Interrupt - Sepideh Karami by Architecture+Philosophy

Philosophies ResArc KTH- Relationality, Spatiality, Materiality-Spring 2013

-interrupt Sepideh Karami-PhD @ UMA-(Ume책 School of Architecture)

-interrupt Philosophies ResArc KTH- Relationality, Spatiality, Materiality-Spring 2013 Course Leader: Helene Frichot

By: Sepideh Karami-PhD @ UMA-(Ume책 School of Architecture)- August 2013

Content 1. Introcuction 2. Relationality 03

• Relations and Agency: “Flowerbox Architecture”? No, thanks! • The Theory Tool Box: “New wars need new strategies!” 3. Spatiality 08

• Container Technologies: “What escapes from the capsules? What can capsules escape from?” • Ficto-Criticism: “Interruption” 4. Materiality 13

• Posthumanist Philosophies: “Cyborg and Amateurism” • Affect: “I look at this woman. Who is she?” 5. Conclusion 17

Introduction Franz Kafka writes, “A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us”. Foucault considers knowledge “not for knowing” but “for cutting”. In both quotes, the action, the move and consequently ‘change’ and ‘revolution’ is the fundamental message. What matters is not the theory or knowledge itself but what it can do. In fact the knowledge or theory is built while operating, affecting or changing; its credibility and reliability is hinged to its performative affects. Hence the “cut” and the “stroke” suggest how theory should perform within the reality outside, in everyday life, in politics and in history, in time and space. Theory should be the ax to break down the frozen and solidified routines to let the sea overflow, spill and become “practice” in each of its stroke. Theory is not separable from practice if it is supposed to be applied and become effective. The following collection is produced in three different modules of PhD Philosophy course at KTH. In each text that is basically a reflection on the collection of readers in different conceptual clusters, I have tried to keep close to my own thematic research on one hand and investigate it in close relation to practice of architecture on the other. It has been an effort to see how each conceptual cluster could be applied in practice and what are the possibilities and potentials for opening up new concepts while being put to work. I have tried to test the relation of each theoretical discussion to reality, through, movie, literature and architecture. As my own research interest is summed up under the title of “revolution”, my goal has been more or less to study each cluster through the lens of ‘change’ and ‘revolution’. It’s why the ‘act’ itself becomes the fundamental search for me in theory; the small and tiny acts, which are capable of making changes and revolutionizing our routines and what we are immersed in without being aware of. In the first module, Relationality, the conceptual clusters “01 Relations and Agency” and “04 The Theory Tool Box” were the guidelines to develop my discussions. The contributed text to cluster 01, “’Flowerbox Architecture’? No Thanks!” discusses the transformation of the role of architects to a role closer to social workers in very many of recent practices. What is criticized is both ignoring the aesthetics value of space and withdrawing from where power is present in some of these practices. That instead of partaking in the power struggle they only rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic. The second text, “New Wars Need New Strategies”, reflecting on cluster 04, investigates the relation between theory and practice and accordingly the role of new intellectual (here architect) not as an observer but as an activist and actor. Looking at architecture and planning practice of Teddy Cruze, the architect who performs where conflict persists, it studies how immediate action survives theory from being expired or hijacked by counter forces. It is about where to act, how to act and when to act. 1

“A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us”.

The second module, Spatiality, became a chance for me to investigate two conceptual clusters, “07: Container Technologies” and “09: Ficto-Criticism”. The text “What Escapes from Capsules? What Can Capsules Escape From?” reflects on Container Technologies in two parts. It mainly studies if and how capsules could be transformed into wombs and what liberating potentials capsular society offers? In regard to Fictocriticism my text “Interruption” deliberates to the concept of ‘interruption’, which I found one of the most related concepts to revolution. Here I brought up two examples from literature and architecture to study the concept of interruption. I looked at the project Metro-cable by Urban Think Tank as an exemplary architecture project that interrupts the dominant urban setting and creates access to urban infrastructure for excluded parts of the society. In the third and last module, Materiality, I concentrated on two clusters, “11: Posthumanist Philosophies” and “15: Affect”. “Cyborg and Amateurism” contributed to Posthumanist Philosophies, discusses how cyborg identity has resulted in amateurism and what amateurism could bring to different professions and disciplines including architecture. Amateurism lets you be attendant in different fields, breaks the boundary between disciplines and gives you a part in each; all this is possible thanks to cyborg identities. The Affect Theory, gave me a chance to re-look at three videos and movies. In the text “I Look at This Woman. Who Is She?” I investigate the concept of ‘delay’, ‘pause’ and ‘slow-motion’, as methods to intensify affect and how micro becomes important when each gesture is broken down to its tiny composing elements. As mentioned earlier the following chapters are a try to develop a theory toolbox to understand and conceptualize revolutionary aesthetics and the role of architecture in relation to the concept of revolution. I have tried to use this three-module course to investigate not only the what-ness of revolution but also, where, when and how architecture should perform to create a continuous revolution.

Philosophy unravels the knots in our thinking; hence its results must be simple, but its activity is as complicated as the knots that it unravels. —Ludwig Wittgenstein.

-relationality

The right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to access urban resources: It is a right to change ourselves by changing the city.

What are the architect’s roles and tools in a relational practice?

... from the moment a theory moves into its proper domain, it begins to encounter obstacles, walls, and blockages which require its relay by another type of discourse. Practice is a set of relays from one theoretical point to another. No theory can develop without eventually encountering a wall, and practice is necessary for piercing this wall.

When Kokhavi claims that “space is only an interpretation”, and that his movement through and across the built fabric of the city reinterpretes architectural elements and thus the city itself, he uses theoretical language to suggest that one can “win” an urban battle, not by the destruction of a city, but by its “reorganization”. If a wall is only the signifier of a “wall”, un-walling also becomes a form of rewritting - a constant process of undoing fueled by theory. 3

Relations and Agency

“Flowerbox Architecture”? No, thanks! Why have we -architects- withdrawn to the other extreme end? All these transformations of the role of architects from “designing the objects” to “designing the agencies” is initiated with good intentions indeed. It has started from the exhaustion of being the slave of huge capitals and the good intentions of producing sociability, involving different actors and encouraging inhabitants to participate in producing the space and its politics. But isn’t it withdrawing too much from our role towards a sort of “social worker” and loose our ability and attention to the aesthetics paradigm of space? Is the working as a social worker or diminishing the space production to what I would like to call “flowerbox architecture” the destiny of our profession? Isn’t it only being involved in activities that hardly even touch the powerful narratives of our cities? There is nothing problematic of playing the role of social worker but it should go one step further and be involved in the aesthetic value of space. As David Harvey writes in his The Right to the City: “the question of what kind of city we want cannot be divorced from that of what kind of social ties, relationship to nature, lifestyle, technologies and aesthetic values we desire.” And “the right to the city is the right to change ourselves by changing the city”. Hence I believe the right to city is also the right to make the image of the city. At the end we should have the right to imagine the aesthetics of our cities beyond what we are urged to accept and to consume as the dominant image. Many practices of architecture that defines their role as “spatial agencies” such as the ones of “aaa” that starts with new dreams and the beautiful ideas of defining architecture as “shared activity and a relational practice” operate mainly in the margin of the mainstream reality. Clinging into vacant spaces, acting in spaces where power is absent (De Certeau’s term) and “to encourage inhabitants to re-appropriate vacant land in the city and transform it into self- managed space” through everyday activity has the potential of bringing people together and the possibility to take action. But at the same time it is to take refuge in the safe islands of the 4

city and urban spaces without facing the power. Then I am afraid all these efforts become “rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic”. I believe “urban tactics” should operate where the power is present, and then the real art is how to find opportunities and take micro-actions to question the power. It is about de-territorialization of the already occupied lands rather than re-appropriation of vacant lands. This is where the political falls into the place. There is no “surprise” in action and in space when power is absent. It is about the courage of taking risk, operating and taking action in where it is risky, the risk of being destroyed, of being blocked, of being confronted and of being failed. Together with ‘where to act’, ‘how to act’ is also coming into importance. The activity of everyday life such as gardening and cooking, although bring people together, but to a considerable extent, lacks the characteristics of surprise, chance encounter and probable conflict. I believe the activities used as “tactical tools” should be of unfamiliar characteristics and lead to a kind of creativity, curiosity and new imagination. The question is that how architecture as agency or “agancement” can create situations that provoke new activities and accordingly new encounters? The contemporary story is: When “new architects” are chanting their songs, gardening cute flowerboxes, drunk in the celebration of differences and biodiversity, capitalism, that familiar giant, is standing in her elegant silk frock, enjoying the spectacle of cranes and scaffolds building up the amazing city of commerce, joy and light; she turns her magic wand in the air and within a blink many spectacular buildings mushroom from the ground. Here is how our cities are being built up. To act is just to confront “her” in a smart way. It is to create new imagination different from what we are fed with on everyday basis. Architecture is able to create this counter-image! How? There is a long way to go!

“

Interesting point you make Sepideh… and good reminder! Even though I believe that even ‘small scale’ projects or projects located outside what we would perhaps deem as the ‘center of power’ can play a role in change and have a positive effect, I agree that we have to be mindful of the way we think about what we do and aware of the risks of being marginalized. Risky gardening, provocative cooking perhaps? Or maybe one question is where and how can this kind of practice leak in to the spaces of power and be more confrontational? A move towards occupation, rather than appropriation? Which leads us to the area you are dealing with in the ‘aesthetics of revolution’… (Similar to my thoughts about what terms we choose to use in the blog post on the Theory Tool Box, ‘architecture’ or ‘space’.)

Thanks Brady for your comment! “Occupation” rather than “appropriation” is very interesting! And it is definitely deliberates to “revolutionary aesthetics”; it actually carries the notion of confrontation of power within! So thank you for bringing it to the discussion! Still I am concerned with the sorts of activities; what kinds of other activities can challenge the power; what new activities can architecture suggest or creates situations that new activities emerge! This interests me a lot, to create situations that unfamiliar activities being created.

“

Very inspiring reading. Thank you for articulating an issue I have been thinking a lot about myself. Is the picture of “rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic” your own or a citation?

Thank you Ida for your comment! If you mean the photo yes its taken by myself, a double-highway construction in Tehran. (was that your question?)

I was rather thinking of the words, e.g. “rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic”. Is that your phrasing?

Oh! Sorry! No it’s not mine, it’s a british idiom!

Ah, british of course! Thank you for introducing me to it.

The line is where Architects should act- Border Region by Teddy Cruz, Tijana-San Diego

The Theory ToolBox

“New Wars Need New Strategies” Franz Kafka writes “A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us”, and I would say this is what theory should do with the reality outside, in everyday life, in politics and in history, in time and space. Theory should be the ax to break down the frozen and solidified routines to let the sea overflow, spill and become “practice” in each stroke. This is how it becomes revolutionary in its emergence and its action. When Deleuze defines the operation of theory as encountering a wall that practice is to pierce, theory becomes the how-ness of action, of piercing the wall and hence they can’t be separated anymore. They create the network of ‘relays’, of dependent chain of actions. In this sense by defining theory as action the role of the new intellectual is also becoming significant. As Deleuze puts it intellectual should be the main actor not the one being in the margin of the struggle against power. The role of intellectual is not anymore representation but presentation. When it comes to the practices of art and architecture, artist or architect as the “new intellectual” does not any more reside and operate in the safe side of the struggle but she locates her knowledge and action in the middle, in the most conflictual condition where people and power collide; she becomes “the people”; those who actively participate in power struggle. She becomes part of the network of relays instead of being only the observer. Teddy Cruz, the architect who builds up his practice in the conflictual borders of urban dynamics like the one between San Diego / Tijuana, deliberates and exemplifies this necessity shift of locating the role of architects within the power struggle. He uses this territory of conflict as a backdrop to critically observe the clash between current top-down discriminating forms of urban economic re-development and planning legislature, on one hand, and the emerging American neighborhoods nationwide made of immigrants, on the other, whose bottom-up spatial tactics of encroachment thrive on informality and alternative social organizational practices. He basically by designing political and economic process act and try to change the legislations through political involvement with decision makers and with those affected by the very legislations. His practice is a sort of activism; a network of actions-theory that makes his machine of activism work. He puts the theory and knowledge in the middle of the interaction. Struggle here goes through the knowledge and theory toolbox to confront power and where he acts is the conflictual borders. 6

When it comes to Israeli military forces and when one faces the application of theory in warfare systems such as the one by IDF, it becomes crusious what is missed that a progressive and utopian theory can be applied by an oppressive and brutal system? What is missed that theory can be hijacked by the most brutal power systems of the world to fuel in the machine of war and genocide? It is absolutely a smart point by Naveh when he interprets theory as “a methodology that wants to disrupt and subvert the existing political, social, cultural, or military order”, which is in a way the task of critical theory. Not only IDF but also many other oppressive systems, totalitarian regimes apply these methodologies and reverse their effects. It is in fact detaching the theory from the ethics that is once built on and adopting it for different and opposite objectives. It becomes a bare methodology naked from its ideals; a utopian toolbox against power that has become a toolbox in hand of power. The question here is that what we can learn from this? Aren’t we thinking and acting at the same time? Are we delayed in taking action? Are we like “French generals”, in Bruno Latour’s term “always one war behind”? Well, perhaps if we add the issue of “time” and “context” to our operation, or in other word, taking theory as practice and make our ideals realized immediately, performing in a more micro forms of action, we’ll be more on time and perhaps taken our step before leaving our theory (or its methodology) to the oppressing systems to hijack it! New wars need new strategies!

“ helenefrichot

This is a great polemical take on the discussion between Deleuze and Foucault, and I have to confess I’ve always been a big fan of Kafka…and the breaking of the frozen sea quote has always sent shivers up my spine (affective power!) The architect as intellectual is a good question, and the way power relations (from which, if we agree with Foucault, we can never remove ourselves) can produce oppressive as well as liberatory ends. The discussion is well applied to Teddy Cruz, and I see that this work was also stirring some of the discussion you contributed to the group. Will you be plotting your own diagrams, inspired by Cruz, to apply to your own project? If so, you could test them here? hf

Thank you very much Helene for your comment! Yes There are usually very many layers in Kafka’s work that can be applied in different contexts and discussions, and all very expressive! Regarding the diagram of my own project, it’s very much applicable in my own research, although I have to work on it and I am not there yet with my case studies! But your comment made me think of it! Thanks!

-spatiality

... the individuals, with the help of numerous media, make images of themselves with more than one meanng. ... the struggle is not between one person and another but rather between ways of speaking and writing... such struggle is already under way within the language of a single person. In this case, to interrupt it is simply to provoke tendencies at work in that first language. In this sense, the practice of interruption seeks not to impose a language of its own but to enter critically into existing linguistic configurations, and to re-open the closed structures into which they have ossified.

Sadness will be any passion whatsoever which involves a diminution of my power of acting , and joy will be any passion involving an increase in my power of acting.

Writing is a question of becoming, always incomplete, always in the midst of being formed, and goes beyond the matter of any livable or lived experience.

Container Technologies

“What Escapes From the Capsules? What Can Capsules Escape From?”

footages from the movie “Taste of Cherry” by Abbas Kiarostami

In the movie “Taste of Cherry”, Abbas Kiarostami depicts a one-day narration of a lonely, aged modern city-man, fed up with his life, in an absolute ‘capsular’ setup. There are three main containers or capsules in this movie: the car, the apartment and the grave. The man is moving between these capsules, while identified mainly by his car. He is rarely out of a capsule, perhaps for some short moments in transition between them. The whole story goes on in a car. He leaves his ‘apartment’ (first capsule) driving his ‘car’ (second capsule) in the streets of Tehran, to find somebody to help him. He wants to commit a suicide and he has already dug his ‘grave’ (third capsule). He is now looking for somebody to do the job for him; the job is that when he will have taken the pills, he will be laying down in the grave that very night and the employed person should come to the grave the morning after and make sure that he is dead. If he is still alive, he should help him out of the grave (liberating him from the capsule), and if he is dead he shovels the earth into the grave to perpetuate his encapsulation. The grave is dug under one of the few trees somewhere between deserted hills out of the city, to where he gives lift to three persons and takes them to show where they should do their job. On the way to the grave, one sees the body-car moving around a strange landscape of gigantic road construction site where one sees only the machines and the bodies of workers, reduced to fleshes; all working with earth, digging and filling. Bodies out of the capsule are flesh, and that is what the man is in need of: “I need only your hands to shovel the earth to my grave. I don’t need your mind.” The world out of capsules is earth and dust: - Nice? It’s nothing! But dust and earth! - You don’t think earth is nice? Earth gives us all the good things!

- According to you, yes, all good things return to the earth.. This contradictory feeling between a perpetuating encapsulation and liberating from one, is visible through the whole story. There is a permanent desire of escaping the capsule and being combined with earth. There are always elements encapsulated and liberated from the capsules: the persons (fleshes) invited to the car, confront the man’s mind, getting stressed and escape from the capsule. While the flesh stays within the car, the gestures, the voice, the look and the thought is what spills over the capsule. He looks out, he is looked in; he calls out, he is called from out; fleshes come in and going out; the ideas, desires and wishes stay in the car and at the same time duplicated by transferring into the invited fleshes and go out by them. These are what break down the solidity, the closeness of the capsule; isn’t it the potential capability of the bodies to transform the capsules to a womb, to an organic matrix through what escapes from the physical body?

The new public within the capsule

No doubt that we are living in a capsular society. We carry our capsules with us everywhere. We are identified by our compulsory or voluntary capsules. And it is all due to protecting our physical and mental entity; no matter if there is a real intruder to our entity or not. And it has become both unavoidable and favorable. We have become new species; we have become: “Capsulophiles”. As Lieven de Cauter says: “the greater the increase in physical and informational speed, the greater the human need for capsules.” Within the world of 9

speed and flow, capsules are the shells of protection. They basically protect man from the real and virtual and melancholic dangers ‘outside’; protecting against what endangers us in one way or another in a context that Ulrich Beck calls the “risk society”. Dangers are interpreted and have different quality in different contexts. It ranges from a propagandized risk and real risk as death to the intruder of privacy or whished life style, which could be against the conservative norms of society both morally and politically. In this sense many sorts of capsules can function as liberating medium rather than limiting ones. In a context where public spaces are not a space for public-ness because of control and surveillance, the reaction could be withdrawing to the individualized and isolated life or creating new possibilities. In Iranian society people resist the hyper-controlling of public spaces not by withdrawing to isolation but by creating new public-ness within the private or new private-ness within the public. Capsules play important role here. For instance the apartment is not a place for solitude as in its Western counterpart but is a place for gathering, for parties, for meeting, for celebration, discussion etc.; because it can be hardly monitored by the dominant power; it is a place of liberation; a private place that creates new public-ness. This influences the architectural design of housing units and apartments, where larger spaces are dedicated to more collective areas such as living room, kitchens etc. to facilitate the gatherings. Personal cars as the extension of apartments are the same. They play extremely important role in protecting the freedom of being and strolling in the city especially for youth and women. Car has become a shell that detaches one from direct control while giving the options of connecting to the others. Here capsules play the role of not isolating individuals but facilitating the “being together”. All to all, the main questions are: how can capsules become transformed to a breathing matrix, to a womb? How they can become organic? How they can open up rather than closing down? And how the body of human being can overcome the closeness of the capsules, through gestures, look, voice, or in general actions?

The family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation. There must be something in family life that generates factual error. Over-closeness, the noise and heat of being. Perhaps something even deeper, like the need to survive. (...) we are fragile creatures surrounded by a world of hostile facts. Facts threaten our happiness and security. The deeper we delve into the nature of things, the looser our structure may seem to become. The family process works toward sealing off the world.” (Don Delillo-White Noise)

Fictocriticism

“Interruption”

Metro- Cable Caracas by Urban Think Tank

The Red-Haired Man There was a red-haired man who had no eyes or ears. Neither did he have any hair, so he was called red-haired theoretically. He couldn’t speak, since he didn’t have a mouth. Neither did he have a nose. He didn’t even have any arms or legs. He had no stomach and he had no back and he had no spine and he had no innards whatsoever. He had nothing at all! Therefore there’s no knowing whom we are even talking about. In fact it’s better that we don’t say any more about him. Daniil Ivanovich Kharms This is a story about somebody who does not exist, somebody who exists through nonexistence. It is a story about a man’s existence and as he does not exist therefore there is no story. The story eats the existence of a red-haired man through description and illustration of how he does not exist. The story and the character contradictorily negate each other; the latter through vanishing from the context of the story and the former through describing his disappearance in the sequences of narrative. The writer brings a nonexistence to existence by describing his nonexistence. In other word, by describing somebody who does not exist he brings him to existence and at the same time by describing his nonexistence he negates him. There is a conflictual dialogue between existence and nonexistence, between affirmation and negation in this narrative. At the end of the story both the character and the story arrive in a zero point of existence and that is how a void is produced; like nothing has ever existed. Ultimately the title is also killed as there is no “hair” because there is no “man”, and “red”, bewilderedly has no place to sit. But while reading and getting to the end there is an intention to go back and read it from the scratch; an intention or insistence to bring both the character and story to existence. There is a struggle between the story and itself, a continuous and fast “undoing” of every given fact by “turning it on itself ”, which I believe is a sort of “interruption” –in Anna Gibbs’ term- in the progress of the story. In fact the story eats itself through continuous and fast tiny interruptions in tandem. The voice of the writer interrupts itself. 11

“Interruption” as one technique germane to various forms of fictocritical practice can also be transformed in the practice of architecture when it is defined as a practice writing on the site. The idea of “fictocriticism” in general can define the practice of architecture that aims in making a gradual change in the fabric of the existing social order; that its intention is not to impose a language of its own but to enter critically into existing linguistic configuration. One challenge is to find and making apparent the discontinuities, ruptures, gaps and silences that lies in the politics of urban space and act within these ruptures to interrupt the continuity of dominant power. I would like to call these interruptions “micro-revolution” through special interventions. They are opportunist actions that are waiting and searching for the exact moment or place of possible action. One of the most famous projects by the architect-activists Urban Think Tank, Caracas Metro-Cable can be a translation of an interruption in a continuity of dominant urban flow. The metro-cable is an additional loop of transportation, that connect the most desperate parts of the city, the informal settlement to the loop of transportation of the formal city. The stop in the formal city metro is the place of interruption. Metro-cable actually interrupted the loop of formal flow -that is mostly servicing the higher class- by injecting the informal flow that is highly excluded from the right of being in the city and using the formal infrastructure.

-materiality Words, bread, and wine are between us, beings or relations. We appear to exchange them between us though we are connected at the same table or with the same language.

Cyborg writing is about the power to survive, not on the basis of original innocence, but on the basis of seizing the tools to mark the world that marked them as other. The tools are often stories, retold stories, versions that reverse and displace the hierarchical dualisms of naturalized identities. In retelling origin stories, cyborg authors subvert the central myths of origin of Western culture.

... different affects make us feel, write, think, and act in different ways. this engagement of affect and aesthetics is more a matter of â&#x20AC;&#x153;mannerâ&#x20AC;? than of essence: â&#x20AC;&#x153;not what something is, but how it is -or more precisely, how it affects and how it is affected by, other things.

Posthumanist Philosophies

“Cyborg and Amateurism” The “pleasure in the confusion of boundaries” and taking “responsibility in their construction” –that Donna Haraway in her cyborg manifesto argues for- is what only a ‘lover’, is capable to do. That is what is subtle in the meaning of becoming an “amateur” that originates from the Latin word “amator” meaning ‘Lover’. The transgression between human body and machine and the emergence of “cognisphere” have equipped us to act as amateurs in many different situations. Cyborg is based on amateur-ness, an amateur ‘man’, an amateur ‘woman’, an amateur ‘body’ or an amateur ‘mind’. It is actually what Haraway claims as partial identity. Amateurness is partial, and this partiality and unfinishedness opens the door for creativity, unmapping and becoming; an amateur is liberated from the labels and resultantly from “unity-though- domination” or “unity-through-incorporation”. An amateur is able to break phallogocentrism. It creates politics of dissent or as Haraway defines cyborg politics, that “struggles for language and the struggle against perfect communication”. We can act now beyond the predefined and established identities, professions and disciplines, and built up new hybrid identities in the constant condition of becoming, thanks to the existence of cyberspace. One is a photographer, writer, activist, journalist, etc. without being backed by any established institution and only through having access to cyberspace; we have become ‘chimera citizens’. Incredible numbers of variable blogs, thousands of documentary reports on political and social incidents, social networks, virtual identities and plenty of other experienced and emerging features in WWW proves the huge possibilities of claiming spaces of action, presentation and sharing information without any need of accreditation or institutional approval. Clay Shirky in his book “Here comes Everyone, The Power of Organizing Without Organizations” states that the possibility to publish news, photos and movies on the web has blurred the distinction between who is a journalist and who is not. In this sense it gives the agency to many more people to participate in (re)presenting and broadcasting stories from elsewhere and perhaps challenge the biased politics of dominant medias. In addition, gender, race, class etc. to a great extent could be disguised, played around, and redefined through anonymity and other possibilities cyberspace offers. One can imagine the cyberspace as world without gender, race, class, etc. Is that a utopian cyborg society? Although it should not be denied that the general access to cyberspace is yet not equal worldwide. In this condition, amateur and professional cannot be separated as dichotomies, rather they could be perceived as hybrids, as cyborg actors. Although it is pretty hard to be a chimera of amateur-professional, but this chimera could be liberated from the constituted limitation of a profession through the constant becoming of amateur. It would be better to say one should become a professional amateur that constantly makes the profession anew; the professional amateur might be understood as ‘revolutionary becoming’; being revolutionary is the profession of an amateur. Could that also be the case of discussion and investigation in the profession of architecture? Is the famous term of ‘participation’ one aspect of amateur-ness and to what extent the terms such as transdisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity opens the door for amateur-ness? I would like to argue for a cyborg architect who is a professional amateur in architecture. Cyborg architect could be defined as an amateur architect, not a vernacular one but the one who renews her/his social and political role by “retelling stories” as Haraway puts it. A cyborg architect enjoys practicing “in the confusion of boundaries” but more important taking “responsibility in their construction”. 14

Affect

“I Look at This Woman. Who Is She?”

In the last scene of Godfather trilogy, Francis Ford Coppola creates an affective scene, an unforgettable expression of loss, pain, love, violence and revenge. From the moment when Mary Corleone is shot to the end of that very scene, several delays are applied as a technique in expressing intense emotion that strongly affects spectacles. Coppola through choreographing gestures and bodily movements and voices creates two very influential moments in this scene. One is a suspension between death and life when Mary walks in shock toward her father, Michael Corleone, a suspension when the father realizes his daughter is shot and forgets his own injury; like he is not shot himself at all. The repeated shifts of camera from Michael to Marry, by focusing on their shifts of emotion are expressed in facial and body gestures. This repeated shift delays the transmission of emotions from the actors to the spectacles and this delay increase the strength of affection. But second part and even the more affective moment starts when Michael screams to the sky, and Coppola cuts the sound of the scream for some seconds. This cut of the sound together with the facial and body gestures, and the slow motion of the scene intensify the emotion that is transmitted to the spectacle, and then the moment when the sound of screams reveals and the motion returns to its normal pace, one is flown away by the exploded intensity of emotion. Here delays are the most influ ential technique to generate affect. This delay shows

all the tiny incidents, the micro-changes and shifts that creates the whole process; a process that we usually conceive as a whole. All these tiny gestures in between or all the tiny gestures that creates this totality that we call it sorrow, cry, scream have their own importance in creating an affect. This is what Bill Viola also does in his videos. In his work “The Quintet of the Astonished” (http:// vimeo.com/15130088), which is a display of different emotional expression of a group of people, shown in an extraordinarily slow pace, makes the spectacle being confronted with a slow process of affect instead of arriving too fast to the result in the natural pace we are experiencing things in everyday life. As Nigel Thrift states in “Spatialities of Feeling”, Viola by ‘slowing things down, shows how each element of the body takes its part in a show of emotion, which has its own contested cultural history’.

The process of affect could be understood by decomposition of emotions, to recognize all the pauses, gestures, sounds, gazes etc. that creates an intense behavior, what is not anymore controllable, what escapes from the confinement of the body, or better to say becomes extension of the body in connection and in encounter to the others. Affect is a process consists of all voids and plentitudes of gestures. Understanding and analyzing the mechanism of affect helps us to understand how body is

dispersed over time and space through emotion; how it is related to other bodies and how emotions play an important role that is usually denied. Affect is this connection. In my post on Capsular society I argued how gaze, look and voice help to create permeability in capsules. Affect is the intense accumulation of all these plus other gestures that are not controlled, and it is what exactly makes capsules permeable. Eric Shouse in his paper “Feeling, Emotion, Affect”, defines affect as “a non-conscious experience of intensity; it is a moment of unformed and unstructured potential”. What is interesting is also to see the collective role of affects. The experience of being part of unrest, rebellion or any similar forms of spontaneous collective action, shows how affect could join people, without every individual being able to reflect or explain why-ness or how-ness of their action. The affective ties are created through thousands of encounters or in Spinoza’s description of l’affect, it goes from one experiential state of the body to another and implying an augmentation in the following body to act. The image of revolution in general or any other similar sorts of collective intense action is represented through masses; and the mass does not represent personal feeling and affects in details but it expresses a collective affect or the outcome of thousands or millions of individual emotion; in other words it represents a totality. But if we understand the mass as a body consists of thousands or millions of parts, then every individual has a role in creating the affect or representing the emotion; like what we see in Viola’s “The Quintet of the Astonished”, each person represent the emotion by several gestures. What this can bring us? Lets reverse the discussion. I would like to finish this short reflective text by another movie. “Into Thin Air” (http://www. youtube.com/watch?v=tnsIgIlws50), a short movie by Mohammadreza Farzad, shows a scene of a unrest from around fifty years ago in Tehran. Farzad focuses on one body among the mass. As he slows down and rewinds a footage from that incidents, says: -I rewind the video and look again. But I can’t make out any of the faces. What it is I was looking for in this scene? I look at this woman. She puts one hand on the ground, gets up and exit from the corner of the frame. Who is she? By this narration Farzad focuses on one body among hundreds in the mass. He points to the importance of one story among thousand. These micro stories are what create the bigger stories. Revolution that we perceive as a macro event and an affective mass movement consists of all these personal and micro stories. It is a sea of faces, a forest of hands, and oceans of gestures and stories.

I was trying to test Affect Theory... and it worked :)

-Was worried by your faces on FB ...! - ha ha, was a try on Affect theory I went crazy, cause it was too abstract - Good one - it worked!

Conclusion Lets tell a story and never finish it; lets retell it again and again; lets forget what wanted to be said; lets see it anew. Lets tell a story and leave it for a while, pass by and return. Lets tell a story and erase it, like it has never been told, like it has never been heard. Lets tell a story, lets not finish it, lets grow new story from each word, from between the words, from between the letters, the pages. Lets take a basket of dots, of colons of semi colons and plant them in between the words. Lets fold the page, let’s fold the sentence and direct the story to somewhere else. Lets block a word from being continued to become a sentence; lets push it back, lets drag it somewhere else. Lets stop a sentence from becoming a story. Stand there for a while for a day for a year. Lets not say a word, not tell a story, lets stay silent and still. Lets forget the rest of it or hide it; and then lets withdraw abruptly and you will see, you will see the torrent, words spill over, like a torrent, like a tornado. *** The different thematic modules of philosophy course with its reader collections, related lectures followed by group discussions and the blog assignment, methodologically enhanced me with a chance to inhabit each cluster for a while and more importantly to reflect on each chosen cluster. The blog-posts not only helped to understand each theoretical cluster better but also worked for me as abstracts for probable future papers. The good experience of understanding each concept through short text, made me adopt it as a methodology for my own research. The choice of image in combination to the text brings the reflection to another level; what I would like to describe as an effort to settle the theory in practice. Choice of image for me was always an entry to the ‘world outside’, to what we experience in real world. This approach adds to what I have already been doing as “Image and Dialogical Research” in my ongoing PhD. Thematically my personal choices of theoretical themes were on the basis on my ongoing research, and through the produced texts I tried to develop the answers to my own research questions that I was already dealing with. Among the conceptual clusters, “fictocriticism” was the main concept that opened up a new route in my research both thematically and methodologically. The concept of fictocriticism revealed the idea of how small actions or what I would like to call “micro-revolution” can lead to bigger changes. “Fictocriticism” and the idea of “interruption” could be taken as a methodology in architecture. Taking the urban context as an established literary text, architecture can interrupt the urban flows and create pauses and turns. In other word or in Deleuze’s term by creating stammering moment it can revolutionize the urban spaces. *** All is delayed, all is changed, all is strengthened, and all is intensified. And revolution has already happened. Revolution is a pause and a change in what the routines were going on so far. Revolution is not adding but rearranging, moving around, stop when you are not supposed to and go on where you are supposed to stop. Revolution means to be aware, attendant and find a pause and stand in that pause or move there, dance there, shout there or intensify the silence.

One Frame On ‘Delay’ ‘Delay’ is a way to be affected by the world; to perceive the world; to be lost in the flow of bodies; to not being able to find each other.

Summer 2013- Ume책, Sweden....................................................................................................