Architecture and Transformative Politics = Coup d'Funk
Starts:
Finishes:
Venue:
Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street
No booking required
Architecture and Transformative Politics = Coup d'Funk
Organisers: Architecture & Social Movements Network (Royal College of Arts) and Focus on the Funk (Birkbeck)
What is the role of artists, activists, writers & academics as well as militant research practices in projects of political transformation during times of reaction, fascism and coups? What collaborations can be established between architecture, law, politics, philosophy and social movements?
Recent referendums, elections and cuasi-judicial or political processes in the UK, the US, Colombia and Brazil have made evident the disconnection between urban centres and post-industrial hinterlands. While many reasons lie behind these lines of division, it is undeniable that at stake are a series of decisions concerning people, territory and its architecture. Equally evident, is the inability of most political parties, academia and media as well as other visual practices, to grasp the socio-political contexts and perspectives from which these popular votes and varieties of populism keep emerging. However, events like these are not entirely surprising. Many have cautioned against the dangerous consequences of neoliberal forms of governance being mobilized by fascist and xenophobic projects, as well as against the consequences of historically revisionist and politically questionable equivalences between rightist and leftist varieties of populism.
It is in this context that an attention to popular and social movements as well as their political organisation is key. In our view, social movements and emerging political organizations are evidence of important mutations taking place in the social and material environments of our cities and territories. They are the product of concrete lives and conditions whose specificities are often unrecognized by existing structures of political representation and academic research.
The two-day event will pose the following questions: what design, research and collaboration methods have to be developed so that the spatial problems of social movements can be adequately described and addressed? How can organizations that emerge out of social movements continue to learn from them? How can academic institutions and design practices develop alliances with popular organizations and movements? What forms of struggle and militancy are required for the development of counter-hegemonic projects?
Please note: You need to book separately for each day
Day One: Conference (attendance limit 220)
Date: 3 March 2017
Time: 2.30-5pm
Venue: Birkbeck, University of London, Bloomsbury, Malet Street main building, Room B34, Torrington Square Main Entrance
Speakers include:
- Juan Carlos Monedero (Universidad Complutense Madrid & Podemos, Spain)
- Nina Power (Roehampton University, UK)
- George Cicariello-Maher (Drexel University, USA)
FREE EVENT, OPEN TO ALL: BOOK YOUR PLACE
Day Two: Workshop (attendance limit 45)
Date: 4 March 2017
Time: 10am-6.30pm
Venue: Royal College of Art, Kensington Campus, Room D612, 6th flooroom B34
Speakers include:
- Radha D'Souza (Westminster University)
- Antoni Font (Barcelona en Comú, Spain)
- Tiago Mota Saraiva (ateliermob, Portugal)
- Dimitra Siatitsa (Inura Athens, Greece)
FREE EVENT, OPEN TO ALL: BOOK YOUR PLACE
Partner organizstions
School of Architecture, Royal College of Art; Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities; Birkbeck School of Law; Serpentine Galleries.
Contact name:
Madisson Brown