The production of space: art, architecture and urbanism in dialogue

Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 3 hours / session

This seminar engages in the notion of space from various points of departure. The goal is first of all to engage in the term and secondly to examine possibilities of art, architecture within urban settings in order to produce what is your interpretation of space.

Today's lack of public spaces due to privatization leaves little room for truly public discourse. How can art and architecture renegotiate the "res publica" - a space for a multitude of voices - the fundament for democracy? Texts by theoreticians such as Bachelard, Lefebvre, Bataille, Foucault, Harvey, Fraser, Hayden, Hollier, Bourdieu, Klein just to name a few will be intertwined with lectures by practitioners from various fields from outside and within MIT.

While there have been many points of confluence historically between art and architecture, the specificity of these relationships and how they are "embedded" in the urban fabric often remains unacknowledged within the discourses of both disciplines. This course will introduce discourses in architecture and urbanism with a focus on the notion of space seeking how they could act complicit. Such potential points of contact and their differin discourses will be introduced through a series of public discussions around heterogeneous approaches to re-engage in the need of a public sphere.

The seminar is organized around external input considered as lab time on the Monday nights@VAP, a mix of lectures, screenings and debates that are open to the public. Wednesdays are for course students only. Here we debate and deepen questions arising out of the Monday night events and go through additional material such as texts and background material on the topic of the course including historical references. The project of the course intends to form small teams to develop various spaces of communication and exchange, and last but not least to experience what is your interpretation of space. The students will be asked to develop and test possibilities of how to create with limited means a variety of spatial narratives.

The Wednesday classes will be broken in to two parts:

At mid term the groups will introduce their proposal and at the finals the groups are expected to present their "spaces" to a public. Class attendance and participation is mandatory on both days.

Presentation Guenther Selichar (Austria)

Introduction/Overview of material, formation of teams

Presentation Regina Moeller, Visiting Prof. VAP (Germany)

Regina Moeller - Discussion of her work and introduction to comicbooks

"Why don't we do it on the road" - Prof. Ute Meta Bauer

"Reclaim the street" - Urban practices of the nineties, site specificity

Introduction and discussion on reader texts, formation of groups

Trevor paglen terminal air (Institute for Applied Autonomy) Guest of CAVS

Field trip to "Juergen Staack: Left behind, …missing pictures" at Space Other Gallery, Boston

Text debate and group work

Stata Centre field trip

Conference on "Theatricality in Contemporary Article. Part I"

Situationists: Legacies and antecedents, Guy Debord film

Group work and discussion for mid-term

Mapping presentation by Stefan Heidenreich

Mid-term project: In class presentation

Krzysztof Wodiczko

Visit to media lab

Gustavo Artigas (Artist, Mexico City) Guest of Harvard
CAVS Artist Group N55 introduce their work (Guest of the Interrogative Design Group, Prof. Wodizcko)

Review of semester projects "Work-in-progress" with Guest Reviewers Azra Aksamija and Jenny Ferng

Christopher Sequeira and Victoria Powers (Pugwash) and Chris Csikszentmihalyi (Director, Computing Culture Group at MIT Media Lab)

Performative actions versus monuments

CCTV / Culture Agents (Harvard)

Visit to MIT museum; Mary Otis Stevens Archive (tentative)

Final project: Public presentation

CAVS Damon Rich presents CUP (Center for Urban Pedagogy)

Wrap-up seminar and project evaluation

Note: There are a number of books and articles that the student may want to become familiar with as background to these discourses.

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