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PROTO/E/CO/LOGICS//

SPECULATIVE MATERIALISM IN ARCHITECTURE

SYMPOSIUM / ROVINJ / CROATIA / 6-7 AUGUST// curated by Alisa Andrasek and Bruno Juricic

links: http://proto-e-co-logics.com and http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/STUDY/VISITING/rovinj.php

The symposium will tease out speculative directions for architecture that move beyond innocent and reductive approaches to ecology as in notions of “sustainability” and “green”. As Slavoj Zizek reminds us, the so called “balance of nature” is in itself a myth since catastrophes have always been an integral part of natural history. Rather than acting from a position of idealization with regards to nature, can we conceive of agency within a condition that isalready artificial, accepting noise and errors, embracing true face of complexity?

Recent tendencies in architecture take a unique point of view, with aesthetically novel and unnatural sensibilities emerging from a close scrutiny and study of apparently natural systems. These speculative tendencies are being driven by mathematical and computational abstractions that transform the way we understand the matter-information relationship. Instead of form being imprinted upon matter, matter is understood as an active agent in its own formation. It promotes dissolution of linear hierarchies, enabling heterogeneous and non-linear nature of complex agencies to hybridize and be incorporated into increasingly complex fabric of architecture. Under this accelerated convergence of matter-information, architecture can begin to speculate its own possible futures within denaturalized material ecology and conditions far from equilibrium.