Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Opening seminar; Lofoten

Layered Landscapes Lofoten
Small auditorium

January 4 Wednesday - Opening seminar; Lofoten

09.00-09.30  Introduction  practical info + intentions  Gisle Løkken
09.30-10.00  Introduction  working methods + blog    Magdalena Haggärde
10.00-11.30  Lecture 1       Introduction Lofoten          Sigve Olsen, Lofoten matpark
11.30-12.30  Lunch
12.30-14.00  Lecture 2      Sociocultural approach
                                          to fishing communities        Sissel Tjosaas, UiT
14.00-14.15  Break
14.15-16.00  Lecture 3       Let’s build a waterfall         Anniken Førde, UiT

January 5 Thursday - #1 complexity

09.00-10.00  Lecture 1       Complexity & Mapping     Magdalena Haggärde
10.00-11.00  Lecture 2       Production of space
                                            through art                        Tone Megrunn Berge
11.00-12.00  Lunch
12.00-13.00  Lecture 3       Rhizome - lecture and
                                            literature seminar             Gisle Løkken
13.00-13.15  Break
13.15-15.00  Conversation about the assignment, summary and questions


#1 complexity

Keywords: new hierarchies / rhizome / schizoanalysis
Literature: ‘Rhizome’ (Introduction from ‘A Thousand Plateaus’ Deleuze&Guattari 1980)
Lecturer: Introduction lectures by teachers GL, MH, TMB

In his book Invisible cities, Italo Calvino let the dialog between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan evolve as a narration of innumerous urban conditions, as complex descriptions of different strange cities: Kublai Khan had noticed that Marco Polo’s cities resembled one another, as if the passage from one to another involved not a journey but a change of elements. Now, from each city Marco described to him, the Great Khan’s mind set out on its own, and after dismantling the city piece by piece, he reconstructed it in other ways, substituting components, shifting them, inventing them.  They didn’t speak the same language, and the dialogue was full of hidden stories within the story, with a constantly development of the perception of the city, and after a while: Kublai interrupted him [Marco Polo]: ’From now on I shall describe the cities and you will tell me if they exist and as I have conceived them.’ (Calvino 1972: 37)

The conversation between Marco Polo and Kublai Khan is maybe one of literature’s finest examples on how we see and experience along totally different trajectories consisting of perception and knowledge; shifting and alternating depending on mind-set, viewpoint and background. Even if the whole book probably is about the same city, the conversation reminds us about how different and complex the existence is – how it is perceived, conceived, expressed and lived. Every place, life and history can be divided and deconstructed into segments and layers like pieces of DNA that together assemble to whole organisms.

In his other book Six Memos for the Next Millennium, Calvino talks about the Italian poet Carlo Emilio Gadda’s book That Awful Mess: the least thing is seen as the center of a network of relationships that the writer cannot restrain himself from following, multiplying the details so that his descriptions and digressions become infinite. Whatever the starting point, the matter in hand spreads out and out, encompassing ever vaster horizons, and if it were permitted to go on further and further in every direction, it would end by embracing the entire universe. (Calvino 1988: 107)

Calvino is fascinated about the relationship of the particulate and the interconnected where each detail only presents an incomplete record – one point in the phase space of the system*. The notion that each connection infinitely lead to new connections predict a non-linear and non hierarchical network where each point is the centre of a network. Through the concept of rhizome lies the ultimate metamorphosis of a hierarchical system, as by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari termed as a tree structure: unlike the trees or their roots, the rhizome connects any point to any other point, and its traits are not necessarily linked to traits of the same nature; it brings into play very different regimes of signs, and even non sign states. (…) Unlike the graphic arts, drawing, or photography, unlike tracings, the rhizome pertains to a map that must be produced, constructed, a map that is always detachable, connectable, reversible, modifiable, and has multiple entryways and exits and its own lines of flight. (Deleuze&Guattari 1980: 23)

The conception of the rhizome liberates our search for knowledge and opens for experimentation about what is unexpected and unknown. It opens for infinite connections end juxtapositions of what is past and what is to become – regardless of limitations in time and space – revealing endless possibilities and new beginnings. In this open interactional space there are always connections yet to be made, juxtapositions yet to flower into interaction (Massey 2005: 11).

In the 1970 Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari developed the notion of schizoanalysis as a radical piece of philosophical theory primarily as a critique of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis. Freud focus singularly on neurosis and define any desire as lack - and interprets whatever the ‘patient’ says in terms of a ‘castration complex’ or the ‘Oedipus complex’, (Collins) which Deleuze & Guattari argue strongly against in ‘Anti-Oedipus’, with its problematic logic and symbolic order. Schizoanalysis begins therefor apparently as a critique of psychoanalyses, and develops into a reworking or (…)  a ‘metamodeling’ of its systematic malfunction in society (Guattari1996: 122, Guattari 1995: 58-76 in Collins). The process of remodelling (‘metamodeling’) is a process of reworking and reforming that is intrinsically artistic (Collins).
The intention of a schizoanalytic process is to prevent oversimplification and to allow complex systems of information to directly inform the process – and as such it is closely linked to the rhizome. Schizoanalysis rejects reductionist modifications in order to pursue complexification and processual enrichment towards the consistency of its virtual lines of bifurcation and differentiation (Guattari 1995: 61).

The etymology of ’schiz’ in schizophrenia and schizoanalysis comes from skhizein, meaning to split, break, separate or divide. With schizophrenia, this refers to the ’split’ in the mind (...) Schizoanalysis is trying to locate exactly where and how these breaks in reality arise, and then mobilize them to manufacture a new production of subjectivity (Collins). Guattari argue to expand and open the largely monadic, narrow and punitive process of institutionalization, so it can operate as a ‘polyphony’ that can bring into play ‘anthropological, social, and ethical dimensions that concern the whole of society (Guattari and Rolnik 2008: 376, in Collins) This is as a whole a question of expanding and remodelling the territory from which you stand and define your own way of being that is individually unique for you – from Guattari’s; autopoiesis, reappropriation or production of subjectivity (Guattari, 1995: 13).

The concepts are for us to use and develop into own understanding where the important thing is not the final result, but the possibility of complex mapping and cartographic methods to develop along processes of subjectivation. Felix Guattari is very clear stating this possibility in Chaosmosis:
I don't, however, con­sider my "schizoanalytic cartographies" to be scientific theo­ries. Just as an artist borrows from his precursors and contem­poraries the traits which suit him, I invite those who read me to take or reject my concepts freely. (Guattari, 1995: 12).


*(A phase space of a dynamical system is a space in which all possible states of a system are represented, with each possible state corresponding to one unique point in the phase space / A multidimensional representation of a dynamical system in which each dimension corresponds to one variable of the system. Thus, a point of phase space corresponds to a specific state of the system, and a path represents the evolution of the system through different states.)


Italo Calvino, Invisible cities, 1972
Italo Calvino, Six Memos for the next millennium, 1988
Lorna Collins, Schizoanalysis, https://lornacollins.com/schiz-basics/
Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, A thousand Plateaus, 1980
Gilles Deleuze & Felix Guattari, Anti Oedipus: Capitalizm and Schizophrenia, 1972
Doreen Massey, for space, 2005
Felix Guattari, Chaosmosis 1995
Felix Guattari, Chaosophy 2009
Felix Guattari, The Guattari Reader, 1996
Felix Guattari & Suely Rolnik, Molecular Revolution in Brazil, 2008

best
/GL & MH



Welcome to Layered Landscapes Lofoten!

BAS, spring 2017

Responsible teachers: Gisle Løkken and Magdalena Haggärde, (70°N arkitektur)
Assistant teacher: Tone Megrunn Berge, (Kaleidoscope Nordic)

Students: Anders, Andreas, Anna Liisa, Arne, Arnulf, Christian, Elise, Eva, Ingeleiv Andrea, Jøran, Kazhben, Lara, Lassi, Livie, Maria Eugenia, Matt, Pernille, Pia, Soheil, Stefanie, Stephanie, Stine, Sum, Sveinung, Teemu, Victoria Helene
  


….the essence of the deserted island is imaginary and not actual, mythological and not geographical. At the same time, its destiny is subject to those human conditions that make mythology possible. (…) What must be recovered is the mythological life of the deserted island (…) The deserted island is not the origin, but a second origin. From it everything begins anew. The island is the necessary minimum for this re-beginning, the material that survives the first origin…(Gilles Deleuze, Deserted Islands and other texts, 1953-1974)

Studio content:
Context; Lofoten is the history of extremes; extreme nature, extreme weather conditions, extreme natural resources and extreme survival. The archipelago of Lofoten floats in a timeless mythical narration of battling between man and nature rooted in the origin of human presence in these territories. The fact that Lofoten for centuries has hosted the world’s most precious fisheries of codfish, and now the sea bank assumed to hide a prosperous amount of oil and gas, signify a latent and incommensurable conflict that can irreversibly change the landscape, and its conditions. The people living in these territories, connected to the landscape and the resources for innumerable years are now facing not only external threats from global economies and climate changes, but also internal, national political decisions and structural changes in the fisheries which menace to deprive the resources from the local communities. In this context the municipality of Flakstad has started a ground breaking process of re-defining the position of three old fishing settlements (Ramberg, Napp, Fredvang) - still fighting for the right to exploit the surrounding renewable recourses - but also taking advantage of a year by year growing influx of tourists. The intention is a renewed development towards a more holistic and sustainable future that is susceptible to the inevitable changes, but at the same time it is crucial to try to be in control of the changes' impacts on the landscape and the societies. 

Working method; We will follow an analytical approach to the landscape inspired by Henry Lefebvre’s method of progressive and regressive reading. The method is highly spatial and sees the landscape as an intrication of abstract and concrete retrospective and forward -looking bodies, events and factual history. Lefebvre sees regression as a way of understanding the past when especially emphasizing the traces and splints of history being most significant in the present. For us it is a way to evoke the basic conditions that have constituted an area, like ownership, relatedness and heritage, political conditions, geological and geographical forces, trans human ecology and biology, laws and jurisdiction, etc. The past and the present is always provisional, incomplete and in progress, and If you really were to take a slice through time - says Doreen Massey in her book: ‘for space’ - it would be full of holes, of disconnections, of tentative half-formed first encounters. ‘Everything is connected to everything else’ can be a salutary political reminder that whatever we do has wider implications than perhaps we commonly recognise. This means that the regressive investigation sees the past retroactively by emphasizing what has happened and what could have happened by mapping of forces and phenomenon in play. The progressive method focus on the movement which anticipates its completion, which means what have created something new. The regressive-progressive method may be used for spatial understanding of landscape and architecture, and for socio-cultural conditions. It is important to study how people live, use and dwell in the landscape, or in general what produces the meaning of the space. The way the space is appropriated is based on distinctions like differences in classes, power positions, function etc., or is linked to how the space is arranged and inhabited. It is an knowledge based orientation that can be used generating new spaces, defined by Lefebvre in general as:
Conceived space; which is the way space is seen by architects and planners – like the codified and institutionalised understanding of space – where space is abstract and self-referential within the discourse.
Perceived space; which is life the way it is experienced and perceived.
Lived space; which is the heavily symbolic and culturally imbedded space directly experienced through associative images and symbols – and which draws on the culture and the place’s common experiences and interpretations – commonly known as the culture’s loci.

The intention using Lefebvre’s approach is to create a foundation from where we can investigate. Not least the possibility of reading the landscape along his many different notions of imbrication (overlapping information), as: flux and networks / different dimensions and different forms / ages / appropriations / territories (in law, size, time) / rhythm (circulation-rhythm, job/leisure etc.) / management / built and unbuilt space etc.
In addition to Lefebvre we will use a broad source of theoretical knowledge to help us elaborate and confront our findings within a discourse of complex understanding and transcendence. The situation in Lofoten provides a dichotomy of crucial issues that demands a holistic and open approach. But it is unhelpful if it leads to a vision of an always already constituted holism. The ‘always’ is rather that there are always connections yet to be made, juxtapositions yet to flower into interaction, or not, potential links which may never be established. Loose ends and on going stories. ‘Spaces’, then, can never be that completed simultaneity in which all interconnections have been established, in which everywhere is already (and at that moment unchangingly) linked to everywhere else. (Massey, 2005)

Learning Outcome:
Skills, knowledge and competence: We will work on elaborated methods to develop our ability to investigate complex and contested landscapes. We will learn to approach with respect and non-bias to uncover both the obvious and the underlying invisible structural forces in the landscape, the stakeholders, and the interests at stake.

As architects and planners we will encounter these issues and processes based on investigations and theoretical studies – learning to create a relevant foundation of complex knowledge and understanding. The studio will provide tools and measures for expanding the planning process to become comprehensive and relevant both regarding of global and structural forces, and for individual and local interests – not loosing the one perspective in the other. The aim is to slowly develop and confront the planning process for it to become more in contact with the real, and to elaborate planning processes along trajectories developed by Deleuze & Guattari as lines of flight. Manuel De Landa describes lines of flight as something to follow and something expected to redeem new responses – as an operator which transcends the real and ascends to the virtual (De Landa, 2002). The notion of transcendence is even an opening for experimental approaches that can be highly subjective and can give new and unexpected experiences and results - and will therefore require skills and knowledge to become relevant.

By combining investigation methods and at the same time stimulating individual research, we will learn to develop our own understanding and methodical approach. The overall intention for the studio will always be to enhance our individual abilities - preparing ourselves to act in complex and unclear situations.

Studio structure:
The studio will create a studio blog for all assignments and works to be posted. The blog will be used when reviewing the assignments, which will be in a studio-plenum.

The studio is structured along 6 different assignments each with a two weeks working period. The final assignment is regarded more complex and is given approximately 5 weeks working period. In between the assignments there will be a field trip to Lofoten both focusing on comparative locations in Lofoten and Vesterålen, and on our primary field of study in Flakstad municipality (the places of Ramberg, Napp and Fredvang). Each assignment follows a theme-structure based on the studio’s didactic approach. Lectures, assignment texts and literature will follow each assignment, and will be the foundation for the work beside individual tutoring. All assignments will be individually presented every two weeks. In connection with the field trip we will join a seminar in Ramberg on the topic Fremtidens fiskevær (The future fishing community), and the DAV will take place as an further alternative approach to the territory. 


Themes:
Keywords: new hierarchies / rhizome / schizoanalysis

Keywords: connectivity / layering / overlapping information

Keywords: vitality / global forces / ecosystems

Keywords: space and time / lines of flight

Independent program with artist Anne Katrine Dolven

Keywords: borders and margins / transcendence

Keywords:  points of departure / consolidation

See you all soon!
/GL & MH