#kamworkshops2011 | Hardt & Negri, Empire (2000), p.32

“The most complete figure of this world is presented from the monetary perspective. From here we can see a horizon of values and a machine of distribution, a mechanism of accumulation and a means of circulation, a power and a language. There is nothing, no ‘‘naked life,’’ no external standpoint, that can be posed outside this field permeated by money; nothing escapes money. Production and reproduction are dressed in monetary clothing. In fact, on the global stage, every biopolitical figure appears dressed in monetary garb. ‘‘Accumulate, accumulate! This is Moses and the Prophets!’”

#kamworkshops2011 | by Ilia Kabakov, 1977:

“An enormous past rises up behind these crates, vials and sacks; all forms of packaging which were ever needed by man have not lost their shape, they did not become something dead when they were discarded. They cry out about a past life, they preserve it…

It’s hard to say what kind of image this is… maybe an image of some sort of camp when everything is doomed to perish but still struggles to live; maybe its an image of a certain civilization slowly sinking under the pressure of unknown cataclysms, but in which nevertheless some sort of events are taking place. The feeling of vast, cosmic existence ecnompasses a person at these dumps…

…But stiil why does the dump and its image summon my imagination over and over again, why do I always return to it? Because I feel that man, living in our region, is simply suffocating in his own life among the garbage since there is nowhere to take it, nowhere to sweep it out - we have lost the border between garbage and non-garbage space. Everything is covered up, littered with garbage - our homes, streets, cities. We have no place to discard all this - it remains near us.”

#kamworkshops2011 | a photo-question towards @dpr_barcelona: How did sewage and waste management fit into Zenetos vision for Electronic Urbanism?

Caption and image no23 of the publication on Electronic Urbanism (Arhitektonika Themata 7/1973) shows the use of sewage and recycle collection center as an intermediary solution which would be abolished as soon as future technology becomes available in the electronic city. The preparation for a temporary sewage collection center however, raises a series of questions and shapes a ‘critical’ entry point for Zenetos’ work: Why did Zenetos prefer to ground his ‘suspending’ urbanism with a sewage treatment plant? Why did he not experiment and design with the “closed-circuit dwelling units” as an option; and what critical assumptions are drawn from this observation on his project’s consistency and his work in general? What other infrastructural or design solutions did he proposed for treating human waste and garbage; how visionary and elaborate was on this aspect?

This is a topic that ‘the-value-of-garbage’ would like to explore more. For now we are anxiously waiting for dpr-barcelona findings on the work of Takis Zenetos to continue this discussion. Follow the project of dpr-barcelona on Takis Zenetos here. 

#kamworkshops2011 | zombie-theories

[…] let us ask a naïve question: why do the dead return? The answer offered by Lacan is the same as found in the popular culture: because they were not properly buried, i.e., because something went wrong with obsequies. The return of the dead is a sign of a disturbance in the symbolic rite, in the process of symbolization, the dead return as collectors of some unpaid symbolic debt. […] The return of the living dead, then, materializes a certain symbolic debt persisting beyond physical expiration.

It is commonplace to state that symbolization as such equates to symbolic murder: when we speak about a thing, we suspend, place in parentheses, its reality. It is precisely for that reason that the funeral rite exemplifies symbolization at its purest: through it, the dead are inscribed in the text of symbolic tradition, they that, in spite of their death, they will “continue to live” in the memory of the community. The “return of the living dead” is, on the other hand, the reverse of the proper funeral rite. While the latter implies a certain reconciliation, an acceptance of loss, the return of the dead signifies that they cannot find their proper place in the text of tradition. (p. 23)

Žižek, Slavoj. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan Through Popular Culture. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1991

(Source: books.google.com)

#kamworkshops2011: reading about Creative destruction in wikipedia contemplating what produces today’s garbage (in a broader sense) and how is this connected to current economic crisis?

A theoretical concept that goes back to Karl Marx and used by economists and social scientists until today appears highly relevant to the above question and to the workshop’s investigations: 

Creative destruction is a constant process of devaluation and revaluation, connected to technological innovation and a capitalism’s inherent tendency to handle it’s own crises by displacing them. Geographer, David Harvey has elaborated further these ideas in many books, showing also the connection to urbanism, architecture and space in general:  

The built environment that constitutes a vast field of collective means of production and consumption absorbs huge amounts of capital in both its construction and its maintenance. Urbanisation is one way to absorb the capital surplus.

The effect of continuous innovation […] is to devalue, if not destroy, past investments and labour skills. Creative destruction is embedded within the circulation of capital itself. 

Hence, in this continual process of creative destruction, capitalism does not resolve its contradictions and crises, but merely “moves them around geographically.”