October 28, 2010
Call for Papers: Fugitive Geographies
From the unique perspective of the criminal fugitive, the built environment is both accomplice and obstacle – a mercurial landscape that offers concealment one moment and prevents escape the next.To be fugitive is to exist in a continuous present, where successful evasion depends on the ability to re-read and react to a shifting context. Fugitive Geographies is an investigation into this elusive and transitory condition where both subject and context exist in a precariously unstable state, where boundaries and borders are unclear, and where the criminal takes new agency over the environment. The symposium aims to bring together the efforts and ideas from the fields of architecture, art history, sociology, criminology, forensics, cartography, media studies, political science, psychology and history. Papers may investigate a range of themes and interpretations around the topic including, but not limited to:
The Getaway
When evasion becomes a priority, how is the fugitive’s perception of the environment transformed? What are the spatial or psychological implications of constant movement in the landscape? How do governments reshape borders and boundaries through extraordinary rendition and “black sites”?
The Hideout
What are the sociological or geographical implications of trying to live a normal life, shadowed by the constant fear of arrest or deportation? How are transient spaces –crowds, safehouses, ersatz constructs– created or used in a fugitive state? What is architecture on the lam?
The Cover-up
The fugitive state is one based on deception – from the concealment of the act to the concealment of identity. Radical redesigns of the environment may be necessary in this effort: chemically altered waterways, restructured finances, burned villages. How are geographies altered with a cover-up in mind?
Fugitive Geographies is organized by Andreas Kalpakci, Eero Puurunen, David Rinehart and Jimmy Stamp, the 2nd year graduate students of the Yale School of Architecture Master of Environmental Design program. The symposium complements the 2011 M.E.D. research colloquium Space, Crime, & Architecture.
ROTH-SYMONDS LECTURE
Fugitive Geographies will open on March 24rd with a keynote address by Thomas Y. Levin, Associate Professor of German at Princeton University, where he teaches media and cultural theory and serves on the executive committee of Princeton’s Program in Media and Modernity. Levin’s areas of enquiry includes the philosophy, aesthetic theory, technology, and the politics of surveillance. His book CTRL [space]: Rhetorics of Surveillance from Bentham to Big Brother (MIT Press, 2002) is the catalogue of a major exhibition which he curated at the ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Interested graduate students must submit an abstract of no more than 300 words along with a curriculum vitae by email to fugitive.geographies@gmail.com. Each proposal should clearly articulate the subject matter and its relevancy to the symposium’s theme. All submissions must be received by January 7, 2011. Successful candidates will be notified by the middle of January. Initial drafts of papers for a 20-minute presentation will be due on February 21, 2010. Final submission will be due by March 10, 2011.
Homepage | Subscribe | | Leave a Comment
October 21, 2010
Ghostmodernism
[Harold Lime, Walter Gropius, and others look on as the Static Engine is activated for the first time.]
French playwright Alfred Jarry invented practical time travel in 1899. In an essay that shattered the scientific community, he theorized that a time machine “is no more difficult to conceive of than a Space Machine,” and continued to describes his design for an an ebony and ivory apparatus of levers, springs, and flywheels that isolates its occupant from the passing of time. This pivotal discovery was almost lost to ahistory when, just moments moment before he completed the famous equation that would make time travel possible, the Father of Pataphysics was murdered by an splinter group of non-practicing Ghostmodernists. Thankfully, the Established Lobbyists simultaneously traveled back in time to prevent the murder of Alfred Jarry from taking place. Yet this was not the end of that particular story. The rogue Ghostmodernists persevere with their efforts to destroy chrono-liminality – and so continues the atemporal crusade that will eventually never be documented as “The Perpetual Lobby.”
The above is an excerpt from my contribution to Junk Jet no4. Check out the full issue to learn more about Static Engines, Paradox Designers, and the Alt-Bauhaus.
Homepage | Subscribe | | Leave a Comment
September 1, 2010
Seemingly oblivious to the city around her, the young woman takes the mobile phone from her ear and presses a button. Suddenly, floating in the ether directly in front of her a message appears: “New Dress code: FUNKY.” With a smirk and a wave of her hand, she’s suddenly surrounded by three new translucent windows, enveloping her in the heads-up-display of the Fifth Avenue fighter pilot. A growing smile is evidence that some urban attack pattern has been implemented and with a final wave of the hand, the virtual displays fall away – replaced with the advertising message: “Life moves fast. Don’t miss a thing.”
Homepage | Subscribe | | Leave a Comment
March 17, 2010
Over-caffeinated, under-employed, and Bored to Death
It all seems so simple in retrospect. I wanted a cup of coffee, I got a cup of coffee. But obtaining this particular cup would’ve been much more difficult five years ago – and nearly impossible ten years back. This wasn’t just any coffee (and cucumber sandwich [1]), this was a very specific coffee. Actually, let me rephrase that – a very specific coffee shop.
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have known them all already, known them all –
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
- From T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
It started Wednesday morning at a diner in Park Slope. In recovery from the night before, I was slumped over the diner counter, sipping the diner coffee and reading the New York Times on my iPhone when I came upon an article about the city’s new coffee culture. A plan began to emerge: there I was, drinking coffee, reading about coffee and needing more coffee with nothing more important to do than buy a bottle of wine for dinner that night – the perfect experiential synergy to create a feedback loop of illusory productivity. Or more simply, the makings of a Wednesday afternoon. My first instinct was to visit all the coffee shops listed in the NYTimes piece but I quickly realized that was way too ambitious (and way too much coffee) so I selected a few choice cafes scattered across Brooklyn.
[A Brooklyn coffee primer courtesy of the New York Times]
Now I’m not exactly a stranger to New York, but I’ve never really lived there and despite repeat visits, there are still massive areas of Brooklyn that are, if not completely unknown to me, incredibly…well, let’s say “hazy.” My very own late night Mr. Hyde seems to travel around the borough as if by teleporter, leaving me with only sprained ankles and fuzzy recollections of red hair and blonde brick. But who needs recollection or any sense of direction when the little gizmo on which I was reading the paper could also conveniently provide turn-by-turn directions pointing me to small cafes in foreign neighborhoods. Mobile devices like iPhones have blown open our cities. The technology in your pocket has everything you need to navigate and understand a strange place; to tame and domesticate an exotic locale. Forget about pouring over guidebooks or bugging a friend to show you around. There’s an app for that.
[Reyner Banham being completely awesome in Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles]
My constant reliance on the iPhone as an urban compass recalls British architecture critic Reyner Banham’s 1965 essay “The Great Gizmo.” For Banham, the American landscape was tamed by the gizmo. In fact, he argues that the use of the gizmo has become the defining characteristic of American progress and design culture. And the defining characteristic of the gizmo was its autonomy. “The great American gizmo,” writes Banham, “can get by without any infrastructure… it is independent of any physical or social infrastructure beyond that by which it may be ordered from catalogue and delivered to its prospective user.” The function of such gizmos was to bring instant order or human comfort into a wild situation. Portable domesticity. Instant urbanism. While there may no longer be an American frontier that needs taming. there are casual frontiers, everyday frontiers, personal frontiers – a foreign city or an unvisited neighborhood or even an elusive cafe. With the rise of the casual frontiersman (distinguished from the flâneur by his intent), the importance of the gizmo has changed. As I read reviews of coffee shops, then located and mapped my selected destinations — Cafe Pedlar, Marlow & Sons, Blue Bottle Coffee (An old San Francisco favorite now in New York) — it occurred to me that the American gizmo’s dependence on infrastructure, a quality that Banham believed to be its dangerous weakness, has actually become its greatest strength. As the frontier turns inward, becomes urban, we rely on our gizmos to connect with invisible infrastructures — locative data, telecommunication networks, reviews, news, images, information — to get us safely through the city.
[Everything you need to know about Bored to Death]
Without my gizmo, I would have never been able to find my way around Brooklyn so easily, much less track down a certain coffee shop. I’ll spare the details of describing the cups and clientele at each of the aforementioned locations and skip to the one that matters. Somewhere along the way, this mediated, gizmo-enhanced, semi-directionless Brooklyn coffee investigation brought to mind the recent HBO television series Bored to Death. After all, what are television shows if not cues or advertisements for modes of living? They tell us how to arrange our homes, what to say to our friends, what to drink, and, as in the case of Bored to Death, where one can find a good cup of coffee in Brooklyn and when it’s necessary to deal with writer’s block by starting your own unlicensed detective agency on craigslist. Unfortunately, the detective agency would have to wait but the coffee was fully within the realm of possibility – assuming it was a real place and not some studio backlot. Suddenly, I had a destination. This was no longer a mindless drift. My case: 1) track down the coffee shop in Bored to Death 2) order a coffee and a sandwich. 3) …that’s pretty much it really. As far as cases go, this one was open-and-shut. I should probably find a crime or something next time. Nonetheless, I owe its success to the modern gizmo. It didn’t take long to search through a few coffee and television blogs (infrastructure) to confirm that my destination was real and was in Brooklyn: Smooch [2]. Then it was only a matter of mapping the location (infrastructure), and finding the right train (infrastructure). then sending a photo (infrastructure) to a friend who also loves Bored to Death. Case closed.
[navigating foreign territories with the help of invisible infrastructures]
The classic private eye wasn’t so lucky. He couldn’t turn to craigslist or iPhones or social networks. From the sleuth’s magnifying glass to the gumshoe’s sidearm, the detective had only his guts and his gizmos to overcome the dangers of a city made strange by crime and intrigue. His necessity for autonomous gizmos isn’t so different from that of the frontiersman. The context has changed, but the goal is similar. It was no less a man than oft-referenced cultural critic Walter Benjamin who described the detective story as “the literature which concerned itself with the disquieting and threatening aspects of urban life.” The detective tamed this “threatening” landscape as a frontier that could be more dangerous than the actual wilderness. But as technology advances, the detective must adapt. Shaking down some snitch for information in a back alley is all well and good, but easy access to profiles, reports, photos and maps becomes just as crucial. As this information disperses across fiberoptic networks, the modern detective must master the modern gizmo. “The future, at a modest guess,” writes Banham, “is going to require a much more flexible distribution of American citizens on the ground, and this is going to be much easier to effect if they can pick up their culture and ride.” While Banham seems to envision a completely autonomous nomadic lifestyle similar to that which was partially realized by Ant Farm in the 70s, our notion of mobility has changed. The virtue of our new mobility is not movement through space, but access in space. With an active information infrastructure and the means to read it, specific space/time coordinates become irrelevant. In this new context, the basic premise of Banham’s prediction holds true for both the modern American citizen and the detective. Infrastructure has disseminated into the ether and with the gizmo, so too have we. We use our gizmos to work in cafes. We have conference calls in taxi cabs. We do research while waiting for a bus. We uncover hidden aspects of the city. We update our relationship status with tears still fresh in our eyes. We move confidently through unknown spaces guided by digital maps and blog hearsay in pursuit of elicit agendas. And sometimes we even wander through strange neighborhoods on Wednesday afternoons in search of perfectly roasted coffee.
[1] 2 hardboiled eggs, sliced + 1/3 skinned and sliced cucumber + a lot of cracked pepper between 2 slices of lightly toasted pumpernickel bread. Simple, right?
[2] Ozzie’s in Park Slope was also featured in episode seven. If you’re interested in the show, you should definitely check out their website. There’s this convenient map that lists every location in Brooklyn where they filmed.
#lgnlgn
Homepage | Subscribe | | 7 Comments
March 8, 2010
Landscapes of Quarantine
Landscapes of Quarantine opens tomorrow at New York’s Storefront for Art and Architecture. Curated by Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twiley, the interdisciplinary, group exhibition features work that emerged from an eight-week studio exploration into the spatial implications of quarantine. Continue Reading >>
Homepage | Subscribe | | 2 Comments
January 30, 2010
The Heroics of Scale
A seemingly endless, sprawling labyrinth.
A generic hero – a “super-man,” who lives in a world that no longer needs him.
A world of technological achievement and wonder where man can be everywhere at once.
A crisis of purpose and identity.
A loss of significance in the face of modernity.
Technology. Identity. The humbling power of architecture and the built environment.
Continue Reading >>
