--empyre- soft-skinned space--
Hello
And I'm delighted by this framing of a topic 'neo-eco-liberalism' for several
reasons. I'm currently based in at Malmö University in Sweden, I teach mainly
for the Interaction Design programme but my own background is in philosophy and
dance.
I contribute the 'embodied' strand to the Master's and PhD education but am
increasingly uncomfortable with the way bodies play into interaction design,
just as a placeholder for the word 'context,' or more worryingly as another
domain for design to colonise under the rhetoric of increased personal freedom,
efficiency or health benefits.
I was fascinated by wearable technologies, and indeed worked actively in this
area for a few years, but now I cringe with the next wearable watch or sensor
to pump our data into the cloud. This relates to sustainability and the
neo-liberal agenda in that the words sustainable, smart, or green are so
frequently appended to the words growth or well-being. So we have 'sustainable
growth', 'green growth', etc, as viable agendas within national economies and
design research initiatives, when what they actually mean is depletion,
physical and environmental depletion.
Sweden is about to have an election, 4 days before the Scottish independence
vote, and the campaigns offer an avalanche of neo-liberal rhetoric in a country
which seemed to have the good sense and social democratic legacy to be
inoculated from it. I would argue that the many faces and hybrids of
neo-liberalism need to be unearthed and exposed and called to account by as
many people as possible in the current climate.
On Sep 9, 2014, at 3:11 AM, Adam Nocek wrote:
--empyre- soft-skinned space--
Hi all,
I'd like to welcome Ross Exo Adams and Adrian Parr to the first week at
-empyre!
This week's topic addresses what I'm calling, Neo-eco-liberalism. The title
references the complicated way that ecological catastrophe dominates so
many design discourses today. In an era when the Anthropocene (hypo)thesis is
hotly debated in nearly all academic fields, it is designers in particular
who often feel a responsibility to correct for the footprint left by modern,
industrial-scale design, and design with an eye to the deep time of the
planet. No doubt the myriad discourses on “sustainable,” “ecological,” or
“smart” technologies come to mind as possible ways of addressing the deep
time of design. For example, great progress has been made in the application
of biotechnology, synthetic biology, and nanotechnology to design fields, so
that “programmable” or “mediated matter” now provides a viable means for
designing complex (even semi-living) systems that adapt and evolve in
response to wider, non-human environments— surely a post-humanist framework
for design.
But as our guests know, the many discourses and technologies surrounding
“sustainable” and “eco design do not easily avoid neoliberal capture, and in
fact, have too often become a resource for private investors to strengthen
the firm grip of capital. Urban developers in particular, as Ross has noted
elsewhere, have been quick to embrace the discourse of “ecological
catastrophe” as a way to ensure that the private development of urban space
proceeds without reproach, and destroys the last vestiges of public space.
As a way into this week's topic, I'm wondering if our guests would begin the
conversation by meditating or complicating this tension.
Here are our guests bios one more time:
Ross Exo Adams (US) is an architect, urbanist and educator whose work looks
at the political and historical intersection between circulation and
urbanization. He is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Iowa State
University. His writing has been published in Log, Environment and Planning
D: Society and Space, Radical Philosophy, Thresholds, Architectural Review
among others. Previously he has taught at The Bartlett School of
Architecture, UCL, The Architectural Association, the Berlage Institute in
Rotterdam, NL and at Brighton University in the UK. His work has been
exhibited in the Venice Biennale, the Storefront for Art and Architecture in
New York City, the Centre of Contemporary Architecture in Moscow and the
Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam. As an architect and urban
designer he has worked in offices such as MVRDV, Foster Partners, Arup
Urban Design and Productora-DF. He holds a Master of Architecture from the
Berlage Institute and a Ph.D. from the London Consortium for which he was
awarded the 2011 LKE Ozolins Studentship by the RIBA.
Adrian Parr (US/AU) specialist on the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, and has
published widely on the sustainability movement, climate change politics,
activist culture, and creative practice. She is currently an Associate
Professor in the Department of Sociology and School of
