(Material Conversations) Critique (?) in planning and architecture in twenty-first century Stockholm A presentation for the course “Communications: Staging the message� October 2013 Helen Runting Urban Planner (B.UPD (Hons.)) Urban Designer (PG Dip.UD, MSc.UPD) PhD Student, Critical Studies in Architecture, KTH School of Architecture helen.runting@arch.kth.se svenskstandard.org
The Plan
The development of a disciplinary culture of criticism in urban planning at this point occupies a liminal space – it is yet to be brought into being. In the Stockholm context in which I wish to work, critical reflection is presently being supplied by (and sourced from) art practice. Permitted to enter the “space” of planning, these practices pursue a form of critical engagement reliant on their position of artistic autonomy – they produce a critique from the outside. As an urban planner and urban designer, necessarily inhabiting the position between planning and architecture, I see Stockholm’s urban planning project and process as a site for active design intervention and knowledge production. Through the proposed research I wish to deploy and develop practices, debates, and understandings of criticality drawn from the field of architecture, in order to contributetoconstructingmodesofcriticisminplanni ngthatmightbeperformedfrom the inside.
I heart
You are her material. “Many authors start building their characters by giving them a name. This project, I find, is about that. But who is the author? And who is ‘Kira Carpelan’? I have argued that Miriam is the author and I am her material, as in the initial description of the project, which suggested that I would be her work of art. I have also argued that my role is to play the character she will create for me, and that like all fictional characters I will reflect my author and the result will be a portrait of Miriam Bäckström. We have only agreed on the first part.” - Exhibition catalogue, ‘Kira Carpelan,’ Miriam Bäckström, reproduced in Artforum, 2008
Little Frank and His Carp Andrea Fraser(2001)! Source: http:// www.smith.edu/artmuseum/ On-View/Andrea-FraserAcquisition]!
Kira Carpelan! Miriam Bäckström (2007)! Source: http:// www.anabelle-lacroix.com/ exhibitions-projects-2/ so-you-say/2frontmiriam/!
“[Louise] Lawler transforms the seemingly irrelevant plethora of supplements – captions which name, proper names which identify, invitations which advertise, installation photos which document, catalogues which historicize, “arrangements” which position, critical texts which function in most of these capacities – into the objects of an art practice. Her use of these formats is a double displacement: she brings the often invisible, marginal supports of art into the gallery and situates her own practice at the margins, in the production, elaboration, and critique of the frame.” - Andrea Fraser (2009)[1985] ‘In and out of place’, A Alberro & B Stimson (eds.) Institutional critique: an anthology of artists’ writings, MIT Press: Cambridge, Mass.
Let the Right One In
Robert Moses, Brooklyn Battery Bridge model, 1939.
Stadsplanering som performance: en lyckad idè? (2012)
Source: ‘Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Road to Recreation’, Queens Museum of Art, New York (2007) http://www.queensmuseum.org/wp-content/ uploads/2010/03/robert-moses-and-the-moderncity_robert-moses.jpg
Source: SVT ABC. Broadcast 5 September 2012. Viewed 14 September 2012 at http://www.svtplay.se/klipp/275956/ stadsplanering-som-performance-en-lyckad-ide-.
Rirkrit Tiravanija, "Untitled 1992 (Free)," at 303 gallery in New York Source: http://legwork.cc/2010/06/cookinginvocation/
Urban Play Source: http://urbanplay.dk/forside/ udstillingen/vaerkerne/jesper-aabille/
Screen shot, True Blood! ! Source: http:// www.trueblood-online.com/ category/news/page/8/!
The Liquid Seam
Engstrand & Speek! Perrongen! Bl책sut!
Liquid Seam! Source: http:// blogs.smithsonianmag.com/ threaded/2012/09/ stockings-series-part-2paint-on-hosiery-duringthe-war-years/!
This Is A Crime For Taping & Replaying
“Later, as he sat on his balcony ea2ng the dog, Dr Robert Laing reflected on the unusual events that had taken place within this huge apartment building during the previous three months.” JG Ballard, High Rise (1975)
â€œâ€Ś to what degree are we necessarily locked inside our own system, so that even our fantasies of change reflect its internal logic, rather than our genuine discovery of something else, something radically different or other?â€? (Jameson, 1995: 202).