Aca­d­e­m­ic

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IN THE THICK OF IT 

Lec­ture at TU Delft, Bor­ders & Ter­ri­to­ries, June 8, 2023

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DRECK­SAR­BEIT / DIRTY WORK 

Lec­ture at IKA, Acad­e­my of Fine Arts Vien­na, June 20, 2022

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Amidst con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed land­scapes, cov­ered with tena­cious traces and end­less claims and ide­olo­gies, with hopes, dreams, fears and sto­ries, with waste, waste, waste, archi­tec­ture – like all art and all life – is dirty work.

Instead of adding new promis­es and tox­ins, would it not make sense to fig­ure out what to do with all those that are already here and that won’t just go away?

Rather than start­ing from scratch, dirty work attends to accu­mu­lat­ed pasts and attempt­ed and abort­ed futures. It grap­ples with the left­overs, frag­ments, debris of things, ide­olo­gies and lives, with the facts and fic­tions that haunt every spot on Earth, with the many ghosts that abound and demand engagement.

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WATCH ON VIMEO

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STAINED AND STORIED 

Ter­ri­to­ries of Resource Extrac­tion as Mytho­log­i­cal Landscapes

Post­doc­tor­al research project con­duct­ed at TU Delft, Gold­smiths, Aarhus Uni­ver­si­ty, 2022–2023

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Ter­ri­to­ries of resource extrac­tion are cred­it­ed to cov­er more than 80% of the plan­et, and con­tribute to the biggest envi­ron­men­tal threats: to resource scarci­ty, to soil degra­da­tion, defor­esta­tion, species extinc­tion and bio­di­ver­si­ty loss, air and water pol­lu­tion and cli­mate change.

In order to under­stand these crit­i­cal land­scapes of the Anthro­pocene more com­pre­hen­sive­ly, in the project “Stained and Sto­ried” I aim to study them as cul­tur­al land­scapes with long human and more-than-human his­to­ries, mutu­al­ly relat­ing their mate­r­i­al and nar­ra­tive aspects. The lat­ter include mod­ern tales of Progress and eco­nom­ic prospects, polit­i­cal ide­olo­gies and sto­ries of social injus­tice, vio­lent con­flicts and eco­log­i­cal loss, but also tra­di­tion­al myths, leg­ends and folklore.

In order to inves­ti­gate the rec­i­p­ro­cal influence/agency of mat­ter and sto­ries, of facts, fic­tions and believes, I devel­op and employ a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary approach that com­bines per­spec­tives and meth­ods from archi­tec­ture, anthro­pol­o­gy, and the arts. Through such a nar­ra­tive artis­tic spa­tial anthro­pol­o­gy – close­ly linked to my con­cept of “Phan­tas­mog­ra­phy” – I attempt to reveal often over­looked fac­tors and actors of extrac­tive land­scapes and con­tribute to a bet­ter under­stand­ing of these com­plex and con­test­ed more-than-human cul­tur­al land­scapes. This forms a basis for an envi­ron­men­tal­ly and cul­tur­al­ly more respon­si­ble engage­ment with the land.

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TOX­IC TEXTURES

Exper­i­men­tal sem­i­nar, mod­ule “Built Envi­ron­ment”, HSLU Lucerne, spring semes­ter 2022, taught togeth­er with Alex Hurst

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PHAN­TAS­MOG­RA­PHY

Stu­dio at the Acad­e­my of Fine Arts Vien­na, 2021–2022

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In the PHAN­TAS­MOG­RA­PHY stu­dios we crit­i­cal­ly engage with con­tem­po­rary spaces and ter­ri­to­ries in rela­tion to the phan­toms and phan­tasms that inhab­it and shape them. While PHAN­TAS­MOG­RA­PHY I deals with spaces of extrac­tion, PHAN­TAS­MOG­RA­PHY II focus­es on spaces of accu­mu­la­tion. Sim­ply put, every­thing we make and build hap­pens in a field between extrac­tion and accu­mu­la­tion – between tak­ing some­thing away from some­where and gath­er­ing it some­where (else). Extrac­tion and accu­mu­la­tion thus mark the poles of our cul­tur­al, polit­i­cal and eco­nom­i­cal life and under­ly all forms of spa­tial production.

Phan­tas­mog­ra­phy, as we envi­sion it, is a spa­tial prac­tice con­cerned with estab­lish­ing con­nec­tions and under­stand­ings between the mate­r­i­al and the imma­te­r­i­al (sto­ries, mem­o­ries, his­to­ries), between the vis­i­ble and the invis­i­ble, between past, present and future, between the liv­ing and the dead, be­tween facts and fictions.

Phan­tas­mog­ra­phy is a prac­tice that com­bines meth­ods and tech­niques from the dis­ci­plines of archi­tec­ture, art and anthro­pol­o­gy, in order to devel­op a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary and mul­ti­sen­so­ry under­stand­ing of con­tem­po­rary spaces and man-made landscapes.

Phan­tas­mog­ra­phy coor­di­nates and aligns two dif­fer­ent modes of think­ing and mak­ing: a sci­en­tif­ic, sec­u­lar, fact-based, mod­ern, West­ern and an artis­tic, non­sec­u­lar, specula­tive, non­mod­ern and non­west­ern mode. Only by com­bin­ing and inter­twin­ing these com­mon­ly upheld oppo­si­tions is it pos­si­ble to under­stand how diverse phan­toms and fan­tasies con­tribute to shap­ing the world we (and many oth­ers) inhabit.

Phan­tas­mog­ra­phy is a sit­u­at­ed, site-spe­cif­ic ap­proach that places con­crete sites in rela­tion to oth­er sites (and non-sites) that they are entan­gled with through man­i­fold process­es and dependencies.

Phan­tas­mog­ra­phy com­bines research on, with­in and with spaces and land­scapes with their trans­for­ma­tion in crit­i­cal design projects. Read­ing and writ­ing, under­stand­ing and transform­ing are there­by inex­tri­ca­bly intertwined.

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LINKS

Insti­tute for Art and Archi­tec­ture, Acad­e­my of Fine Arts Vienna

IKA Sum­mer Pre­view 2021

IKA Review Sum­mer 2021

IKA Win­ter Pre­view 2021

IKA Review Win­ter 2021

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PHAN­TOM FORUM

Sem­i­nar at the Acad­e­my of Fine Arts Vien­na, 2021–2022

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The sem­i­nar lec­ture series PHAN­TOM FORUM, which is asso­ci­at­ed with the stu­dio PHAN­TAS­MOG­RA­PHY at the Acad­e­my of Fine Arts Vien­na, unfolds a larg­er dis­course on the agency of diverse phan­toms and phan­tasms in rela­tion to con­tem­po­rary spa­tial real­i­ties and prac­tices. Assem­bling orig­i­nal inter­na­tion­al voic­es from the fields of archi­tec­ture and urban­ism, con­tem­po­rary art, anthro­pol­o­gy, phi­los­o­phy, soci­ol­o­gy, lit­er­a­ture and post-apoc­a­lyp­ti­cal stud­ies, the sem­i­nar inspires dis­cus­sions on spaces and land­scapes at the nexus of human and non­hu­man action, active and pas­sive mat­ter, liv­ing and dead per­sons and species, sec­u­lar and non­sec­u­lar prac­tices, real­i­ty and imag­i­na­tion. In the course of two semes­ters spaces of extrac­tion and accu­mu­la­tion are thus entan­gled in a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary web of artis­tic and sci­en­tif­ic stories.

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LINKS

Insti­tute for Art and Archi­tec­ture, Acad­e­my of Fine Arts Vienna

IKA Review Win­ter 2021

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FLY ON THE WALL

Exper­i­men­tal sem­i­nar, mod­ule “Built Envi­ron­ment”, HSLU Lucerne, spring semes­ter 2021, taught togeth­er with Suzanne Song

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FIELD­WORK

Exper­i­men­tal sem­i­nar, mod­ule “Built Envi­ron­ment”, HSLU Lucerne, spring semes­ter 2020, taught togeth­er with Lukas Raeber

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BERG DER ENGEL

Exper­i­men­tal sem­i­nar, mod­ule “Built Envi­ron­ment”, HSLU Lucerne, spring semes­ter 2019, taught togeth­er with Hol­ger Schurk

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FETISH-FAC­TISH

Exper­i­men­tal sem­i­nar, mod­ule “Built Envi­ron­ment”, HSLU Lucerne, spring semes­ter 2018, taught togeth­er with Hol­ger Schurk

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INDEX ROT+++

Exper­i­men­tal sem­i­nar, mod­ule “Built Envi­ron­ment”, HSLU Lucerne, spring semes­ter 2017, taught togeth­er with Hol­ger Schurk

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Lev­enti­na – Envi­sion­ing A Valley

Sum­mer School ETH Zurich, 2014

Pro­gram Direc­tor: Michael Hirschbich­ler, co-teacher: Nils Havelka

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EAST­OPIA – Entwer­fen im Bestand sozial­is­tis­ch­er Utopien

Design Stu­dio Prof. Marc Angélil, ETH Zurich, Autumn Semes­ter 2014

Direc­tor of Stud­ies: Michael Hirschbichler

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Roh, Rau, Robust / Raw, Rough, Robust – Archi­tec­ture as Infrastructure

Design Stu­dios Prof. Marc Angélil, ETH Zurich, 2012–2014

Direc­tor of Stud­ies: Michael Hirschbichler

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Exper­i­men­ta Urbana

Sum­mer school, par­tic­i­pa­tion with a group of ETH Zurich stu­dents, Kas­sel, June 27 – July 7, 2012

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A Trop­i­cal House

Design Stu­dio, Papua New Guinea Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy, 2009–2010

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