Encountering ‘others’ and ‘elsewheres’ A socio-material investigation of Superkilen, Copenhagen Philosophies - Architecture in Effect, ResArc PhD Course KTH School of Architecture, Ida Sandström, June 2013
Table of Contents Introduction Part one: Encountering ‘others’ - on the production of difference, disagreement and territorial identities at Superkilen 1. ’We Are One’, Cosmopolitanism and Cosmopolitics 2. Superkilen, Beyond the Police, Disagreement and Agonism 3. The Ugly Squab, Ficto Criticism 4. Soil from Palestine, Container Technologies Part two: Encountering ‘elsewheres’ – on socio-material strategies of transcending the local 5. Interpreting the Open-air Museum, Boundary Objects 6. Object no. 94, Traveling Subjectivities/Quasi Objects 7. Urban red, encountering other ‘elsewheres’, New Materialism Bibliography
Introduction This is the result of a series of readings I have undertaken within the PhD course Philosophies at KTH School of Architecture. Concepts, primarily from Post-humanist Philosophies, New Materialisms and Critical theory, are explored and made operative through an elaborative investigation of Superkilen - a recently opened public space in central Copenhagen. Superkilen is a project designed to celebrate the cultural diversity of Nørrebro, set in the interstitial terrain between architecture, planning and art. The principal design concept, to fill the space with more than 100 objects from around the world, has resulted in an emblematic space for co-existence that has been presented as a ‘generator for integration’. The selection of concepts - including Cosmopolitics, Agonism, Ego-spheres, Boundary Objects and Quasi Objects - has been guided by my primary question of investigation: How does materiality affect the way relations to ‘others’ and ‘elsewheres’ are established in urban space? The work has been subdivied into two separate, but related parts. Whereas part one Encountering ‘others’ addresses the production of difference, disagreement and territorial identities at Superkilen, part two Encountering ‘elsewheres’ searches for socio-material strategies of transcending the local.
Part one: Encountering ‘others’ - on the production of difference, disagreement and territorial identities at Superkilen
1. We Are One - Cosmopolitanism and Cosmopolitics Thousands of butterflies have landed in Malmö the last week. Colourful and sparkling they are to be seen everywhere in the city - pasted to walls, on streets and in shop-windows, an on the statue of King Karl X, an old Swedish king, at the main square. They are numerous and they come with a promise of transnational unity: WE ARE ONE. The suggestive message, sent out for the Eurovision Song Contest taking place in Malmö the coming week, corresponds to the recent interest in the notion of cosmopolitanism – a concept that includes all who defines themselves as citizens of ‘the cosmos’ rather than of one particular state, religion, family or profession. The concept of cosmopolitanism goes back to Kant’s idea of a cosmopolitan law (introduced in Perpetual Peace, 1795) based on the principle of universal hospitality. The cosmopolitical proposal, as presented by Isabelle Stengers denies any relationship with the Kantian notion of cosmopolitanism. She does not address ‘a good common world’, but seeks on the contrary to slow down the construction of ‘the common’, by creating a space for hesitation – an interstice where concepts such as ‘good’ and ‘common’ can be examined and redefined. Stengers explains: “The cosmos, as I hope to explain it, bears little relation to the world in which citizens of antiquity asserted themselves everywhere on their home ground or to an Earth finally united, in which everyone is a citizen. On the other hand, the cosmopolitical proposal may well have affinities with a conceptual character introduced by philosopher Gilles Deleuze: the idiot. (Stengers 2005 p. 994). The idiot is a conceptual character borrowed by Deleuze from Dostoyevsky, describing someone who slows others down by resisting the consensual way in which a situation is presented and action is mobilized. He does so not because he believes the presentation to be false, but because he senses that ‘there is something more important’ (Stengers 2005 p. 994). The idiot, who cannot discuss the situation, as he does not know himself what is more important, becomes - in his inability to contribute to the solution - a producer of interstice.
The cosmopolitical proposal is ‘idiotic’ in so far as it addresses those who reject the consensual, without presenting an alternative. Where as advocates for ‘a good common world’ take cosmopolitanism as a vehicle of tolerance, Stengers referes to cosmopolitics as the cure for what she calls ‘the malady of tolerance’ (Stengers 1997 citied in Latour 2004 p. 454). Stengers constructs the concept of cosmopolitics by combining what Latour refers to as “the strongest meaning of cosmos and the strongest meaning of politics” (Latour 2004 p.454). Stengers refers to cosmos as “the unknown constituted by these multiple divergent worlds and to the articulation of which they could eventually be capable” (Stengers 2005 p. 995). The presence of cosmos in cosmopolitics resists the reduction of politics to mean only the transactions between humans. The presence of politics in cosmopolitics resists the tendency of cosmos to stop at a limited list of entities that must be taken into account, or in Latour’s words: “Cosmos protects against the premature closure of politics, and politics against the premature closure of cosmos” (Latour 2004 p. 454). Latour and Stengers both reject the idea of a common world already in existence. The question we must address is one of composition - what world do we want to compose, and with what entities? The world is not naturally one, a common world - if ever there will be one - “is something we will have to build, tooth and nail together.” (Latour 2004 p. 455). Latour’s choice of words is an invitation to return to the realm of architecture. To what extent will an allembracing design such as Superkilen contribute to construction of the common? If it is true, as declared by Latour, that we have to choose between cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitics, the spatial consequences cannot be ignored when advocating one over the other. Therefor the closing question becomes one of matter and intention; what spaces does the cosmopolitic proposal produce, and how do they differ from those produced by the cosmopolitan idea of one common world where ‘we are one’?
2. Superkilen, Beyond the Police - Disagreement and Agonism Drawing on Jacques Rancière, Introducing Disagreement (2004) this is a continuation of a discussion on Superkilen – a recently opened public space in central Copenhagen, located in Mjølnerparken, an area defined as a ‘ghetto’ by the Danish government. The official definition of a ghetto operates through criteria’s constructed to describe the level of exclusion from ‘the Danish society’ and indicates a high percentage of immigrants or descendants from non-western countries, a high percentage without connection to the labour market and/ or a high level of convicted crime (Ministry for Social Affairs, 2010). Spaces of exclusion, of parallel worlds, are described by Rancière as breeding grounds for potential political subjects, subjects uncounted by the police. Acknowledging Mjølnerparken as fertile ground for politics and subversion suggests a threat to the police. In respond the police operates through inclusion, as inclusion renders it impossible to quarrel on the common. For the distribution of the sensible to be intact, the countable categories of society must include all. Therefor only a counting of the uncounted can disarm and neutralize a potentially political space, and thereby prevent an antagonistic dispute on the common. The project of Superkilen was approached by the architects as “an exercise in extreme public participation”. The spokesperson for BIG explains: “Rather than a public outreach process towards the lowest common denominator, or a politically correct post rationalization of preconceived ideas navigated around any potential public resistance – we proposed public participation as the driving force of the design, leading towards the maximum freedom of expression” (BIG 2013 n.p.). A general designation of Superkilen could be that it resembles a somehow roughly drawn caricature of a plural world. Lately a massive outbreak of graffiti has indicated that all actors are not yet assembled as allies to the project. Other, more articulated voices in neighbourhood, have expressed sharp critic to the project and what they experience as a quasi-participatory process, resulting in a project almost identical to the vision brought to the table by the architects (see Politiken 2010-07-14).
To me, the space as such - filled with disparate objects (street furniture, play tools, commercial signs) and covered with clashing colours (red, pink, orange) – makes a rather weak picture of ‘the maximum freedom of expression’ that it claims to be the result of. The space is, in its colourful rubber ground and eyecatching artefacts, reminiscent of a popular fairy-tale playground in Malmö. Assuming (with good reason) that Superkilen is not intended for children primarily, one may ask for whom the splendour of colour is intended. Is it perchance for another particular - yet countable - category within society; ‘the immigrants’? Superkilen’s has, it seems, offered inclusion in return for the political. Is Superkilen best understood in the light of the police’s need of control, or can it on the contrary be seen as an emancipating space opening up for multiple interpretations, by breaking with habitual uses of public space? The answer may well, considering the scope of the question, be contradictory; Superkilen might, in spite of its initial intentions, render new and unforeseen political subjectivities beyond the police.
3. The Ugly Squab - Ficto Criticism It was so beautiful out there. At the Black market cherries were in blossom, and in distance the Red square could be seen glowing in the evening sun. A lonely stork minced about on his red legs, clacking away in Egyptian, which was the language his mother had taught him. Round about the open square rose signs and artefacts from all over the world. Yes, it was indeed lovely out there.
she see there, mirrored in the clear water? She beheld her own image, and it was no longer the reflection of a clumsy, dirty, grey bird, ugly and offensive. She herself was a swan! Being born in a pigeon yard does not matter, if only you are hatched from a swan’s egg.
In the midst of the sunshine stood a remarkable fountain, covered with tiles and shaped as a seven pointed star. Water was glittering from the bottom of the basin right up to the edge, and there on the outside of the mosaic star, a pigeon sat on her nest. “Piip piip,” said the little ones, as they came to life and poked out their heads. The biggest egg was the last to break, and the poor squab that had been the last out of her egg, was pecked from the moment she was out. “She’s too big and strange, and therefore she needs a good whacking,” said they all. “You do not understand me,” said the squab and off she went.
Epilogue: What understandings of territorial identity does the story of the ugly duckling set at Superkilen open up? Is it perhaps a reminder that being born in a Danish ghetto doesn’t matter, if only you are hatched from a more beautiful (read Moroccan/Thai/Palestinian/Ukrainian/...) territory? Will the globally collected artefacts at Superkilen - as the water in the story – reveal ‘true identities’ beyond the normative reflection (dirty, ugly and offensive)? And if this is the intention – are we to regard the objects at Superkilen as ‘ethnicmirrors’ put in public space with a despairing aspiration to render individuals beautiful by re-connecting them to their ‘flock of bird’?
The wind was so strong that she had to struggle to keep on her feet, but she ran on just the same, crossing 12, if not more, undulated white lines on black asphalt, until she reached a great shiny structure in the shape of an octopus. There in the spongy interior of the many-armed beast she lay, weary and disheartened. It got late. Just as the sun was setting in splendour, a flock of large, handsome birds appeared from behind the red brick building, graciously navigating between vertical objects and commercial signs. She had never seen birds so beautiful. They were dazzling white, with long graceful necks. They uttered a strange cry as they unfurled their magnificent wings to fly from this cold land, away to warmer countries and to open waters. She did not know what birds they were; yet she loved them more than anything she had ever loved before. “I shall fly near these royal birds, and they will peck me to bits because I, who am so very ugly, dare to go near them. But I don’t care. Better be killed by them than to be nipped by the pigeons.” So she followed the beautiful birds to the star shaped fountain and into the water and swam towards them. “Kill me!” she said and bowed her head down over the water to wait for death. But what did
4. Soil from Palestine - Container Technologies In 2011 the artist group SUPERFLEX travelled from Copenhagen to Palestine with Hiba and Allaa, two young women with family history in – but as it turns out, barely any memories of – Palestine. The mission of the journey was to reach the site of the former village of Hiba’s and Allaa’s grandparents, and bring back an object for Superkilen from there. I followed the women’s journey in an almost 30 minutes long sequence of four films uploaded at Superkilen’s homepage and on Youtube. The expectations seem to build up as the women, guided by Hiba’s grandmother on a loud crackling cell phone, searches the wide undulated landscape for traces of their ancestors. ‘She says to look for two stones that look like sofas, which are hard to see, but we should walk straight upwards.’ Five minutes into the third film the promising atmosphere seems to be exchanged by resignation and exhaustion. ‘It’s all torn down, now it all looks the same.’ The redemptive turning point comes with the sudden appearance of a local shepherd. ‘He says that an old lady came by a few years ago, which might have been my grandmother. And she recognized this place as her own parents’ house, just here.’ His story is declared to be true by the old woman on the cell phone, and the treasure hunt is officially over. The sofa-resembling stones remain unfound. The last part of the film is a description of the process of transporting the object, e.g. a plastic trunk full of soil, from the hillside in Palestine to its final destination – Nørrebro, Copenhagen. More than 20 years before Superkilen was launched, Margaret Thatcher claimed the individual’s stranglehold on the common in her much cited statement on the death of society: ‘there is no such thing as society; there are only individuals, individuals and families’ (Thatcher in De Cauter 2004, p.81). The increasing individualization of society has been an insistent theme in social science during the last century. De Cauter argues nevertheless that individualization, paired with an immense disinterest in the concept of society and solidarity, has only
recently been transformed into an official ideology of hyperindividualism. Sloterdijk enters a similar discussion when describing how life mechanisms during the 20th century has been caught in ‘a centrifugal force that scatter individuals into their own world cells’. A process leading to an ontology of separateness. Separate world cells (egospheres) are produced and supported by the practise of self-objectification through ego-technical devises such as mirrors and diaries (Sloterdijk 2007 p. 98). Sloterdijk describes how the contemporary apartment is no longer a place where the get-together of individuals is undertaken, but a place that supports ‘the pairing of the individual with himself ’. We stand, according to Sloterdijk, before a crisis of the second person, where individuals are taking themselves to be ‘the substantial first, and their relationships to others to be the accidental second’ (Sloterdijk, 2007, p.96). A condition described by Elías Canetti as ‘a society in which every person is depicted, and prays before his own image’ (Canetti in Sloterdijk 2007 p.99). So what about Superkilen? Can Sloterdijk’s notion of egospheres cast new light on the seemingly far-fetched idea of traveling 2000 miles only to bring back a trunk of soil to the construction site of an urban park in Copenhagen? Does Superkilen make more sense, when regarded as a space for meeting – not the other, but the self ? Hyperindividualism, as described by De Cauter, celebrates the passage of information through the subject. A similar preference to strong authorships can be traced in the design concept of Superkilen. Here every object - may it be a bench from Cuba, a manhole from Israel or soil from Palestine, is connected to a story, and to memories from past times and places far away. The site becomes a collage of strong subjectives, of materialised (self-) reflections on exile and belonging. The egospheres at Superkilen are however, unlike the individual apartment, not hidden, but explicitly exposed to others. Such exposure of the personal turns the space into a field of what Sloterdijk calls ‘connected isolations’ (Sloterdijk 2007 p.92), a space that enables the establishment of (if nothing else) brief relations to the accidental second. Is the design concept of Superkilen to be understood as an attempt to create connection where the common is considered a lost cause?
Part two: Encountering ‘elsewheres’ – on socio-material strategies of transcending the local
5. Interpreting the Open-air Museum - Boundary Objects ”A world Exhibition at Nørrebro”1 “A Contemporary Urban Version of a Unversal Garden”2 “Copenhagen’s New Museum”3 Strong proclamations have surrounded the new public space in central Copenhagen - Superkilen, since it opened in June 2012. Comparisons have been made to the tradition of world exhibitions and the notion of the universal garden offering you the world in a promenade. At Superflex’s homepage I read: “In the garden the translocation of an ideal, the reproduction of another place, such as a far off landscape, is a common theme through time. As the Chinese reference the mountain ranges with the miniature rocks, the Japanese the ocean with their rippled gravel, or how the Greek ruins are showcased as replicas in the English gardens. Superkilen is a contemporary, urban version of a universal garden. A sort of surrealist collection of global urban diversity that in fact reflects the true nature of the local neighbourhood” – rather than perpetuating a petrified image of homogenous Denmark” (superflex.net/tools/Superkilen). Art curator Lori Zimmer describes in the online magazine Inhabitat Superkilen as “a unique presentation of a museum, weaving the fabric of the actual city with these international artefacts” (Zimmer, 2012). Superkilen has little resemblance of an ‘ordinary park’. The way benches, play furniture, lampposts and signs are arranged does, I agree, resemble an exhibition where each object is put on display with a lot of space in between, as to emphasis their importance in solitude. Why the mimicking of an exhibition space? Is it an intentional way to break with habitual expectations and privileges of a park, and what does it produce in terms of uses and interactions? Star and Griesemer touch upon the organising principle of a museum in their work on Boundary objects – a concept they use to describe the coexistence of diversity and cooperation. In analysing interactions between different groupings connected to the establishment of a natural museum, Star and Griesemer found different types of boundary objects, among which I have chosen to use “Repositories” when addressing the collection of objects at Superkilen and their socio-spatial production. 1. superflex.net/tools/Superkilen (2013-05-08) 2. topotek1.de/projects/chronological/110 (2013-05-08) 3. inhabitat.com/bjarke-ingels-superkilen-transforms-copenhagen-into-an-outdoor-museum (2013-05-08)
In general boundary objects allow different interpretations, but have enough immutable content to maintain integrity, as they “are objects which are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites” (Star and Grieseme 1989, p.393). They are in themselves a mean of translation as they carry different meanings in different social worlds, but have a structure common enough to make them recognizable across several separate social worlds. Repositories are described as ordered ‘piles’ of objects, which are indexed in a standardized fashion. One example of repositories is - apart from museums - libraries. Characteristic for ‘repository-spaces’ is the selection of things on display and how it allows people from different social worlds to “use or borrow from the ‘pile’ for their own purposes without having directly to negotiate difference in purpose” (Star and Grieseme 1989, p.410). If repositories are, as suggested by Star and Grieseme, “built to deal with problems of heterogeneity caused by difference in unit of analysis” (Star and Grieseme 1989, p.410), then why is Superkilen constructed in a similar way? Is the “problem of heterogeneity” too challenging to be addressed by conventional design, creating more universal qualities by composition, shelter and shade? The more critical question links to the intention of the space as a vehicle for integration: what social interactions are present in a space where ‘negotiations of purpose’ have become redundant? The aspiration to enlighten visitors by showing singular objects cut out from their context does recall Patrick Geddes’ belief in the exhibition as a vehicle of education, materialized in his project the ‘Outlook tower’. As the name suggests, a place of outlook, and at the same time a type-museum, created to make people understand their city (Edinburgh) and its relation to the world at large. The objects at Superkilen originate from specific ‘elsewheres’ (e.g. a bench from Cuba, a fountain from Morocco etc.), but the composition itself resembles other typologies sprung from a European tradition of national romanticism, such as the open-air museum. Skansen, founded in Stockholm in 1891, was the
first open-air museum. It was constructed to show traditional ways of life from different parts of Sweden and to, as described by Mary Hanrock, “represent the rural other” (Hancock 2010 p. 101). 150 objects, mainly houses, were brought from travels in Sweden, and shipped piece by piece to Stockholm. It was created around a nostalgic longing for lifestyles and forms of community that were rapidly giving place to an increasingly industrialized society. Today there are hundreds of open-air museums around the globe, exhibiting vernacular architecture in respond to what Hanrock describes as “a global appetite for local pasts” (Hancock 2010 p. 103). As an urban type the open-air museum is characterized by its pedagogical aims and cultural conservatism. At the same time it is a space of entertainment and leisure. The resemblance to Superkilen is hard to overlook. Whereas the typical open-air museum is a national memoryscape created out of rural localities, Superkilen operates through globally collected localities. Is Superkilen the unique experiment it claims to be, or is the exposure of ‘global localities’ something that we will see more of in public space? In 2010 (e.g. a few years before Superkilen was constructed) the city of Helsingborg, Sweden, took on a similar approach to public space and migration. Here the artist David Svensson won a competition for the redesigning of a public space at Söder, an area with a high percentage of people born outside Scandinavia. Svensson collected lampposts from different parts of the world with the objective that they should be “representatives for different periods, places and cultures” creating “a new fellowship” (davidsvensson.net) at the public square. The project, entitled Shine together, is supported online by pictures of the new Helsingborg agglomeration, and of each lamppost at its original site.
6. Object no. 94 - Traveling Subjectivities/Quasi objects A major part of the communication around Superkilen is created through online narratives. On site there is no official sign introducing the concept of the project. The act of downloading an app to your smart phone, provided you have one, will however get you access to stories about the project and a map locating the 108 objects on site. Through the app I find out that object no.94, a sound system from Jamaica is one of five objects that are not replicas but ‘the real thing’ brought back to Copenhagen from afar. The loudspeaker is entitled ‘Body Rock’, and was found in a suburb of Kingston by Niklas and Benjamin, two young rappers. The video clips of object no.94 (viewed on YouTube 6098 times between June 2012 and April 2013) tells the story of similar sound systems becoming the centres of spontaneous street parties in poor Kingston ghettos in the 1950s. A similar spontaneous use was encouraged when the loudspeakers were installed at Superkilen in spring 2012. Here anyone with a ‘bluetoothed’ cell phone should be able to transmit music. The original idea did however turn out to be a source of conflict; the noise generated by the loudspeakers spread freely in the open space and to surrounding houses. As a result the sound system was shut down the first summer it was running, and has been cut off power on and off since then. Lately the use has been mediated by restricted ‘play hours’. Michel Serres uses the notion of quasi-objects to describe a process of sociomaterial entanglement. The example he uses is the ball. A ball is only relevant when played - it’s meaning emerges in action. The ball becomes a connector that allows cooperation between the social and the material, creating the collective through a traveling individual agency – whoever has the ball, is the active subject. The constantly shifting agency makes the ball hard to categorise, it is neither subject nor object, neither material nor social. In Steps to an Ecology of Mind the British anthropologist Gregory Bateson questioned the boundaries between the social (human) and material (object) by describing a blind man with a stick. Bateson finishes his text by asking: “Where does the blind man’s self begin? At the tip of the stick? At the handle of the stick? Or at some point halfway up the stick?” (Bateson, 1972 p. 318 in Davis, 2002 p. 110). For Bateson, these questions make no sense since the mind is not determined by anatomical
boundaries, but by context. Information is traveling between the ground, the stick and the man, making it impossible to draw a boundary line between them. It is a feedback loop that involves both social and material components and is both internal and external to the subject. Bateson’s blind man is one early approach to re-thinking subjectivity and the entanglement of human and non-human actors. (Curiously enough a similar example - a man and his stick - was used already in 1923 by Paul Schilder when discussing man’s relation to himself and the surrounding world.) Similar questions have since then been addressed through assemblage theories, actor network theory and theories of performativity. More recently the increase of networked- and virtual technologies have expanded the theoretical scope further. N. Kathering Hayles describes how new technology – e.g. the Internet and networked information devices such as cell phones, tags and GPS networks, have emerged from the same forces that gave birth to Donna Haraway’s notion of The cyborg. Hayels argues that contemporary formations have long exceeding the concept of cyborg in terms of merging humans and technology, a process that is now moving us (humans) out of the human sphere and into the post-human. One my last visit to Superkilen, I had the ambiguous experience of facing the turned off loudspeakers, a heavy body stripped of its primary function. How can an object, intended as a vibrant sound transmitter, be conceptualised when numbed: as a lost opportunity of public interaction? An odd piece of furniture, descent for holding mugs and bottles? Or, as proposed by in the local newspaper, the result of a sloppy design-process where little or no considerations was made to sound environments? (Politiken 2012-10-04) It all boils down to the production of relevance. Where, in the network of object no.94, is meaning produced? Any one answer - in the loudspeakers, in the phone, in the blutooth network, in the person choosing music (here the complexity may increase if person A is outplayed by person B resulting in a sudden change of music), will be insufficient. Alike the examples of the ball and the blind man, the material (non-human) and
technical body of the loudspeakers are intimately related to human bodies. If the ball makes sense only when played, so does the loudspeaker. Much like the ball, the loudspeaker can only be “played” by one person at a time, why it may be conceptualised as a quasi-object producing subjectivities through a traveling agency. Object no. 94 is, more than anything, a highly designed socio-material experience. Here the location of the subject is unstable, as the subject is not delivered by the human alone. Instead it entangles technologies, objects and humans in numerous interactions and dependencies, and is consequently escaping any attempt to separate the social from the material. It’s physical presence rises questions of collective becomings, where does it lead if we undo the individual as departure?
7. Urban red, encountering other ‘elsewheres’ - New Materialism Returning to Superkilen my attention is drawn to the ground on which I stand: under my feet a triangular island of pink surrounded by a patchwork of shades of red, magenta and rust. The ground recalls a selection of lipsticks tried on and smeared off at the same one serviette. A 30000 m2 large space bursting with colours, materials, people, political- and artistic intentions, online narrations, sounds, artefacts and regulations – how could I possibly grasp such a complex configuration? In search for theoretical guidance I encounter the notion of Shi (in Bennett 2010), a concept originally used by Chinese generals. Shi was traditionally a way to conceptualise the multifaceted, material and non-material, configurations a general had to grasp in order to be successful in warfare. Bennett describes how “a good general must be able to read and ride the shi of a configuration of moods, winds, historical trends, and armaments: shi names the dynamic force emanating from a spatio-temporal configuration rather than from any particular element within it” (Bennett 2010 p.35). The notion of Shi describes the agency of an assemblage and helps to “illuminate something that is usually difficult to capture in discourse: namely, the kind of potential that originates not in human initiatives but instead results from the very disposition of things” (Bennett 2010, p.35). The Shi of an assemblage can be apparent or subtler, as it describes the energy and the style of a specific composition. It is but always vibratory: it changes over time as alliances are created and recreated by actants drawn to each other. The assemblage is an ‘open whole’ in the sense that its actants will never dissolve into one collective body, but stay autonomous and multiple. Each actant is capable of self-alternation, a transformation that may create new relations to the whole. Deleuze invented the term “absorbsion” to describe a similar partwhole relationship, where emphasis is put on the composition and the creativity within the actant alike. I notice the edges of each colour on the ground; they were more distinct last time I was here. I know there have been concerns from immediate neighbours experiencing red light reflected into their apartments, but now the paint has
faded significantly. The bike lane is no longer closed, as it was in June, but a sign tells me to take care; “the area is slippery when wet”. Traces of street-salt have made pink striped in the red, clearly slipping has been an issue this winter. I remember the controversies surrounding the choice of pavement. How the architects from BIG insisted on a material originally intended for indoor use when the Red square was to be constructed, and how that turned our to be a costgenerating choice for the City of Copenhagen as they could not use their usual machines for cleaning the ground. I recall having read recently that the surface will be completely redone in 2013 and that it is still not clear who will pay for it. Will the red stay? Standing at Superkilen other stories of urban red comes to my mind. Just across the bridge from Copenhagen, in Malmö, a new public space is being designed for Rosengård. This is an area often defined by its high percentage of immigrants, crowded housing and social deprivation. The new square, due to open in September 2013, was recently named “Rosens röda matta” (e.g. The Red Carpet of the Rose), a name in line with the red collage-like illustration available on the municipality’s home page. In Oslo a central square in Grønland - an area with a reputation similar to Nørrebro or Rosengård, stands before a major redesign. The catchphrase of the project “Oslo’s Red Square” is curiously familiar. Another paved red square is to be made. Scandinavian sibling spaces, connected through emergent red materialities, and if - as Donna Haraway reminds me - the smallest unit of analysis is the relation, why this repetition? In my encountering of Superkilen it has become evident that the project operates far beyond it’s geographical and temporal boundaries. The number of relations to other places, e.g. the number of ‘present elsewheres’ exceeds by far the obvious ones created by ‘foreign objects’ at site. Here the celebrated project “City Lounge” in St. Gallen, Switzerland can hardly be overlooked. Here an under-used space in the financial district was ‘ animated’ by a red carpet of dirt and snow-repellent rubber that covered everything in its path. Images of the project, designed by the architect Carlos Martinezin the artist Pipilotti Rist
circulated extensively in design- and architecture magazines the years after it opened in 2006. So what does the red as such produce in terms of interaction and co-existence? A shared property of the ‘red projects’ I looked at seems to be the belief that social cohesion and public life can be created by captivating design. Is this, as proposed by the city of Copenhagen, a bold way to create public space, or will it simply remain paint on the ground in contested neighbourhoods?
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