12th May 2011, 13h00.  Seminar Room 3, School of Architecture, Crookesmoor Building.

We invite Andreas to reflect on his practice, public works, and to consider with us their work in terms of gestures.  We would like to think about how gestures may constitute a form of action or practice, seemingly peripheral but vital to the affective dimension of the work.

The Politics of The Gesture Transcription

Wednesday 6th April, 3pm
Seminar Rm 1, Crookesmoor Building, University of Sheffield

*** All Welcome ***

Kerry Morrison is a PhD research student at Salford University and has 18 years of professional experience as an environmental artist. She works within the public realm creating temporary and permanent landscape interventions and happenings in response to environmental issues within a given locale.

Over recent years she has developed a transdisciplinary practice to design and deliver projects that challenge preconceptions of what designated green infrastructures in urban areas should look like and contain. Since 2006 she has been investigating Brownfield sites and the importance of biodiverse Brownfields for the health and well being of people and wildlife. Working in and with communities, and in and with land, she has developed a dialogic practice that encourages community participation and removes didactic approaches. Over the course of this work she has begun to developed ideas for a site evaluation tool for derelict land and Brownfield sites in urban areas. The tool will highlight
site-specific and location-specific issues and concerns in order to identify opportunities for ethical interim treatment that is of benefit to nearby communities and ecosystem services.

An Open Seminar with Dr Jennifer Gabrys.  Organised by “living  with climate,” PGAS.

The paper Dr Gabrys presented can be downloaded here: Life in the city a moss-eye view

Dr Jennifer Gabrys is leader of  MA Design and Sustainability at Goldsmiths University.  Her research and practice focus on the intersection of environments and communication technologies. She is currently undertaking a study, Program Earth, on sensor technologies for ecological applications. She is a member of the collaborative environmental design and research group on climate change, Weather Permitting (www.weatherpermitting.org),
with Dr Kathryn Yusoff at the University of Exeter.

Detail and links  to her work and publications can be found at:

http://www.gold.ac.uk/design/staff/gabrys/

Photographs by Kathryn Yusoff, 2006.

 

 3:15pm, Wednesday 9th February 2011, Seminar room 1

Open seminar with Micropolitics Research Group

‘Crisis’, ‘Austerity’, ‘Workfare’, ‘Big Society’, ‘Security’: these are just a few key words characterizing the present political moment in the UK and beyond. Recent top-down attack to higher education, the arts and the cultural public sector have made us aware of the real implications of such abstract propositions. In this session Manuela Zechner, Valeria Graziano and Mara Ferreri, from the Micropolitics Reseach Group will be exploring some of the recent processes of collective organisation that they instigated by a wider coalition they’re part of, the Precarious Workers Brigade, based in London. The workshop will be an occasion to reflect on recent social struggles connected with the production of knowledge, the creation of spaces of solidarity and possibilities of collective political subjectivation, action and research in the current climate of mounting social inequality.

Edited transcription of seminar can be downloaded here: Micropolitics Research Group Edited Transcript 2011

Suggested readings:
Colectivo Situaciones translated by Sebastian Touza and Nate Holdren ‘Something More on Research Militancy: Footnotes on Procedures and (In)Decisions’ www.ephemeraweb.org Volume 5(4): 602-614 ephemera Theory and Politics in Organization, 2005

Colectivo Situaciones Translated by Sebastian Touza ‘On the Researcher-Militant’ transform.eipcp.net September 2003 http://transform.eipcp.net/transversal/0406/colectivosituaciones/en#redir

Open seminar with: Duncan Cook (RCA)

Duncan Cook studied Fine Art (Time-Based Studies) at the University of Wales Institute Cardiff and Photography at postgraduate level at Central Saint Martins School of Art and The Royal College of Art. He has worked as a teacher and lecturer since 1997 in Visual and Media cultures including Fine Art, Film, Photography and Critical and Historical Studies. Recently he has contributed to conferences organised by the Association of Art Historians, Slade School of Art, The Bartlett School of Architecture and Wimbledon College of Art on the politics of spatial practice and contemporary cultural production.

Optional Reading:

Genosko, Gary (2009) ‘Subjectivity, Art and Ecosophy’ in Felix Guattari: A Critical Introduction London and New York: Pluto Press pp.69-88
Harrmann, Anke (2009) ‘Nature-Culture: A Political Collective’ in Harrmann, Anke and Lemke, Harald (eds.) Culture/Nature: Art and Philosophy in the Context of Urban Development Berlin: JOVIS Verlag
Heynan, N, Kaika, Maria and Swyngedouw, Eric (eds.) (2006) ‘Urban Political Ecology: Politicizing the Production of Urban Natures’ in In the Nature of Cities: Urban Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism London: Routledge pp.1-20
Murdoch, Jonathan (2006) ‘Post-structuralist Ecologies’ in Post-structuralist Geography: A Guide to Relational Space London: Sage Publications pp.184-199

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.

spatialpractice_notes

Open seminar with Supitcha Tovivich, DPU, UCL.

Supitcha will be presenting co-operative housing programs conducted by CASE and CODI in Thailand, ranging from urban poor housing to middle-class housing projects, to facilitate our discussion around questions:

+ To what extend an architectural design process could be employed as a tool for community expowerment and what are challenges in architectural practice? + How can needs and desires of individual and community share and negotiate in co-operative design? + What is the ‘professionalism’ of architect working with others?

Ten Bangkok_note

Open seminar with Yara Sharif, University of Westmister.

What is an architecture of resistance? Can it be imagined as the spaces between people, lines, documents and maps? What spaces of possibility exist that can empower fragmented societies and bridge the gap between divided spaces, working against the Israeli project of marginalisation?

possibility_notes.pdf

An open seminar with guest Gregory Cowan. Gregory will be presenting his projects based in Mongolia, Senzai Eco houses and Yarmag children’s Camp, supported by an international agency VSO with Mongolian NGOs. We will be discussing around questions of Informal Architectures, Activism, Collaboration and Participatory methods in Architectural Practices and Education.

Meike Schalk and Apolonija Sustersic will be presenting material from their projects to facilitate discussions around questions of “social space” (Lefebvre), “performance and performativity” (Butler), and “agonistic pluralism” (Mouffe)

taking-care_transcription.pdf

In order for a full discussion students are recommended to read the following:

Henri Lefebvre, The production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991),
from the chapter “Social Space”, XV, pp. 164-168; lefebvre01
and from the chapter “Contradictions of Space and Differential Space”, IV, pp. 356-357. lefebvre02

Judith Butler, “Excerpts from Subversive Bodily Acts”, in Jane Rendell, Barbara Penner, Ian Borden, Gender, Space, Architecture (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 96-98. Excerpts from subversive bodily acts

Chantal Mouffe, “Deliberative Democracy or Agonistic Pluralism”, Political Science Series 72, edited by Christine Neuhold and Gertrud Hafner (Vienna: Institute for Advanced Studies, 2000), pp. 1-17.
http://www.ihs.ac.at/publications/pol/pw_72.pdf

Chantal Mouffe, “Politics and Passions. The stakes of democracy” CDS Perspectives (London: Centre for the Studies of Democracy, 2002), pp. 1-16.
http://www.wmin.ac.uk/sshl/pdf/Mouffe%20PDF%20.pdf

Grant H.Kester, ” Conversation Pieces, community + communication in modern art”, University of California Press, Barkeley and Los Angeles, 2004, pp. 82-123 dialogical_aesthetics