User:Claxhanson/Projectproposal
CONTEXT
"Urban infrastructure is a gear of political power. Its aim is to conquer the territory of the city and hold dominion over certain city relationships. Public space is more than just a polygon delineated by coordinates, it is a factory of social realities." - Ximena Peredo in "Infrastructure & Corruption", a photo project by Alejandro Cartajena
Infra- is what is below; beneath; after. In this sense, we can understand infrastructures as not only the basic systems and services that a company an industry, economy, or any other system, but also as what it further than it, more deeply within it. It is what a system needs to work effectively, but it is also the result of all of what might constitute the ideologies, the philosophies, and doctrines and the aspirations of this said "any-system".
I realize just now that I have always had a fascination for intangible matters, like the concept of law, of language, the way I’ve always known that they were major key systems that were enabling me to understand the tangible world that surrounds me.
Maybe that’s what is urging me to be researching infrastructure. Something with that infra-, this places in the realms of the within, of the around, but never of the "as". Somehow, there is this constant awareness that the words I use, the streets I walk, the flat I live, and the language.s I speak, shape me, and that they are themselves deeply rooted, embodying, or adapting to the forms they have taken throughout history.
I’m also fascinated by the somehow esoteric knowledge or master crafts that come with them.. From the evocation of the "Sacred" in the conception of property, or the way a chair and a lamp will be gendered in french, or these laws, that are nothing but an amass of dead letters, without an interpretation..
I know it, I can feel it, I’ve seen it, even, but I never really got total grasp of it, never totally could define it*. What are they really, where do our infrastructures of power stem from, where are they going ? These uses of language.s, of collective imaginaries, of cemented ideologies, there’s one thing I know, they’re all corrupted !
What do you want to make?
Recognizing the patterns is the first step to healing.
THE INSTITUTION OF CARE FOR CORRUPTED INFRASTRUCTURES (OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT)
I will set this dual approach of "Infrastructure" & "Corruption", coined in the eponym work cited above, as a framework to try and define the outlines and patterns that constitute what I might consider a corrupted infrastructure.
Then I will develop a system of nodes, research units, and other modalities. When the developed protocol is up and running, it will be weaponized as a tool to further analyzing all the aspects that constitute what might be considered as infrastructure and infrastructure and corruption.
A CARE SHEET (Feuille de soins, in fr), that will be designed to support both the writing of my Thesis and my prototyping practice. If the protocole is followed properly, this care sheet should provide you with all the key notions you need to dissect the concept of Infrastructure & Corruption.
This system will be prototyped into a system that will guide you through organizing elements in order to achieve an all-encompassing networked power, resulting in this platform for experimenting with providing diagnosis and engaging in prognostic speculations.
This platform would be an aggregation of the studies of the recondites practices that take place in the fields of prediction and past readings.I want the person arriving on the website to feel like they have to engage with the stucture in order to make sens of it, like they have just entered a world they have yet to understand.
As the project grows, it will also become a collective archive for these story tellings, that will inherently be decentralized and modular, as the forms the enter a project in a database are only guidelines for you to situate your questited project to its roots, and explore subconscious pattern, and speculate on later outcomes, potential future implications.
While developing this platform, I will strongly be referring to the concept of survival architecture (Yona Friedman for the moment, might expand it to other researches) and following the models of self-organization, through the use of modules, of nodes, ect… I would like to investigate if, and if so, how, can the researches in the fields of architecture and sociology intersect, could be adjusted to conceive new digital spaces. How can I translate and aply the patterns to digital space and digital resources, see how this might merge into new forms.
"When we decide to approach architecture as “the discipline that organizes bodies in space,” countless texts can be commissioned and written about how architecture materializes various forms of political violence. Yet, it is much harder to articulate a tactical ‘positive’ discourse about political architectures as we propose to do throughout this issue - The Funambulist Nº23 - Insurgent Architectures
I will also be trying to articulate the different ways in which some of the tactical ‘positive’ discourses about political architectures could be translated or applied into the digital realm, where the needs to materialize resistance against imperialism, border enforcement, capitalism, and/or patriarchy, are just as urgent.
References :
"A multidisciplinary systematic review of the use of diagrams as a means of collecting data from research subjects: application, benefits and recommendations" : https://bmcmedresmethodol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2288-11-11
my devotees
https://n-o-d-e.net/zine/index.html#
How do you plan on making it?
I will be using a narrative of insurgency through a transdisciplinary perspective, in the hope that it might offer a sharper, all-encompassing vision of the different ways architectural projects, frameworks, technologies, and institutions (non-exhaustive list) have been utilized to ensure the well functionning of a corrupted system.
What is it then that is clearly defined as an infrastructure of corruption ? Does it have a clearly defined beginning and a clearly defined end ? How can I access this esoteric knowledge ? With the little amount of knowledge that I have of structures and organizations (I’m a Virgo), I have been working on suggesting some sort of mystical research center for corrupted infrastructures, a care unit. This platform will be supported by a carefully designed structure, that will guide you through establishing an a sharp diagnosis for your quesited project.
This formation of nodes, aggregations, clogs, and all sorts of linking systems that will allow for an almost infinitely expandable research platform, and will propose an alternate trajectory to reading, a non-linear reading paths for the archive.
References :
Here and Now? Explorations in Urgent Publishing Key notions of relations, trust, and remediation : https://networkcultures.org/makingpublic/2020/05/20/here-and-now-explorations-in-urgent-publishing/
The way of the shovel - Dieter Roelstraete
Why do you want to make it?
SHIFT OF POWER
There’s this cycle of Jupiter and Saturn. They come together every 20 years, roughly, and it is called the Grand conjuct.
According to it’s astrological meaning it is cyclical conjunction and is a marker of historical eras in traditional astrology. When Jupiter and Saturn come together there is both the intensity of old forms dying and a new growth taking shape.
For the last 200 years, Jupiter and Saturn have been aligning in earth signs. They’ve been in earth signs since 1802, and this year, in 2020, Jupiter and Saturn will align in the air sign of Aquarius. It’s a new cycle that will last until 2159 ! Also known as the great Upheaval, this conjunction is extra special because it marks the start of a new roughly 200-year cycle during which Jupiter and Saturn will form conjunctions in the same element: air.
In 1980, we got a glimpse of it, when they briefly conjunct in Libra, the beginning of the internet revolution, of information technology revolution, if you like. But it really gets moving at the end of 2020. That’s a very significant point.
Anyway this means that the planet ruling earth (oil extraction, heavy machinery, earth industries) have just shifted into the air sign of Aquarius, the sign of progress, innovation, and community. That means that the extractive forces that have been focusing on earth for the past 200 years will now re-orient their interests (the strive towards more and more data, more control over communication resources).
CONTRAST AND OVERLAP
I would like to engage with people who are receptive to these forms of narratives, who themselves have other stories to tell, other corruptions to account for, and want to prepare together for this shift of power. I would like to explore the options for speculation that exist within this narrative of Jupiter and Saturn to speculate explore the frameworks of Neoliberal and Imperial powers materialize their desires for expansion in the physical world, and speculate on how they could possibly be doing even more so in the digital realm.
My intention is to show that even with that shift of power, physical corruption through master planning and the project that are implemented in the digital area are intriguingly recognizable and are intimately motivated by the same motivations.
What is your timetable?
- End of november, mid december, I will have finished my first module for the project : "My contribution to the e-death industry". Technically this means that the Astrology chatbot I’ve been working on (at my own little pace) for the past 2 months needs to be up and running.
- End of november, mid december, too, I will have commited to my system and will have clearly defined the nodes that will constitute my research project (see thesis proposal), I will have observed if there are (and there will be) swelling points in each of my research unit. Then I will take a bit of time to focus on writting the first chapter, but from the 4th of december on, I will have all the material needed to support my prototyping practice : Case studies, swelling points, diagnisis.
- By January, I will have started the conception of a second module for the project of the a second research unit.
- By Febuary, as I will be hands on prototyping the structure for the plateforme and I will be embeding some of the modules in it already. I expect that I will have at least 5 research units either a finished or at least 70% into the process (40% at worst)
- Mid-febuary, as I conclude the first draft of the thesis, I will start carry on perfecting the plateforme structure and the last modules (By then there will have been massive amount of thinking about it done).
- April should be all done just perfecting everything (would rather have some margin for that)
Who can help you and how?
everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help everybody Manetta can help everybody can help everybody Micheal with prototyping can help everybody Clara & Amy can help everybody can help everybody can help my friends here everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help anyone new I meet that stays at 1.5 m everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help my friends back home everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help Marloes everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help everybody can help
Relation to previous practice
1 _When I was a kid I wanted to be an architect (or a singer, or a teacher).
2_ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6rq_GT6RIk
As I came in to this Master program, my major focus were Myth-Science and Science Fiction. I was singing the song of Outer Space incorporation song at least six tmes a dat and I was reading "La Horde du Contre Vent" by Alain Damasio. My ideas were mostly revolving around the idea of "Myth-science" that I understood as fiction works that produced alternative perspectives and models to revealing "the habits of thought of the physical, historical and social realities as yet more myth". I was spending most of my time actually, now that I look back on it, trying to fabricate fake legal document (post search repports, transcrits of official conversations that never happened, a Fake Writt or Cert*.)
MYTHOTECHNESIS was the last Chapter of my Bachelor research, I believe it is a natural cycle that it finds itself here. Mythotechnesis is the ways in which technology enters into discourse and life, through projections of the existing and future influence of machines.
References : FROM FINANCIAL FICTIONS TO MYTHOTECHNESIS - Simon O’Sullivan
- We had been to see a trial with a friend and then we’d been speculating on the idea of making an appeal to the supreme court, how could it be heard ? Then the project turned into this, "allegorical reading of constitution", as we had humbly defined, a facetious and absurd version of governement procedures, a performance of the impossible. Have I mentioned that I was reading Kafka at the time ?
Some of the works I have done last year will also be relevant to the pan of history I have chosen to explore. I might use the case of "The beast of the gévaudan" to explore the dynamics of communication powers under the King Louis XV. Not that this really needs to be proved to anywone in my public, BUT the idea is to weaponize these case study to define what an infrastructure of corruption really is. The concept of "Mythodology" was also coined during Radio Implicancies, For our "Myth, Mythod, Mythodology" triptic project. I might also this project as a module for my project.
Relation to a larger context
(I will be adding references as I go)
The Funambulist : WEAPONIZED ARCHITECTURE /// THE ARCHITECTURAL DRAWINGS AS MILITARY AND JUDICIARY DOCUMENTS
The Funambulist : ARCHITECTURE AND COLONIALISM ///
Architecture Without Architects, Another Anarchist Approach - Marion von Osten, e-flux journal reader 2009
Architecture of Survival - Yona friedman
How to ensure this right to those to whom it belongs?
How to do it in a world that is heading towards increasing poverty?
How to survive in such a world?"
For the shape :
Fiction as method, HALF 10K, TOP SLICE PLUS FIVE - Matthew fuller - Edited by K S Shaw and Theo Reeves, Sternberg Press