BORDERSCAPES

El laboratorio propuesto opera desde posiciones marginales entre el arte y la arquitectura, siendo una labor iniciada junto con el profesor Darío Gazapo en los cursos de Doctorado La construcción del paisaje: desde la interioridad hacia la exterioridad entre 2005-2010 y que se plantea en este próximo curso 2014-2015 como Laboratorio dentro del Master MPAA en la Línea de Paisaje.

El Laboratorio se ha articulado en torno a tres campos de interacción:

I.- de/construcción de un derrotero específico en el Mediterráneo, entre Tarifa, Motril, isla de Alborán, Mellilla y Ceuta, que conformará el campo de acción de este Laboratorio.4

II.- de/construcción de una experiencia comparada a partir de la elaboración de una serie de acciones conceptuales durante el propio derrotero, como mecanismos de activación del paisaje, originados desde el conocimiento y la vivencia, con el objetivo de desvelar valencias y vínculos entre los diversos parámetros que conforman la corporeidad del concepto de frontera como constructo.

III.- de/construcción de una serie de marcos de apropiación a partir de la elaboración de cartografías como dispositivos de comprensión de la realidad compleja y de textos que permitan su confrontación.*

Concha Lapayese. Laboratorio de paisaje 2014/2015

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paisaje

La definición de “Paisaje” lleva implícita la idea de construcción y en consecuencia, el empleo de una “lógica específica” que posibilite esa acción de formalización del concepto. La primera acción del proceso, supone una elección sobre la posición referencial en la que se localiza el constructor de paisajes. Es a partir de esa hipótesis o decisión inicial, desde donde, a continuación, se desarrollará un proceso vertiginoso e imprevisible, que concluirá con la formalización de un determinado paisaje. Es a partir del análisis de tales situaciones, desde donde es posible la discusión y la crítica. Es desde el origen del proceso de pensamiento, desde donde se establece la especificidad en la forma de la mirada…

Darío Gazapo / Concha Lapayese

Call for Submissions: displacements issue #2: ReFi REALITY FICTION – Feb, 1st

displacements issue #2: ReFi REALITY FICTION
deadline extended: February 1st, 2015

A multiplied reality threaded in fictions. Masked and sneaky. Nonetheless, material. Unstable. A kind of spatialized white noise of mixed signals, the land of #ReFi ——— To come up with a clean and causal narrative becomes impossible. A contradiction in terms. The #ReFi call cannot be a three paragraph text with a few randomly chosen questions. A coherent linear fiction with setup, body and resolution, out of a reality which has none of it. To surrender the endless potential of fiction, of the real; the fascinating forces of the real, of fiction ——— Instead, we offer an ever-changing map of that reality-fiction mesh. A tool to explore and operate within an undifferentiated and evanescent territory with the aid of vanishing or fictitious reference points. A call to fabricate, to discover, to compose new fleeting configurations ——— The call becomes a territory, an instrument and an invitation to explore it.

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Each time the #ReFi page is loaded, the growing reality-fiction territory is randomly reconfigured from a series of proposed relations. You are invited to play around with them: pin down a concept (click-and-drag) and create your own proximities, overlaps and framings ——— Submissions to displacements #2 will work as explorations of this fugitive territory and/or as a reflection on the instruments and strategies needed to explore, move and act within it. We encourage all participants to submit their own personal #Refi territories along with their contributions.

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displacements is asking for written pieces (essays and/or fiction ranging from 2000 to 5000 words), projects, cartographic, photographic and illustration works (video, audio, and other non-printable formats are welcomed as well). Submissions must be previously unpublished and sent in complete form with a short bio of the author(s) to displacementsjournal@gmail.com before February, 1st, 2015.

more info: http://refi.displacementsjournal.com
twitter @DisplacementsJ
facebook displacements.journal

crimescapes: #multitudes [society for the exploration and practice of the spatial commons]

— society for the exploration and practice of the spatial commons —


Until the late 18th century, as the western men faced the large unknown areas of the world, cartographers followed the long-held tradition of livening those uncharted spaces with prodigious imagination, either with fantastical beasts and monsters or with never seen imaginary geographies . By the 19th century the new science, heir of the englightened reason, put an end to this fantasy, at least to the cartographer’s, so as to conjure up a new and absolute blank in the lands yet unconquered by the measurements and representations of the new Geograhy. A blank which was of course just another kind of fantasy. Continents as Africa or Australia were far from empty but inhabited by complex worlds and societies that were erased from western maps, and minds, at a stroke.

These “newly found” blank zones were, first of all an affront for our Englightened Man, but they also symbolized with accute precision the process of construction of space as a peculiar abstract empty void independent of the lives of the people that unfolded unto it as a mere stage with no social or political implication. Characters of very different background, kings and national governments among them, would contribute to make economically and militarly viable the expeditions that little by little filled in the blanks and left them good and ready for the dealing out that was to follow . Science and knowledge had become prominent tools in the hands of the 19th century empire’s colonial expansion, an ongoing battle against an other reality that had to be subdued through erasure and the mapping out of a new image.

Why then do we reclaim such an appalling model to inform our action? Because we consider an urgency to uphold knowledge and research as something essential for something as fundamental and apparently obvious as the survival of our species. That is why we think is time for our University to bring back knowledge to the streets, open up its too long sealed doors and reclaim the potential underlying the relation between the common production of the multitude and the knowledge of the real. Only a deep and canny critique emerging from a thorough understanding of the links between knowledge and power can offer us the tools to render that relation inoperative and take on the field of opportunity thus opened up for a new kind of practice.

— crimescapes: #multitudes —

CRiMESCAPES: #MULTITUDES will work as a follow-up to the work began in our 2013 #crimescapes workshop focusing on the relation between architecture, law and crime. We started back then from the idea of crime as the violation of a line created by law and thus an undisputable spatial-laden concept. But the line is never a line, and so we began working on the modeling of specific legal zones as dynamic relational situations in order to test the effects that different spatial actions could have on their organization. Armed with these tools and with their precise knowledge of the situation the students were then asked to implement an architectural project understood as crime: architectural action as trespassing and reconfiguration of the divisions working in that legal zone.

In this second installment, and as part of the #mpaa5 premises , our goal will be to produce by the end of the term, a material spatial trespassing of the new Spanish Public Safety Law in the city of Madrid. In order to do that we will begin by collectively build up a common body of knowledge, cartographies and models, of the material consequences the new law will have in the built fabric and the space production processess at Madrid’s Barrio de las Cortes. From that knowledge, a repertoire of existing practices and spatial tactics will be drawn through which development the students will be asked to propose a whole new set of spatial pragmatics to plan a final act upon the fabric of the city in the week of the European Parliament elections in May.

In the first weeks of the term the students will collectively analyse the spatial consequences that the Public Safety Draft Bill would have in its hypothetical application—materialization in a specific and traditionally contested neighbourhood of Madrid (Barrio de las Cortes). First through a cartographic approach to the existing nomoscape of the area, and then through its modeling in order to visualize it and make it accesible to the non-specialized public for the open debate sessions that will follow.

In this EXPLORATION phase the target will be the spatial consequences of the draft bill, their materialization in the built environment, the effects onto the everyday life of the neighbours as well as on their dyanmics of common spatial production and the possible interferences between citizenship and public space. Special attention will be paid to the the development of a new instrumental of relation to the real that favors the concept of notation against that of representation . This phase will unfold from work on the following concepts:

In a second phase of the term we will work on a REPERTOIRE OF SPATIAL PRACTICES. We understand that when we talk about the actualization of the multitude’s political potential opportunity cannot be read only in its temporal dimension (kairos) but also spatially. The existence of spatial moments or right spots that respond to an active understanding of form , will define the work of these weeks. Existing spatial practices will be collected paying special attention to the notion of disposition in the relation between body and urban form in each and everyone of them . Based on that first reading of the repertoire and on the individual work developed by the students in the Fall Landscape Lab, they will be asked to propose to incorporate to it a new set of spatial practices.

10FEB 16:00 Aula 1N5 // @paisajeMPAA // lab#02 paisaje: [LAS DIMENSIONES DE LO REAL: NORMANDÍA] // sesión abierta

20-21 ENE 16:00 Aula 1N5 // landscapePhD // lab#02 paisaje // sesión abierta

16DIC 16:00 Aula 1N5 // lab#02 paisaje: [LAS DIMENSIONES DE LO REAL: NORMANDÍA] // sesión abierta

Más info: [pdf]

displacements: an x’scape journal – first installment: CRIMINAL DISPLACEMENTS

DISPLACEMENTS: AN X’SCAPE JOURNAL es un nuevo proyecto arquitectónico-editorial del Laboratorio de Paisaje del Máster en Proyectos Arquitectónicos Avanzados y el Grupo de Investigación Paisaje Cultural en la Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid.

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DISPLACEMENTS: AN X’SCAPE JOURNAL es un nuevo proyecto arquitectónico-editorial que busca afrontar de forma integrada los dos aspectos imprescindibles para una práctica crítica: conocimiento y acción. Para ello displacements abre una convocatoria de escritos, ensayos cartográficos, proyectos, u otros formatos editables, que trabajen en y desde la ambigüa relación existente entre legalidad y arquitectura.

Si entendemos el nomos como un proceso social inseparable de la producción de una espacialidad común, la relación entre ley y arquitectura aparece como práctica social constituyente en la que cuerpos, costumbres y territorio se materializan en el paisaje.

Cuando la excepción se hace regla se abre una zona de indistinción en la que se inscribe la posibilidad de acción para unos desplazamientos criminales nacidos de la necesidad de operar en y desde esa zona de ambigüedad definida por la excepción post-democrática contemporánea.

El crimen nos permite detectar y entender el funcionamiento de nuevas zonas de legalidad contemporáneas. Zonas que son resultado de un proceso de reconfiguración constante entre los cuerpos, prácticas y dispositivos que las forman. Para poder analizarlas y actuar en ellas se hace necesario mirar más allá de divisiones escalares, disciplinares o históricas, desde un concepto ampliado de paisaje capaz de afirmar su complejidad ecológica, política y social.

Texto completo: http://www.displacementsjournal.com

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DISPLACEMENTS solicita ensayos entre 2000 y 3500 palabras, cartografías y trabajos de mapeado, proyectos y otros contenidos editables (video, audio, y otros formatos no imprimibles también serán aceptados). Las contribuciones en forma gráfica deberán ir acompañadas de un texto no superior a 500 palabras. Todos los contenidos deben ser inéditos y serán enviados completos junto con una breve biografía del autor o autores a displacementsjournal [a] gmail . com.

≫ Material escrito: formato Microsoft Word (.doc)
≫ Material gráfico – Fotografía: CMYK con una resolución 300 dpi. Formato JPEG o TIFF.
≫ Material gráfico – Dibujo: formato Adobe PDF
≫ Todo el material deberá estar correctamente referenciado y las fuentes citadas según el MLA Citation Style
≫ El contenido deberá enviarse en Español o Inglés

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FECHA LÍMITE PARA ENVÍO DE CONTRIBUCIONES: 12 Enero 2014
ANUNCIO DE LOS CONTENIDOS SELECCIONADOS: 26 Enero 2014
FECHA DE PUBLICACIÓN: Marzo 2014

www.displacementsjournal.com
twitter @displacementsJ
email displacementsjournal@gmail.com

Comienzo del LAB de Paisaje: 14/10 Juan Miguel Hernández León «ESPACIO DEL DESEO Y TIEMPO DEL DESEO» + 15/10 Javier Ruiz «UTOPÍAS Y DISTOPÍAS EN LA CIENCIA FICCIÓN»

The Humanity of Infrastructure: Landscape as Operative Ground

The ubiquity of contemporary infrastructure cannot be overstated; it silently conveys, inhibits, facilitates, mediates, and in so doing forms the foundation of humanity’s existence. As a result, infrastructure as we know it has become both culturally and physically peripheral, resigned to crumble and rot as it waits to be replaced. In recent years, landscape historians, urban theorists, and designers have turned their gaze once again to focus on the vast networks of infrastructure that underlie our cities and metropolises in order to begin to address the ever increasing pressures placed on contemporary cities and the innumerable biophysical systems with which they interface. The study of infrastructure as an industrial urban phenomenon, however, neglects millennia of infrastructural practice in the city, its periphery, and far beyond. It is necessary to recontextualize landscape, the common medium for human inhabitation, as infrastructure; a practice inexorably tied to the history of human civilization.

For the purpose of this discussion, infrastructure can be defined as those systems, works, and networks upon which the function of any system of human inhabitation is reliant. According to Bhatia, it has become apparent that “the natural environment is perhaps the only issue that affects all of humanity equally,” and a renewed “emphasis on the collective natural environment repositions the role of infrastructure as the foundational spatial format, as it allows for the interconnection between the human and environmental spheres. Landscape is Bhatia’s infrastructure. Landscape is inherently infrastructural: it mediates, produces, facilitates, and transports. As a network of infrastructural function and flow, landscape (here considered to be a result of human modification of an environment) becomes the operative platform of human existence; where landscape exists, so does infrastructure. Landscape is the medium through which culture, society, and the individual interact with biophysical, meteorological, and geological fluctuation or stasis. Landscape is a conduit, an exaggerator, a proliferator, an inhibitor, an enabler; herein lies its timeless operative capacity.

via The Humanity of Infrastructure: Landscape as Operative Ground, by Dane Carlson