Scapegoat: Architecture / Landscape / Political Economy
Realism: Panel Discussion and Launch Party
Thursday 26 July, 2012
7pm, $0
Van Alen Institute
30 West 22 Street, Floor 6
The latest issue of Scapegoat: Architecture / Landscape / Political Economy extends and departs from the investigations of 02: Materialism, examining the histories, influences, and strategies of realism in architecture and landscape. Join contributors and members of the editorial board to celebrate the launch of Scapegoat 03: Realism, which exposes realist assumptions and fallacies, and persuasively defends the necessity of a new realist practice, while pointing to the impossibility of fixing realism as a conceptual method.
The issue contains reflections and projects on diverse themes, such as: Kazimir Malevich’s tenure in the town of Vitebsk; an interview with Krzysztof Wodiczko; a brief history of police kettling; the realism of Jia Zhangke’s films; photographic realism in the American desert; the temporality of riots; the antinomies of realism in Post-War Italian architecture, and many others.
Issue 03: Contributors
Pier Vittorio Aureli, Jesse Boon, Marcus Boon, Erik Bordeleau, Heather Davis, Elitza Dulguerova, Amy Kulper, Ute Lehrer, Michael Lin, Sergio López-Piñeiro, Mary Lou Lobsinger, Mahsa Majidian, Brendan Moran, Thomas Nail, Alessandra Ponte, Jason E. Smith, Scott Sorli, Rafi Segal and David Salazar, Zhu Tao, Krzysztof Wodiczko
FROM THE EDITORIAL:
As professions that create alternative realities, architecture and landscape architecture consisÂtently adopt mixed and ambivalent relations to the real. Every architectural projection is realist in that it relies at base on an understanding of the real in relation to what is possible. There is no way to dissociate the architectural intervention from this inherent realism, but as a practice of changÂing things, architecture could do well with a more robust investigation of the relationships between its projections and the conditions it both emerges from and enters into.
Realism, most certainly, is opposed to one thing: falsification, or, as Krzysztof Wodiczko puts it, falsism. Realism has become an urgent matter for Scapegoat because we hear all around us schemes spun in the name of a false measure of reality. In the twilight of neoliberalism we are witness to the apotheosis of an economic logic that batters us with numbers rather than words. We are disciplined by an economy that asks us to face the “reality†of overspending on social programs, education, healthcare, and accept the austerity measures that defend contemporary class relations. For four decades, neoliberal policies have foreclosed the future in the name of a punitive “realism†of the market. Today, as people around the world clamour for a new realÂity, we hear politicians rail against the idealism of socialism in favour of the tough “realism†of billionaires. In the face of these falsisms, this issue presents a sequence of arguments in favour of a paradoxical and situational realism.
PANEL DISCUSSION PARTICIPANTS
FROM SCAPEGOAT:
ADRIAN BLACKWELL is an artist and urban designer whose work focuses on the relation between physical spaces and political and economic forces. He has exhibited at artist-run-centers and public institutions across Canada, the Shenzhen and Chengdu Biennales, the Architectural Association, and the Jardins de Metis. His current research focuses on urbanization in contemporary China, the political potential of architecture’s virtuality, and the disappearance of public housing in North America. He has taught architecture and urbanism at Chongqing, Michigan, Harvard and Toronto and is currently an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo. He is a co-founder and editor of the journal Scapegoat: Architecture / Landscape / Political Economy and issue editor of Issue 03: Realism.
ADAM BOBBETTE is a landscape architect based in Hong Kong. He is currently assistant professor in the Faculty of Architecture, Division of Landscape Architecture at the University of Hong Kong. He has published widely and his work has been included in exhibitions at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, The Graham Foundation, The Architectural Association, The San Jose Biennial, Storefront for Art and Architecture, and Eyebeam, amongst others. Currently, his research focuses on comparative histories and theories of civic infrastructures and the urban ecologies of contingency, care and danger. He is a co-founder and editor of the journal Scapegoat: Architecture / Landscape / Political Economy and issue editor of Issue 03: Realism.
GUESTS:
URTZI GRAU is principal of Fake Industries Architectural Agonism. He graduated from the School of Architecture of Barcelona in 2000, was awarded Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design by the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation, Columbia University in 2004, and is currently completing his Ph.D. at Princeton University School of Architecture on the 1970's urban renewal of Barcelona. His work and writings have been published in different international journals as 306090, Architect's Newspaper, Domus, Pasajes de Arquitectura y Critica, Pidgin, Volume, Via Arquitectura or Visions.
SADIA SHIRAZI is an architect, educator and curator working at the intersection of art, architecture and spatial praxis. She is currently a visiting faculty at National College of Arts teaching an urban workshop that takes as its subject the city, space, and power in Lahore. Over the past five years, Shirazi has been engaged in a transdisciplinary practice investigating the relationship of art, architecture and urbanism to socio-political issues, cultural and historical memory, and exhibition practices. She has curated exhibitions and public programming at The Kitchen in New York City, at The Drawing Room in Lahore, and at MIT. Shiraziʼs essays, articles, and design work have been published online and in various magazines and journals, including Thresholds, Bidoun, and AU Arquitetura e Urbanismo. She was editor of Thresholds 33, a peer-reviewed journal of architecture, art, and media culture. In 2012, she was named as one of the 100 Women Who Matter by Newsweek Pakistan.
DAVID WACHSMUTH was trained as an urban planner in Toronto and is now a PhD candidate in sociology at New York University. His research interests include the relationship between the city and the countryside, urban competitiveness policy, and critical social theory. He is an organizer with the New York City student movement and with GSOC-UAW, the union for graduate employees at NYU. He is co-editor of Whose Streets? The Toronto G20 and the Challenges of Summit Protest (2011, Between the Lines).
The issue contains reflections and projects on diverse themes, such as: Kazimir Malevich’s tenure in the town of Vitebsk; an interview with Krzysztof Wodiczko; a brief history of police kettling; the realism of Jia Zhangke’s films; photographic realism in the American desert; the temporality of riots; the antinomies of realism in Post-War Italian architecture, and many others.
Issue 03: Contributors
Pier Vittorio Aureli, Jesse Boon, Marcus Boon, Erik Bordeleau, Heather Davis, Elitza Dulguerova, Amy Kulper, Ute Lehrer, Michael Lin, Sergio López-Piñeiro, Mary Lou Lobsinger, Mahsa Majidian, Brendan Moran, Thomas Nail, Alessandra Ponte, Jason E. Smith, Scott Sorli, Rafi Segal and David Salazar, Zhu Tao, Krzysztof Wodiczko
FROM THE EDITORIAL:
As professions that create alternative realities, architecture and landscape architecture consisÂtently adopt mixed and ambivalent relations to the real. Every architectural projection is realist in that it relies at base on an understanding of the real in relation to what is possible. There is no way to dissociate the architectural intervention from this inherent realism, but as a practice of changÂing things, architecture could do well with a more robust investigation of the relationships between its projections and the conditions it both emerges from and enters into.
Realism, most certainly, is opposed to one thing: falsification, or, as Krzysztof Wodiczko puts it, falsism. Realism has become an urgent matter for Scapegoat because we hear all around us schemes spun in the name of a false measure of reality. In the twilight of neoliberalism we are witness to the apotheosis of an economic logic that batters us with numbers rather than words. We are disciplined by an economy that asks us to face the “reality†of overspending on social programs, education, healthcare, and accept the austerity measures that defend contemporary class relations. For four decades, neoliberal policies have foreclosed the future in the name of a punitive “realism†of the market. Today, as people around the world clamour for a new realÂity, we hear politicians rail against the idealism of socialism in favour of the tough “realism†of billionaires. In the face of these falsisms, this issue presents a sequence of arguments in favour of a paradoxical and situational realism.
PANEL DISCUSSION PARTICIPANTS
FROM SCAPEGOAT:
ADRIAN BLACKWELL is an artist and urban designer whose work focuses on the relation between physical spaces and political and economic forces. He has exhibited at artist-run-centers and public institutions across Canada, the Shenzhen and Chengdu Biennales, the Architectural Association, and the Jardins de Metis. His current research focuses on urbanization in contemporary China, the political potential of architecture’s virtuality, and the disappearance of public housing in North America. He has taught architecture and urbanism at Chongqing, Michigan, Harvard and Toronto and is currently an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo. He is a co-founder and editor of the journal Scapegoat: Architecture / Landscape / Political Economy and issue editor of Issue 03: Realism.
ADAM BOBBETTE is a landscape architect based in Hong Kong. He is currently assistant professor in the Faculty of Architecture, Division of Landscape Architecture at the University of Hong Kong. He has published widely and his work has been included in exhibitions at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, The Graham Foundation, The Architectural Association, The San Jose Biennial, Storefront for Art and Architecture, and Eyebeam, amongst others. Currently, his research focuses on comparative histories and theories of civic infrastructures and the urban ecologies of contingency, care and danger. He is a co-founder and editor of the journal Scapegoat: Architecture / Landscape / Political Economy and issue editor of Issue 03: Realism.
GUESTS:
URTZI GRAU is principal of Fake Industries Architectural Agonism. He graduated from the School of Architecture of Barcelona in 2000, was awarded Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design by the Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation, Columbia University in 2004, and is currently completing his Ph.D. at Princeton University School of Architecture on the 1970's urban renewal of Barcelona. His work and writings have been published in different international journals as 306090, Architect's Newspaper, Domus, Pasajes de Arquitectura y Critica, Pidgin, Volume, Via Arquitectura or Visions.
SADIA SHIRAZI is an architect, educator and curator working at the intersection of art, architecture and spatial praxis. She is currently a visiting faculty at National College of Arts teaching an urban workshop that takes as its subject the city, space, and power in Lahore. Over the past five years, Shirazi has been engaged in a transdisciplinary practice investigating the relationship of art, architecture and urbanism to socio-political issues, cultural and historical memory, and exhibition practices. She has curated exhibitions and public programming at The Kitchen in New York City, at The Drawing Room in Lahore, and at MIT. Shiraziʼs essays, articles, and design work have been published online and in various magazines and journals, including Thresholds, Bidoun, and AU Arquitetura e Urbanismo. She was editor of Thresholds 33, a peer-reviewed journal of architecture, art, and media culture. In 2012, she was named as one of the 100 Women Who Matter by Newsweek Pakistan.
DAVID WACHSMUTH was trained as an urban planner in Toronto and is now a PhD candidate in sociology at New York University. His research interests include the relationship between the city and the countryside, urban competitiveness policy, and critical social theory. He is an organizer with the New York City student movement and with GSOC-UAW, the union for graduate employees at NYU. He is co-editor of Whose Streets? The Toronto G20 and the Challenges of Summit Protest (2011, Between the Lines).