Disrupting Cartographies: space, place and narratives

26/09/2018

On why professional ethics are vital. How architecture can, unwillingly, contribute to the erasure of landscapes and livelihoods. And how "postcolonial" commodity and industry networks continue previous exploitative colonial situations.

Follow the supply chains of architecture and you’ll find not just product manufacturers but also environmental polluters and secretive networks of political influence.

26/09/2018

Extraordinary inquiry on architecture, commodities and the environmental, social and political price of construction materials. Building activity can literally erase entire landscapes.
"But more important than any particular strategy is the recognition that the status quo — as exemplified by the LEED certification system with its manipulatable criteria, or by the proliferation of green design competitions that produce fantastically skillful renderings of projects that will never be built — is not sufficient. Intensifying environmental and political crises demand that we enlarge the frameworks for action and responsibility."

Follow the supply chains of architecture and you’ll find not just product manufacturers but also environmental polluters and secretive networks of political influence.

17/06/2016

For the lucky ones who are in London next week, an extraordinary conference.
Do not miss it!

03/06/2016

Space and Politics
A very good and interesting blog by Gaston Gordillo, author of the recently published book "Rubble. Afterlife of destruction".
An extraordinary reading.

A blog by Gastón Gordillo on the spatial and affective rhythms of political events, ruptures, and interruptions.

Blog de Gastón Gordillo sobre los ritmos espaciales y afectivos de eventos, rupturas e interrupciones políticas.

24/02/2016

Aquatic landscapes, often not considered as territories, are place for poetry and narratives.
"Imagined waters", by Yvonne Owuor.

Through the poetry of its mariners – the singers of its rivers and seas – Yvonne A. Owuor explores the geography of the vast ocean of Africa. She finds that the horizons of sky, land and water are blurred and that the shape of the past and the future is a matter of perspective, one that human maps c…

17/01/2016

Borders: what they enclose and exclude, and the life that keeps crossing political boundaries.
Through a spatial approach that focus on the margins, the limit zones, the surveillance structures that cannot avoid porosities, we discover different histories and extremely dynamic realities.
A very interesting network, and very good conferences.

The Asian Borderlands Research Network has been developed with the intention of focusing particularly on the border regions between South Asia, Central/East and Southeast Asia

02/12/2015

Now, something very close to our geographic location: Ahmedabad city, in Gujarat state of India.
Aparajita De writes about her PhD fieldwork in the 'Kot', the walled city of Ahmedabad.
How people localize themselves, spacially and conceptually?
This is a very interesting work on how space becomes a place of self-identification and personal readings of society.

26/11/2015

What borders and maps have to do with performance and dance? Well, everything!
We ended the semester seeing and discussing the work of Panaibra Canda, Mozambican dancer.
In his piece "the marrabenta solos" Panaibra explores the possibilities of narrating an embodied history, and how do we describe ourselves among the identities ascribed to us.
Colonialism, independence and the years that followed, diverse political and social ideologies, discourses about identity, cultural inheritance: all that is translated in movements that built a text. Each word is translated by particular movements, and the permanent questioning and reconstruction of his words is translated by his movements.
Where is the map, in this? Precisely in the silence behind his words, in the borders and political projects that define identities and senses of emplacement.
Here is a short video of this astonishing work:

Using vibrant text accompanied by Jorge Domingos’ fiery solo guitar, Canda deconstructs cultural representations of a “pure” African body. Canda…

23/11/2015

Sanjit Jena shares with us a very interesting topic. In a time when national borders are being increasingly militarized, ISIS has been able to cross borders, frontally not recognizing some of them.
How do external and internal lines, that always have a simultaneous movement of inclusion/exclusion, are being contested, solidified or re-arranged?

Early in 2014, Isis released one of its first videos. Largely unseen in Europe, it had neither the slick, cutting-edge professionalism of its later ex*****on tapes nor the haunting “nasheed” music that accompanies most of its propaganda. Instead, a hand-held camera showed a bulldozer pushing down a…

23/11/2015

Studio X Mumbai has organized some remarkable projects.
This one is the most recent one, on the Bandra area of Bombay.
A collectively drawn map.

"Spread the Word is an ongoing project that questions the nature of the city. The work aims to create a network of diffusing ideas, generating a sense of ownership and instigating change. It takes the form of maps that carry links to the inflows and outflows of water, waste, and people across Bandra and the city, which are then integrated with interviews by local residents investigating their knowledge on resources within the city. The maps appear on slate surfaces which invite an interactive participation of visitors/audiences on their imaginations for development in their neighborhood.
A collaborative project with ArtOxygen - Breathing ArtWorks and Reality Gives"

Dates: November 18th - November 22nd

Spread the Word is an ongoing project that questions the nature of the city. The work aims to create a network of diffusing ideas, generating a sense of ownership and instigating change. It takes the form of maps that carry links to the inflows and outflows of water, waste, and people across Bandra and the city, which are then integrated with interviews by local residents investigating their knowledge on resources within the city. The maps appear on slate surfaces which invite an interactive participation of visitors/audiences on their imaginations for development in their neighborhood.

A collaborative project with ArtOxygen - Breathing ArtWorks and Reality Gives

20/11/2015

The line that once was drawn creating two new countries, India and Pakistan, can be seen under many different perspectives.
This extraordinary photographic series by Aanchal Malhotra
takes us trough intimate and sensitive memories, and objects that condensate personal narratives in an astonishing way.
The Partition is also these embodied stories.
When a line in the ground becomes part of your life.

The Google Cultural Institute brings together millions of artifacts from multiple partners, with the stories that bring them to life, in a virtual museum.

15/11/2015

Enjoying the late Summer in our morning field trip to the Ahmedabad Riverfront.
Walking through different areas of the project makes us experience this new part of the city, recently added to its map. This project completely transforms the old relationship of the city with Sabarmati river.
How a new public space is organized? How the city and the river connect?
Walls, cement, trees, stairs, tunnels, ghats...all are elements that compose the new spatialities that mediate the relationship of the city with its river.
Its worth analyzing how we feel here. What are the links, or ruptures, that we sense, difference of levels or the proximity of the water.
Do we feel free to wander around, or are we guided though prepared directions?
At the end we felt how, sometimes, we are so enclosed in spaces that it´s difficult to find a way out...And how different it is to read a map from actually walking around the space represented in it.

Course fieldtrip to Riverfront, East margin.