Surrounded by a fog of virtual images
To care and nurture for the richness and diversity of our architectural practice(s) we need to go beyond the definition of space as an inert background or a merely abstract dimension. We seek instead to attend to the emerging processes and forms of spatiality threading the living environment around us, with us, through us… For this to become more than mere words, we require new theories, know-hows, instruments and strategies. This extended repertoire will allow us to work with a broader spatial enactment of materiality where the minor realities threading our everyday are heard and operationalized for a meaningful, negotiated and inclusive transformation of our world.
Surrounded by a fog of virtual images is a series of online Research Seminars organized by ALICE (Atelier de la Conception de l’Espace) at the ENAC / EPFL to explore and operationalize these questions through a series of talks with international guest speakers led by its grad and post-grad researchers around key topics of their work.
Echoing the fog of virtual images used by Gilles Deleuze to describe how our surroundings cannot be understood without taking into consideration those minor existences circling around them, hinting and prompting the emergence of new dispositions, we invite everyone interested to meet us in the fog for a series of virtual discussions and critical questionings. As the Zoom rooms’ natives we have become, we live surrounded by a constant flow of high-resolution virtual images made out of ones and zeroes. Consequently we want to make the most of the current Covid-19 situation by joining these two virtualities. Together, we will introduce some conceptual fuzziness and much-needed sensoriality into our screens to draw up new forms of architectural practice determined to work with those material potentialities and plural temporalities so often short-circuited by our new media environment and/or forgotten by our discipline.
Seminars:
01 Maps : instruments of architectural (dis)orientation — Dec. 9th, 2020
02 Ghostly spatialities, haunted architecture? — Jan. 20th, 2021
03 Landscape as affective image — Feb. 17th, 2021
04 Practices for urban capacitation — Apr. 21st, 2021
05 Choreo-spatial politics — May 12th, 2021
Full information: www.surroundedbyafogofvirtualimages.ch