TIME: 7 to 9 PM.
LOCATION: Joan Jonas Performance Hall (N51-337)
at 265 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Ute Meta Bauer, Director of the MIT Visual Arts Program, will introduce the lectures series. “This is Tomorrow” was a groundbreaking transdisciplinary exhibition at London’s Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1956 involving key artists, architects, musicians and designers evaluating “habitation” through the human senses. Fifty years later, how do we imagine future co-habitation, alternative communities and societies to come?

Yvonne P. Doderer, Visiting Professor, MIT Visual Arts Program; Architect; Urban Researcher; Professor of Gender in Media and Design at the University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf (Germany) will address questions concerning feminism, trangender issues and concepts of heterotopia. Can “other” urban communities like the feminist public and the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender community be read as heterotopian? How do these communi­ties participate in urban productivity and heterogeneity?

Jesko Fezer is an architect and collaborator with the Institute of Applied Urbanism in Berlin, Germany, and co-editor of the periodical AnArchitektur. He will speak about “Design Problem Reality: On Social Space, Architecture, Conflict and Negotiation.” How does architecture relate to the conflicting dynamics of social realities? What does it mean for a design practice to embrace the vitality of the everyday, as a reference point against the overwhelming hegemony of the economy and the visual in architecture?

TIME: 7 to 9 PM.
LOCATION: Joan Jonas Performance Hall (N51-337)
at 265 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Pia Maria Ahlbäck will examine a small number of spatial examples, urban and others, in the light of the phenomenological thought of the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard. She will also make use of the concepts of the “chronotope”, which was devised by Russian literary theoretician Mikhail Bakhtin, and the “heterotopia,” conceived by the French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault. Her purpose in utilizing these thoughts and concepts is to facilitate a way of thinking imaginatively about climate change that is related to the Western tradition of utopias/dystopias. Ultimately, she will attempt to answers questions about the challenges this particular approach presents and its implications for current urban spatial thinking.

Peter Marcuse will speak about utopias, planning and urban activism. Utopias can be good (humanist) or bad (neo-liberal), achievable (the city of plenty) or unachievable (the dream city), strategic (utopias of process) or illusory (architectural fantasies). Critical approaches to planning and urban activism would incorporate the former images of utopia into meaningful programs of change. The Right to the City is an example of the effort at such a use of utopian thinking.

TIME: 7 to 9 PM.
LOCATION: Joan Jonas Performance Hall (N51-337)
at 265 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Shuddhabrata Sengupta is an artist, writer, member of the Raqs Media Collective, and co-initiator Sarai Program, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi (India). In his talk he will look at the way in which the scenario of anxiety gets played out in urban situations, especially in the course of the performance of ‘terror’. The discourse around ‘terrorism’ claims bodies and biographies on a regular basis. The city is made to yield these bodies and biographies through incidents laced with spectacular anxiety. The talk will be based on a reading of recent images and mediatized narratives from the city of Delhi.

Philippe Rekacewicz is a geographer, cartographer, journalist and contributor to Le Monde diplomatique, Paris (France). He will address the relationship between cartography and art, science and politics. How does the role of art in the production of maps influence the use and manipulation of maps as a propaganda tool?

TIME: 7 to 9 PM.
LOCATION: Joan Jonas Performance Hall (N51-337)
at 265 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Regina Bittner is a cultural scientist, art historian, coordinator Bauhaus Kolleg at the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation and curator, Dessau (Germany). She will give a talk entitled “Backstage Cities”. The neoliberal transition of urban spaces operates in two directions: fragmentation and integration. These two modes exist in juxtaposition: shrinking areas of economic and social decline are situated next to urban clusters of globally integrated hubs. Already in the 90th scholars have announced that the new urban conflicts would be played out between “growth” and “no-growth”. Cities in eastern Germany and central Europe are especially affected by this mechanism, resulting in shrinking cities, cities of collective despair and urban wasteland. Looking at those “backstage cities” Bittner will discuss new spatial dialectics between the “objectified,” “abstract” urban spaces of economic interests and “weak places.” Here the conflicting appropriation of places, their “use value” might play a constitutive role for a “contingent” urbanity.

Stefano Boeri
Architect; editor in chief of the magazine Abitare; Visiting Professor Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, Cambridge (USA)

Bartolomeo Pietromarchi’s talk entitled “This is Tomorrow, Today” aims to draw an overview of the cultural dimension of our visions of the future through examples current and historical examples. Starting from the optimistic and utopian vision of the future from the fifties, Pietromarchi will discuss The Independent Group and the exhibition This is Tomorrow (1956) in relation to the imaginary of science fiction culture. Other examples include Armin Linke’s Nuclear Voyage project, representing an archeology of a past vision of the future told through the story of nuclear power in the fifties and sixties and the development of photographic stereoscopic technique, the book Limits to Growth (published in 1972) modeling the consequences of a rapidly growing world population and finite resource supplies, and Atelier van Lisehout’s Slave City representing a dystopia of the future, a sarcastic and provocative comment on the contemporary ideology of sustainability.

TIME: 7 to 9 PM.
LOCATION: Joan Jonas Performance Hall (N51-337)
at 265 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Lukas Feireiss’s talk entitled “YESTERMORROW: Utopian Spaces Between Then and Now” will address how an increasing world population of six billion people, with hitherto unknown technical abilities, is massively affecting global nature. Civilization has become a force of nature in its own right, causing far-reaching changes in the ecosystem. Against this backdrop architects and city planners today are confronted with unimagined challenges in terms of creating space, extending far beyond the horizons of their disciplines. Taking this challenge as chance the lecture will take an eclectic joyride across the marvelous worlds of past, current and future visions of the built environment, drawing inspiration from various media such as literature, film, art and architecture.

AbdouMaliq Simone is an urbanist and Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, London (UK). Cities remain places where relations of all kinds unfold. Residents, forced to operate outside of stable regulatory frameworks governing how they put food on the table and how they will deal with each other, must come up with all kinds of tactics, practices, emotions, risks, and commitments in order to survive. Therefore, how do the combinations of all these aspects—in a given place and time—produce particular kinds of urban residents, particular kinds of conflicts, possibilities, skills, and vulnerabilities. In “neighborhoods” of actions and styles that appear to operate at cross-purposes, it is these very cross-purposes that provide a concrete manifestation of the different things that can be done and imagined in any given place. It is a materialization of different possibilities, different routes in and out toward the rest of the city.

TIME: 7 to 9 PM.
LOCATION: Joan Jonas Performance Hall (N51-337)
at 265 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Lucy Orta is an artist, fashion designer, and Professor for Art, Fashion and the Environment at the London College of Fashion, Paris (France). Her talk will address remote habitats. Is the idea of a settlement in a place like Antarctica – inherently isolated, inhospitable and uninhabitable - a tabula rasa that could lead to a “nation of humanity” and a peaceful land for those escaping economic or natural disasters, war or political intimidation?

Nicholas Makris is Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering and Director of the Laboratory for Undersea Remote Sensing at MIT, Cambridge (USA). His talk will engage questions regarding new technologies for deep ocean sensing. How are new technologies, such as Ocean Waveguide Remote Sensing, enabling new discoveries about remote undersea habitats? How will these technologies permit scientists to detect and monitor extra-terrestrial ecosystems, such as the vast ocean under the ice of Jupiter’s moon Europa? How is a habitat, remote in terms of time, i.e. the Renaissance culture of lute playing, now being retrieved and sensed?

Armin Linke is a photographer, filmmaker, and Guest Professor for Photography at the HFG Karlsruhe, Germany; Milan (Italy). What do we know about the habitats on the numerous islands in the Mediterranean Sea?

TIME: 7 to 9 PM.
LOCATION: Joan Jonas Performance Hall (N51-337)
at 265 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Ingrid Book and Carina Héden, artists working in Oslo (Norway), will present a talk entitled “CLEARING LAND IN AFFLUENT SOCIETY: Temporary Utopias and place-based identities versus exclusionary politics. The future garden will be a utility garden.” Should a society establish and foster ‘temporary utopias’ and indigenous identities to counteract exclusionary politics? Is the garden of the future a utility garden?

Nikolaus Hirsch is an architect, Frankfort on the Main (Germany). He will present the Cymbermohalla Hub, a community center and gallery in Delhi, India that involves 70 young practitioners in a project to engage their urban context through various media. Can such a hybrid school create a condition in which architecture becomes a self-reflexive tool for an institution and its cultural agency?

This event is supported in part by the OFFICE FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTS NORWAY

TIME: 7 to 9 PM.
LOCATION: Joan Jonas Performance Hall (N51-337)
at 265 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

X-topia and Y-topia a collaborative exhibition project exploring the notions of urban utopia, dystopia and heterotopia at the MIT Visual Arts Program at N51.

X-topia

Graduate students from MIT’s Department of Architecture display their investigations and the way these terms are represented in visual, audio and literary media. Following the principles of heterotopian spaces the way the French philosopher Michel Foucault defines them in his 1967 lecture ‘Of Other Spaces‘, this project seeks to delineate the complexity of fictional narratives, virtual designs and existing realities. X-topia is a spatial collage where the viewer is invited to enter and to wander through islands of excerpts and citations, illuminated by film fragments and surrounded by sound bites. The elements of this exhibition – juxtaposed quotations gathered into a spatial narration offset by montages of film and documentary footage – portray the interrelation of these urban imaginaries from the 20th century. X-topia questions the overarching social constructs that lead to the pursuit of the utopian ideal society by mirroring it through its inherent dystopian aspects and conclusions.

X-topia is an exhibition project of student participants in MIT’s Visual Arts Program course ‘This is Tomorrow? Urban Utopia, Dystopia, Heterotopia,’ taught by Ute Meta Bauer and Yvonne P. Doderer. The course was inspired by ‘This is Tomorrow,’ a ground breaking, trans-disciplinary exhibition by the Independent Group at London’s Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1956. X-topia is the result of reviewing and reflecting on selected texts and a wide range of 20th century fiction and documentary films supplemented by a weekly transdisciplinary lecture series with guest speakers from all over the world. Students were assisted by Mary Hale and Morgan Pinney.

Contributions by Gabriel Chan, Lee M. Dykxhoorn, Adam B. Galletly, Mishayla T. Greist, Natsuki Maeda, Robert J. Mastro, Timothy R. Olson, Lisa M. Pauli, Mais M. Sartawi, Gerhard J. Van Der Linde.

Y-topia
Students of ‘Radical Networks, Tactics, Breakdowns,’ taught at the MIT Visual Arts Program by Amber Frid-Jimenez, will present research projects on participatory online and mobile platforms that explores how computational media has altered communication and collective action. Revisiting notions of utopia, dystopia and heterotopia in 20th century urban theory and art practice, the work explores the utopian assumptions implied by a teleological approach to technological innovation. Students were assisted by Jaekyung Jung and Doug Fritz.

Contributions by Yannick Assogba, Sam Kronick, Jason Rockwood, Richard The, Jeffrey Warren, Jess Wheelock.

Image credit: Amber Frid-Jimenez.