Looking for Pirdoudan

The Past, Present, and Future of Mining in Armenia

Sarine Vosgueritchian

SMArchS Architecture & Urbanism

Advisors: Roi Salgueiro Barrio & Huma Gupta

Reader: Mohamad Nahleh

In our anthropogenic age, data and memory accumulate and decay faster than we can recall. Depiction of history is usually political and hierarchical, emphasizing chosen moments to build narratives, but time has shown us how that can lead to inaccurate accounts of the past. Historians and researchers constantly undo these narratives by consulting different forms of memory from collective to individual, using physical and virtual artifacts. With the accelerating global climate crisis, it is imperative to project further into the future while remaining deeply rooted in the histories and futures of the past. To do so, we need to understand the processes of change that have led to the construction of our current reality. But what happens if the archive is constantly deteriorating?

Set in what is known today as the mining town of Kajaran, Looking for Pirdoudan uses the medium of film and textual essay to piece together and reinterpret the processes of change which have led to the disappearance of mount Pirdoudan after large deposits of copper and molybdenum were discovered in the 19th century. The extraction of the geological layers of Pirdoudan has effectively erased millennials of memory retained by the earth. While geological studies have allowed us to date these layers and put meaning to the accumulations, scattered archival records and media are today’s most readily available material that allow us to piece together the narratives of our past and present moment. That said, archives and data don’t tell a story on their own. A seeker from 2086 takes on the task of weaving an alternative history of Pirdoudan. Critical fabulation is employed, not only to visualize the gaps in our knowledge, but also to project a post-mine future of Kajaran based on a deep understanding and interpretation of the past. Kajaran is rebranded as an ideal ecological city attempting to repair its extractive legacy, but even with the best intentions, driven by technological advancements which are meant to reverse the anthropogenic footprint on the land, a new cycle of destruction begins.

Figuring the Middle Ground: A Search for Authorship in Perceiving China's COVID-19 Lockdowns

San Zhang

SMArchS Architecture & Urbanism

Advisors: Brent Ryan & Rosalyne Shieh

Reader: Mark Jarzombek

Witnessing and attempting to comprehend China's controversial response to COVID-19 over the past three years from a geographically distant yet culturally and emotionally intimate standpoint, I have grappled with multiple perspectives, sometimes as an insider, sometimes as an outsider, and most of the time as an impostor to both. As I continually query the incoherence of my positionality, I find myself in an obscure middle ground where my voice is filtered as inauthentic and unheeded. I ask myself: What should I do? What can I do?

This project is an effort to give myself a voice in the process of figuring out the "middle ground"— a gradient of unsettled propositions stretching between cultural identities, negotiating with constructed collective memories, and discursively evolving over a three-year-long uncanny journey trying to perceive the COVID-19 lockdowns in China. By accepting the "middle ground" as a valid stance, I was able to devise a set of methods for navigating the complexity of materials gathered at various times and locations. In addition, utilizing architectural representation tools, I curated a collection of works that reproduce the research process and exhibit the processed information.

This endeavor is not intended to rationalize pandemic control. Rather, it cultivates a ground for reflection that deconstructs a dichotomous perception of good and evil, drawing attention to individual lived experiences that provide a nuanced interpretation of the COVID-19 pandemic as an international health emergency that affected everyone. Although somewhat fuzzy and uneasy, the "middle ground" position indicates the possibility that a personal desire to develop one's authorship can lead to a means of making sense of a global crisis.