Course Meeting Times
Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 3 hours / session
Course Overview
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events and go through additional material such as texts and background material on the topic of the course including historical references.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:
- Lecture and debate
- Group work
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.
Grading Policy
| ACTIVITIES | PERCENTAGES |
|---|---|
| Proposal (mid term) and realization (finals) | 75% |
| Readings/Discussions and class attendance | 25% |
Calendar
| WEEK # | TOPICS |
|---|---|
| 1 |
Presentation Guenther Selichar (Austria) Introduction/Overview of material, formation of teams |
| 2 |
Presentation Regina Moeller, Visiting Prof. VAP (Germany) Regina Moeller - Discussion of her work and introduction to comicbooks |
| 3 |
“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 |
| 4 |
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 |
| 5 | Texts Bachelard, Bataille, Foucault, Hayden, Hollier, Defert |
| 6 |
Text debate and group work Stata Centre field trip |
| 7 |
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 |
| 8 |
Mid-term project: In class presentation |
| 9 |
Krzysztof Wodiczko Visit to media lab |
| 10 |
Gustavo Artigas (Artist, Mexico City) Guest of Harvard Review of semester projects “Work-in-progress” with Guest Reviewers Azra Aksamija and Jenny Ferng |
| 11 |
Christopher Sequeira and Victoria Powers (Pugwash) and Chris Csikszentmihalyi (Director, Computing Culture Group at MIT Media Lab) Performative actions versus monuments |
| 12 |
CCTV / Culture Agents (Harvard) Visit to MIT museum; Mary Otis Stevens Archive (tentative) |
| 13 |
Final project: Public presentation |
| 14 |
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.
