urban occupation : berlin

Here are the new readings for this week friday, as always password protected:

1. Michael Speaks, Which Way Avant-garde?  2. Sarah Whiting and Robert Somol, Notes Around the Doppler Effect and other Moods of Modernism 3. Reinhold Martin, Critical of What? Toward a Utopian Realism

The reading group will meet at 1.30pm to continue the discussion, everyone is welcome.  

Reinhold Martin, Critical of What? Toward a Utopian Realism / Sarah Whiting and Robert Somol, Notes Around the Doppler Effect and other Moods of Modernism / Michael Speaks, Which Way Avant-garde? 

AAAARG is a conversation platform - at different times it performs as a school, or a reading group, or a journal. AAAARG was created with the intention of developing critical discourse outside of an institutional framework. But rather than thinking of it like a new building, imagine scaffolding that attaches onto existing buildings and creates new architectures between them. Weblink

As a means of activating architectural theory, and in response to the demands of participants, we have embedded an architectural theory and philosophy seminar into the Urban Occupation workshop and studio. This theory seminar and reading group is open to all participants in the studio and workshop (and please invite along your peers too!). Our aim is to infiltrate the design process being undertaken in the studio and workshop with useful theoretical frameworks. Some of the concepts we will be considering include the psychoanalyst Félix Guattari’s ethcio-aesthetics and his ecosophy; the curator and art critic Nicolas Bourriaud’s relational aesthetics, and his more recent work on the Altermodern exhibition at the Tate Britain; we will also address the ongoing architectural theory debate that posits a new ‘projective’ approach to architectural design against the old, purportedly negative approach of ‘critical’ architectural discourse; we will look at Bruno Latour and ANT (Actor Network Theory) and the relevance of this approach to architecture; and we will read Michel Serres on the quasi-object, from his book, Le Parasite; and so on…All these readings and the discussion that will follow should allow us to construct relays, backwards and forwards, between practice and theory, between research in the medium of design, and what tools we use to critically engage with this research.

writings

Here you will be able to upload the essays that we invite you to submit at the end of the semester.

readings

Follow this link to download the essays we will read. You will also find brief descriptions and/or introductions to these essays here.

discussion

We encourage you to use this link to post comments in response to the essays and the discussion undertaken in the seminar.

(both are password protected)
guattari_new_aesthetic_paradigm-secured
bourriaud_the_aesthetic_paradigm_felix_guattari_and_art
rochus