Global Mini-Series: Cartesian Enclosures
Document Type
Video
Date
Fall 10-8-2020
Keywords
architecture, lecture, Marina Otero Verzier, automation, territories, enclosures
Language
English
Disciplines
Architecture
Description/Abstract
Marina Otero Verzier
Director of Research, Het Nieuwe Instituut
Head of the Social Design Masters, Design Academy Eindhoven
Architecture has a role in how encounters between animals, humans, plants, machinic and inanimate beings are structured in time and space, yet generally orchestrated to serve the comfort and privilege of some humans. It also supports systems where the distinction between machines and living organisms have been purposely blurred, one of which, I’d argue, is automated capitalist production. As a form of production, automation’s result is not only commodities but the biopolitical production and reproduction of forms of life in common through technology. In so doing, automation poses a conundrum to architecture: it allows the discipline to venture beyond its Cartesian postulates and operate with minimal or reduced human intervention, prompting its critical reinvention; simultaneously, it furthers intensifies the enclosing and exploitation of larger territories and their laboring bodies, thus participating in the extraction of what is common. While problematic, these architectures also serve as a lens to today’s challenges and responsibilities, and a testing ground for transcending the Cartesian divide through radical notions of ethics emerging from queer, de-colonial and indigenous studies.
Recommended Citation
Verzier, Marina Otero, "Global Mini-Series: Cartesian Enclosures" (2020). School of Architecture Lectures Series. 215.
https://surface.syr.edu/architecture_lectures/215
Source
submission
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
