Less Is More - On Strategies of Sufficiency for the Socio-Ecological Production of Space

in Arch + (2023)

What makes an Assembly

Book published by Sternberg Press (2022)

Assemblies are ancestral, transcultural ways of coming together as a community. Over the past decades, multiple social movements have reappropriated these forms of collective organisation as a prominent ... [more ▼]

Assemblies are ancestral, transcultural ways of coming together as a community. Over the past decades, multiple social movements have reappropriated these forms of collective organisation as a prominent component of political struggle, to defend radical visions of democracy. At the same time, governments across the globe have sought to reframe public deliberation as a response to the failures of representative democracy. How can we analyze this double movement, and could assemblies of equals once again offer possibilities to reimagine and renew the ways politics is practiced? To address these questions, we need to move beyond simply asking what assemblies can do, and instead examine how they are made. This means departing from the shores of a speculative, deliberative ideal and restoring attention to both their diversity of forms, and their capacities to perform, deform, and transform. Bringing together accounts written by those who practice assemblies, and contributions from artists, activists, historians, philosophers, and social scientists, as well as three architectural experiments that attempt to imagine models for a future assembly, the book proposes a critical inquiry into the potential of assemblies to shape political subjects. From assemblies in Indigenous territories of Brazil to those of the Yellow Vests in France, from medieval communes to street parliaments in Africa, from citizens’ assemblies set up by public authorities to practices forged from emancipatory traditions, What Makes An Assembly? examines the tensions that exist in all assemblies between the need for form and the danger of formalization; between the scripts, rituals, and architectural settings from which they derive, and their capacity to erupt and emerge anew. [less ▲]

Archithese

Article for general public (2022)

Die gebaute Umgebung des Menschen unterliegt seit jeher kontinuierlicher Wandlung. Werden Funktionen obsolet, so stehen auch die damit verbundenen Bauten zur Disposition. Seit den Modernisierungsschüben ... [more ▼]

Die gebaute Umgebung des Menschen unterliegt seit jeher kontinuierlicher Wandlung. Werden Funktionen obsolet, so stehen auch die damit verbundenen Bauten zur Disposition. Seit den Modernisierungsschüben des 19. Jahrhunderts, die mit der Entfestigung der Städte und der Implementierung einer zeitgemässen Infrastruktur begann, hat der Rhythmus der Obsoleszenz zugenommen. Mit Anders nutzen wollen wir den Phänomenen nachgehen, die mehr sind als das durch frühere Obsoleszenzen ausgelöste Umnutzen. [less ▲]

Drone Vision: warfare surveillance protest

Book published by Art & Theory Publishing (2022)

Drone Vision addresses questions of how visibility and verticality are intrinsic to drone technology and its meanings for artistic and political praxis. This book is based on the two-year research project ... [more ▼]

Drone Vision addresses questions of how visibility and verticality are intrinsic to drone technology and its meanings for artistic and political praxis. This book is based on the two-year research project Drone Vision: Warfare, Surveillance, Protest - a collaborative initiative between HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg, the Hasselblad Foundation, NiMAC, Nicosia Municipal Arts Centre and the National College of Arts in Lahore. Led by Dr. Sarah Tuck, the research project explores the affective meanings and implications of drone technologies on warfare, surveillance and protest. [less ▲]

Everyday Matters : Contemporary Approaches to Architecture

Book published by Ruby Press (2021)

Many architects are seeking ways to respond to a world that suffers from overbuilding, yet where millions remain homeless and lack rudimentary infrastructure. Beyond the built form, these practitioners ... [more ▼]

Many architects are seeking ways to respond to a world that suffers from overbuilding, yet where millions remain homeless and lack rudimentary infrastructure. Beyond the built form, these practitioners are expanding their focus to quotidian objects, basic resources, issues of race and gender, daily routines, and maintenance protocols. Featuring contributions by architectural designers, historians, and theoreticians, as well as scholars in fields such as cultural geography, environmental anthropology, political philosophy, and sociology, this book chronicles how the everyday has influenced contemporary approaches to architecture and urbanism, triggering the rise of a new ethics and aesthetics. [less ▲]

DON'T FOLLOW THE WIND

Book published by Sternberg Press (2021)

The twelfth volume of the Critical Spatial Practice series focuses on “Don’t Follow the Wind,” the acclaimed collaborative project situated in the radioactive Fukushima exclusion zone. The book explores ... [more ▼]

The twelfth volume of the Critical Spatial Practice series focuses on “Don’t Follow the Wind,” the acclaimed collaborative project situated in the radioactive Fukushima exclusion zone. The book explores the long-term environmental crisis in the coastal Japanese region through this ongoing, inaccessible exhibition, which maintains traces of human presence amid the fallout of the March 2011 nuclear reactor meltdown that displaced entire towns. What can art do in a continuing catastrophe when destruction and contamination have made living impossible? The exhibition is located inside the exclusion zone, an evacuated radioactive area established after the nuclear disaster that forcibly separated residents from their homes, land, and community. In cooperation with former residents, participating artists installed newly commissioned works at sites in the exclusion zone. Although the exhibition opened in March 2015, the zone is still inaccessible to the public—the exhibition, like the radiation, is virtually invisible. The exhibition can only be viewed when restrictions are lifted and people are permitted to return. This might take several years or decades—a period that could extend beyond our lifetime. While nuclear contamination has displaced and ruptured communities, new temporary and translocal formations have emerged among the residents who have lent their sites, other former residents collaborating on the project, and the artists, curators, and cultural workers. This book includes new texts by feminist theorist Silvia Federici, art historians Noi Sawaragi and Sven Lütticken, and political philosopher Jodi Dean. The project was codeveloped and curated by the collective Don’t Follow the Wind , whose members include Chim↑Pom, Kenji Kubota, Eva & Franco Mattes, and Jason Waite. The participating artists include Ai Weiwei, Chim↑Pom, Nikolaus Hirsch & Jorge Otero-Pailos, Meiro Koizumi, Eva & Franco Mattes, Grand Guignol Mirai, Aiko Miyanaga, Ahmet Öğüt, Trevor Paglen, Taryn Simon, Nobuaki Takekawa, and Kota Takeuchi. [less ▲]

Monocle

Article for general public (2020)

Monocle’s July/August issue is a celebration of the city – it spotlights the cities, leaders and luminaries shaping urban life for the better. We’ve doubled down on our reporting and scoured the globe for ... [more ▼]

Monocle’s July/August issue is a celebration of the city – it spotlights the cities, leaders and luminaries shaping urban life for the better. We’ve doubled down on our reporting and scoured the globe for outposts of opportunity worth uncovering. Plus: we profile 20 urban projects that are adding a sense of purpose to planning: from skinny parks in Seoul to libraries in Nairobi and somewhere to swim in Stockholm. [less ▲]

Next Para-Plattformen Die Raumpolitik des Rechtspopulismus

Book published by Merve (2020)

Para-Platforms investigates the social, spatial, and material reality of right-wing populism. Three case studies—presented in a symposium organized by Markus Miessen at the Gothenburg Design Festival in ... [more ▼]

Para-Platforms investigates the social, spatial, and material reality of right-wing populism. Three case studies—presented in a symposium organized by Markus Miessen at the Gothenburg Design Festival in November 2017—form the core of this collection of essays: journalist Hannes Grassegger on Trump and Brexit; architectural theorist Stephan Trüby on spaces of right-wing extremism in Germany; and Christina Varvia on Forensic Architecture’s investigation of the murder of Halit Yozgat, a young German man of Turkish descent, at the hands of a far-right group in 2006. The presentations are reproduced along with the ensuing conversations with Miessen and the audience members. An essay by design scholar Mahmoud Keshavarz opening the book discusses the capacity of design to create conditions for certain politics to occur. Among the other theoretical, artistic, and historical contributions in the reader, editor Zoë Ritts interviews artist Wolfgang Tillmans regarding his pro-EU poster series, the ongoing project truth study centre, and guest-edited volume What Is Different? The volume concludes with a comic by artist Liam Gillick animating a block of granite—culled from the Swedish quarry responsible for extracting the red granite intended for the Third Reich’s architectural ambitions—as the messiah of spatial and material politics. [less ▲]

Para-Platforms: On the Spatial Politics of Right-Wing Populism

Book published by Sternberg Press (2019)

Para-Platforms investigates the social, spatial, and material reality of right-wing populism. Three case studies—presented in a symposium organized by Markus Miessen at the Gothenburg Design Festival in ... [more ▼]

Para-Platforms investigates the social, spatial, and material reality of right-wing populism. Three case studies—presented in a symposium organized by Markus Miessen at the Gothenburg Design Festival in November 2017—form the core of this collection of essays: journalist Hannes Grassegger on Trump and Brexit; architectural theorist Stephan Trüby on spaces of right-wing extremism in Germany; and Christina Varvia on Forensic Architecture’s investigation of the murder of Halit Yozgat, a young German man of Turkish descent, at the hands of a far-right group in 2006. The presentations are reproduced along with the ensuing conversations with Miessen and the audience members. An essay by design scholar Mahmoud Keshavarz opening the book discusses the capacity of design to create conditions for certain politics to occur. Among the other theoretical, artistic, and historical contributions in the reader, editor Zoë Ritts interviews artist Wolfgang Tillmans regarding his pro-EU poster series, the ongoing project truth study centre, and guest-edited volume What Is Different? The volume concludes with a comic by artist Liam Gillick animating a block of granite—culled from the Swedish quarry responsible for extracting the red granite intended for the Third Reich’s architectural ambitions—as the messiah of spatial and material politics. [less ▲]

Distributed

Book published by Open Editions (2018)

For those who would seek to influence others, the distribution of ideas is paramount. Similarly, for those holding ambition to secrete knowledge for reasons of authority dissemination is key. The same ... [more ▼]

For those who would seek to influence others, the distribution of ideas is paramount. Similarly, for those holding ambition to secrete knowledge for reasons of authority dissemination is key. The same, however, goes for those who seek to protect the fruits of intellectual labour for reasons of profit or ethical concern. This new volume in the Occasional Table series of critical anthologies focuses attention on the act of distribution as a subject for serious creative consideration and one of great social and economic importance. [less ▲]