For the next 306090 book, guest editor David L. Hays wants to know, “What is essential knowledge for architecture?”What is essential knowledge for architecture?

This frequently posed question targets fundamental principles of design, those basic criteria and priorities through which disciplinary stability is ensured. Yet, insofar as relevance is a core value of architecture, in both theory and practice, the contingent nature of the future guarantees that some forms of knowledge not presently considered essential will eventually become indispensable.

With that condition in mind, the editors of 306090 15, (Non-)Essential Knowledge for (New) Architecture, seek contributions that envision possible futures for architecture through speculations about new disciplinary knowledge. What specific methods, materials, or understandings—tools, ratios, formulas, properties, principles, guidelines, definitions, rules, practices, techniques, reference points, histories, and more—not presently considered essential to architecture could, or should, define its future? Pertinent knowledge might be previously forgotten, currently undervalued, generally misunderstood, or not yet recognized. Architects have long looked both to the outmoded traditions of their discipline and to other fields altogether when imagining possible directions for their work. In blurring the boundary between essential and non-essential knowledge, this inquiry seeks not to codify the contemporary state of the art for architecture, nor to assert the value of multidisciplinarity, but to envision, and potentially catalyze, new disciplinary approaches.

(Non-)Essential Knowledge for (New) Architecture will serve as both a gauge of contemporary concerns and a manual for emergent theory and practice. Submissions are sought from practitioners, theorists, historians, critics, artists, activists, and anyone else with direct or indirect interest in the future of architecture.

Click HERE to submit and for more information.
Deadline: Friday, March 30, 2012

In recent weeks it has become public in Argentina, the project initiated by two artists from Buenos Aires, Guillermo Faivovich and Nicholas Goldberg, consisting of a loan moving the meteorite “El Chaco” to Kassel, Germany, during the international art contemporary art exhibition Documenta 13.

“In Argentina, a rich and complex debate has recently arisen about the loan of this object. dOCUMENTA (13) therefore suspended its loan request on January 16 in respect of the positions stated by experts and local communities. Furthermore, dOCUMENTA (13) would like to state that no loan of the El Chaco meteorite will be further requested without a full endorsement by the peoples of the land of Chaco, by the local community as a whole, and in careful consideration of the beliefs and principles of the traditional custodians today. The artists are currently meeting with all concerned parties to discuss the matter together.”

Could this be one of those tactical, post-colonial, and anti-paradigmatic works of conceptual art banning?

Cultural astronomer Alejandro López, among his colleagues, promoted the opposition to this project, which seriously violates the rights of Aboriginal Chaco. The writings of ancient chroniclers and investigations carried up from the Aboriginal worldview, clearly show that for these people meteors scattered on Campo del Cielo, are very important milestones in its territory.

Since the project was announced to move the meteorite Chaco aborigines have voiced opposition to it and want to work to make their voices heard. Click HERE to read and sign the petition. The petition is written in Spanish. However, you don’t read Spanish to sign it.

El Chaco meteorite, Campo del Cielo, near Gancedo, Chaco, Argentina

Click HERE to read the statement written by Documenta 13 suspending their request for the exhibition.

Interview with Guillermo Faivovich in La Voz, an Argentine publication.

Synopsis: This conference aims to reflect on the relevance of the concept of dissidence for architectural practice today. Although dissidence has been primarily associated with architectural practices in the Eastern Bloc at the end of the Cold War period, contemporary architectural and other aesthetic practices have in recent years developed a host of new methodologies and techniques for articulating their distance from and critique of dominant political and financial structures. Architecture and the Paradox of Dissidence asks how we can conceive of the contemporary political problems and paradoxes of architecture in relation to their precedents? Devoid of the agency of action, Cold War dissidents articulated their positions in drawings of fantasy-like paper architecture, while contemporary forms of architectural practice seem to gravitate towards activism and direct-action in the world. The political issues – from interventions in charged areas worldwide to research in conflict zones and areas undergoing transformations – currently stimulate a field of abundant invention in contemporary architecture. Both, Cold War dissidents and contemporary activists encounter problems and paradoxes and must navigate complex political force fields within which possible complicities are inherent risks.

New forms of critical practice, and political and spatial dissent are manifold, appearing in stark contrast to contemporary architectural practice in which professional courage seems to have been translated into structural “virtuosity” of surfaces. This conference seeks to map out and expand on the methodologies of architectural action and reinvigorate the concept of dissent within the architectural/spatial field of the possible. A more historical thread that runs through the programme will seek to weave the genealogy of political/spatial practices from the Cold War dissidents of the Soviet Bloc to the activists of South American favelas.

Dissidents in the former communist countries used a specific set of codes to question the ideological doctrine of the state party. Architects who were otherwise employed in state run architectural collectives, or as staff in architecture schools met to produce writings, private lectures, secret installations and architectural articulations of allegories and legends – activities that challenged the ’stifling’ standardized language of Soviet architecture. Many of these ‘paper architects’ questioned the relationship between art, architecture and politics, but also, and significantly so, the ideological, and thus also ethical function of various forms of ‘creative practices’. The political melt-down of the Soviet Bloc reconfigured this complex field of political codes, architectural gestures and references. The withdrawal of the architect from large ideological concepts regarding social utopias mirrored that fragmentation and dissemination of (neo)liberal market structures. Large ideological battles were replaced with a multiplicity of local, or issue-specific conflicts within which forms of activism have been integrated. Dissent against large integrated and complex networks is no longer possible. All that is left is to navigate the complex fields of forces in a reflective and innovative manner. But can the assemblage of gestures and techniques of past struggles and ‘dilemmas’ of working in politically suppressive regimes help to inform those of today?

The conference thus seeks to attract contemporary spatial practitioners, architects, urbanists, journalists, activists, filmmakers and curators, asking them to reflect upon contemporary forms and conditions of dissent and their potential problems and inevitable paradoxes. It welcomes, too, the reflections of architects and architectural historians to reflect upon previous articulations of political dissent through architectural practice.

Text taken from http://dissidence.org.uk

The Political Equator was conceptualized by Teddy Cruz in 2005. Political Equator 3 was a 2-day cross-border mobile conference held on the 3rd and 4th of June 2011. This event was co-organized by the Center for Urban Ecologies at the Visual Arts Department at UCSD, and two community-based, non-profit organizations on both sides of the border, Casa Familiar in San Ysidro, California and Alter Terra in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico.

The third program in a the series of bi-national conferences, PE3 continues to engage pressing regional socio-economic, urban and environmental conditions across the San Diego –Tijuana border. These meetings have been focusing on a critical analysis of local conflicts in order to re-evaluate the meaning of shifting global dynamics, across geo-political boundaries, natural resources and marginal communities.

RC: Eve Sussman and her collaborative team Rufus Corporation are touring their latest film project whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir, to the Sundance Film Festival, Berlinale, and Site Santa Fe in January and February 2012.

An expedition to the banks of the Caspian landed Rufus Corporation in a dystopian “future-opolis” that became the location for their experimental film noir. Pushing the envelope of cinematic form, the film is edited live in real time by a custom programmed computer they call the “serendipity machine.” whiteonwhite:algorithmicnoir delivers a changing narrative – culled from 3,000 clips, 80 voice-overs and 150 pieces of music – that runs forever and never plays the same way twice. The unexpected juxtapositions create a sense of suspense alluding to a story that the viewer composes. Driven by key words, the work seamlessly comes together as a movie – that is not a movie.

The film follows the observations and surveillance of the central protagonist, a geophysicist named Holz (Jeff Wood), stuck in a 1970’s looking metropolis operated by the New Method Oil Well Cementing Company. Voiceovers and dialogues (in English and Russian with English subtitles) forge the implied narrative – wire tapped telephone conversations, reel-to-reel tapes, snippets of a job interview between Mr. Holz and his employer and a mysterious woman referred to simply as “Dispatch”. A narrator describes various impositions on the citizens including strangely manipulated time keeping, a language ration, lowered suicide statistics, the effects of lithium, and the workings of the water factory. It becomes evident that the character is controlled by the city and the factory he is working in, as the course of the story is controlled by the machine that edits the film.

Via Rufus Corporation

Leonardo Electronic Almanac in collaboration with Watermans and Goldsmiths College in occasion of the Watermans’ International Festival of Digital Art, 2012 announces a special issue titled: Touch and Go.

The Watermans’ International Festival of Digital Art, 2012, will coincide with the Olympics and Paralympics in London, and Watermans is pleased to host a Festival of ground-breaking installations exploring interactivity and participation in New Media and Digital Art. This year long project is showcasing the work of six international artists and collectives and initiates discussions around the impact of technology in art as well as the meaning, possibilities and issues around human interaction and engagement inviting responses from artists, academics, students, art professionals and the public. The project will include a series of seminars in collaboration with Goldsmiths, University of London and a publication with the Leonardo Electronic Almanac.

Touch and Go, Leonardo Electronic Almanac

319 Scholes presents Art Hack Day :: January 26-28, 2012 :: 319 Scholes Street, Brooklyn, NY.

Sound is ubiquitous and permanent, and embraces us as an envelope. Therefore, the experience of the auditory can be considered an environmental experience par excellence. The term and concept of soundscape reflects this idea. It implies, that sounds do not exist in isolation, and have to be understood as being embedded in and interacting with other sounds and perceptions coining the perceptional abilities of individuals and societies and their social relations: soundscape is a system in which all elements are interdependent.

No sound exists on its own: The Global Composition

Considering the world’s objects as instruments, its inhabitants as their players and all sounds on the globe taking place simultaneously, leads to the imagination of a global composition. Any audible phenomenon is part of this huge ongoing concert which includes all living beings and unites them in – mostly unintentional and uncoordinated – collaboration. Soundmakers, listeners and those, requesting sounds as a commodity, are part of a system and often one and the same person.

The Global Composition

The history of postwar art in Los Angeles is punctuated by dramatic examples of public artworks, large-scale spectacles, expansive performances, and small-scale interventions in the public sphere. The Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival celebrates this history through a contemporary lens, with a series of adaptations, re-inventions, and commissions that are inspired by the installation and performance artists working in Los Angeles between 1945 and 1980.

Throughout the 11-day festival, a group of new public artworks will be on view throughout the city. In addition, new performances will premiere every day, including outdoor visual spectacles, experimental theater and sound art, social and political interventions, and media art. A nightly after-party, Black Box, will provide a space for socializing, and include surprise performances each evening.

The festival is presented as part of Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-80, an unprecedented collaboration of cultural institutions across Southern California coming together to celebrate the birth of the L.A. art scene. As the festival moves throughout the city, visitors will also be surrounded by dozens of groundbreaking exhibitions about the history of art in Southern California. The festival calendar has been designed to allow time to attend both the performances and nearby exhibitions on each day.

Pacific Standard Time Performance and Public Art Festival

Ed Bereal and members of The Bodacious Buggerrilla performing Miss America Piece, ca. 1969-70

Ulrick Beck, in “Risk Society’s Cosmopolitan Moment” suggests that being at risk is the human condition at the beginning of the twenty-first century. While risk produces inequality and destabilization, he argues, it can be the catalyst for the construction of new institutions. The term extreme is defined as outermost, utmost, farthest, last or frontier. Bracket [at Extremes] seeks to understand what new spatial orders emerge in this liminal space. How might it be leveraged as an opportunity for invention? What are the limits of wilderness and control, of the natural and artificial, the real and the virtual? What new landscapes, networks, and urban models might emerge in the wake of destabilized economic, social and environmental conditions?

Bracket [at Extremes] will examine architecture, infrastructure and technology as they operate in conditions of imbalance, negotiate tipping points and test limit states. In such conditions, the status quo is no longer possible; systems must extend performance and accommodate unpredictability. As new protocols emerge, new opportunities present themselves. Bracket [at Extremes] seeks innovative contributions interrogating extreme processes (technologies, operations) and extreme contexts (cultural, climatic). What is the breaking point of architecture at extremes?

Leonardo Electronic Almanac in collaboration with The Samek Art Gallery and with Kasa Gallery announces a special issue titled: Not Here Not There. This issue arises out of the territory between two cultural streams.

The Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA) is inviting proposals for an issue on these themes with Senior Editors Lanfranco Aceti, Director of Kasa Gallery, Sabanci University and Richard Rinehart, Director of the Samek Art Gallery, Bucknell University. Artists that work with AR technology and curators and writers that work on issues related to AR, sited art in relation to new media, or site-specific interventions are particularly welcome to submit proposals for consideration.

The Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA) will produce an online and printed issue, as well as host curated images and videos online.

Proposals:

a) Subject heading: Not Here Not There
b) 500 hundred word abstract for articles – submission of full articles preferred for this special issue by proposal deadline January 31, 2012
c) Deadline for proposal submission: January 31, 2012
d) Deadline for submission of full article: March 1, 2012
e) 2 images at 72 dpi resolution no larger than 700pixels width for artists
f) Links to previous work, videos or personal sites

Our publication formats allow for full-color throughout and we encourage rich pictorial content where relevant and possible. Note however that all material submitted must be copyright cleared (or due diligence must be evidenced). For online publication a wide variety of media content may be considered (animation, mp3, flash, java, etc…)

• For scholarly papers please submit the final paper ready for peer review. Your contribution will be reviewed by at least two members of the LEA board and revisions may be requested subject to review.
• For themed and pictorial essays please submit an abstract or outline for editorial consideration and further discussion.
• Please keep your news, announcements and hyperlinks brief and focused – include contact details and a link to an external site where relevant. We reserve the right to sub-edit your submissions in order to comply with LEA policies and formats. Where material is time-sensitive please include both embargo and expiry dates.
• In all cases specify special system considerations where these are necessary (platform, codecs, plug-ins, etc…)

They look forward to hearing from you!

More info at LEA

The Fifth International Deleuze Studies Conference, “Deterritorializing Deleuze,” is being organized in coordination with Southeastern Louisiana University, Department of History and Political Science Tulane University Department of Philosophy.

Although we wait to hear from several invited speakers, currently confirmed speakers include (among others):

Brent Adkins
Jeffrey Bell
Ronald Bogue
Levi Bryant
Ian Buchanan
Claire Colebrook
Gary Genosko
Eugene Holland
Joe Hughes
Eleanor Kaufman
Gregg Lambert
Mary Beth Mader
Catarina Pombo Nabais
Paul Patton
Patricia Pisters
John Protevi
Anne Sauvagnargues
Daniel Smith
Charles Stivale
James Williams

Individual abstracts as well as panel proposals are welcomed at this point and until the submission deadline, which is March 31, 2012. We will also have a mixture of plenary panels and quasi-plenary panels (with only three concurrent panels) on themes appropriate to this year’s theme, Deterritorializing Deleuze. There will thus be, for example, panels on Deleuze and architecture, Deleuze and literature, Deleuze and music, Deleuze and the philosophical tradition, etc. We especially welcome submissions that push Deleuze’s (and Guattari’s) thought in these directions along others that are not listed.

The conference registration fee has yet to be determined, though it will be listed here when it has been. Deadline for registration fees will be June 1, though fees will be discounted for those who pay on or before May 15.

Summer Workshop

Prior to the conference we will have the 6th Annual Deleuze Camp. Spaces are limited so it is recommended that those interested submit their application and registration fee ($225.00) to the Conference organizer by February 1. Applications should include a brief statement of one’s research interests in Deleuze. Selection is made on a first-come first-serve basis. There is also the possibility for presenting a brief 15-minute summary of one’s research work during the workshop. If you are interested in doing so, please make sure to state your desire to do so and provide some detail of what you will be discussing. Applicants will be notified by March 1 whether they will be allotted one of the open-mic slots.

http://deleuze2012.com/

MIRA KAMDAR: The French have found a way to cope with the unrelenting bad economic news in Europe: escape to India. Not the real India but a fantasy land far removed from the realities of sinking currencies and credit-rating downgrades.

Paris metro stations are papered with huge posters for “Rani,” this year’s Christmas-season television special about the improbable adventures of a dispossessed marquise in 18th-century France and India. While, for a much more elite public, the house of Chanel unveiled on Dec. 6 to 200 handpicked guests, including Frieda Pinto and Sonam Kapoor, its Paris-Bombay collection at a sumptuous durbar in the Grand Palais.

The title “Rani” is helpfully translated for the French public as “the Hindi word for the raja’s wife.” The raja, who makes the French renegade Jolanne de Valcourt his wife, is played by Hrithik Roshan, the only name Indian actor in the series. The lead role is played by French actress Mylène Jampanoi who was married in real-life to Indian model and actor Milind Sonam. Continue HERE

The traditional “Krampus and Perchten” procession is a much loved traditional event which attracts visitors from all over. More than 400 “Perchten”, evil demons and St Nicholasses assemble in the Herrengasse for this annual event.

“Out of an estimated 1,500 active volcanoes around the world, 50 or so erupt every year, spewing steam, ash, toxic gases, and lava. In 2011, active volcanoes included Chile’s Puyehue, Japan’s Shinmoedake, Indonesia’s Lokon, Iceland’s Grímsvötn, Italy’s Etna, and recently Nyamulagira in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In Hawaii, Kilauea continues to send lava flowing toward the sea, and the ocean floor has been erupting near the Canary Islands.” See some of the scenes from the wide variety of volcanic activity on Earth over the past year via The Atlantic