Turkey) where incidence of domestic violence is very high, women’s centres were set up but the women weren’t allowed to visit – the free laundries are a tactical way of allowing the women to come out and seek help and support without being stopped. These were started by a group of women but eventually the municipality took over and the women who founded the laundries left. Laundries have a backroom that acts as a consulation room, for literacy classes etc. Can and Philip produced a Women’s Guide to Diyabakir with the laundries and other women’s services but there is still the problem that most of the women to whom it is aimed cannot read it.
Eviction Map (preventing refuge)
Brought together architects working on large developments with neighbourhood organisations to facilitate a discussion, to derive a different model for intervention to be applied otherwise, to make a new methodology.
Discussion
- Need to advance the tools of architecture
- Map as the representational tool to prompt the discussion and the network
- It becomes a prompt also for the next tool
- the ‘use-value’ of research depends on context and not just on exhibition
- it is a tactical use of the art context – its reality and its funds
- ethics of the enabler
- observation is also valid if this knowledge can be used in other ways
