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40 655 Animism in Architecture
Admission to AHO and successful completion of three years bachelor level studies (180 ECTS).
Part of course series: B&SM - Acting and The Collective in a More-Than-Human World
The course is open to students from: Architecture and Landscape architecture
Body and Space Morphologies (B&SM) is a research-based teaching program in the Building Art department. Dedicated to Phenomenology in Architecture, the program offers Trans-Disciplinary master studios in explorative – architectural, pre-architectural and post-architectural - making, sensing and thinking.
We aim at preparing and enabling students to conduct their own interest driven investigation into Architectural Phenomenology - understood as a Research Creation; a working mode creating an inspired, process focused and reflective Material Practice. We consider this to be the Artistic Parallel to both Traditional Scholarly Research and Common Architectural Design Practice.
Based on performativity and affordance theories, performance and performance studies, disability and neurodiversity studies as well as phenomenology and perception theories, the B&SM Studio Works investigate primal and/or pre-architectural material/processes/phenomena/conditions and develop or perform a series of experienced distinct objects that behave relational, that inspire imagination, that provide new knowledge, strong architectural interests and/or architectural narratives or identities.
Spring 2023 marks the start of the second cycle of the B&SM course series on Acting and The Acted in a More-Than-Human World. The overall topic will be Animism in Architecture - studied and worked through a discourse on the various ideas, movements and awareness created in current ecoperformance, ecopoetic, ethnopoetic and ethnofiction works.
The semester task:
- spatially to release your necessity to make something because of something else;
- to act, react or enact on a distinct, personal initiative understood as necessity;
- to acknowledge, accept and further act on impulse / any impulse;
- to not know a thing, but wanting to get to know it;
- to construct and perform identities in the things rather than in thought;
- to embrace performativity as the sole act that sets and consummates your working stage and before any pre-conceived architecture;
- to finally reflect on how your working stage or architectural awareness acts, who it is that is acted, and where in this act or acting a collective can be found;
- to bring your work out and to give it a third-party readability in a final exhibition, a book and/or a film.
Knowledge of:
- the basics in phenomenology of architecture and the various practices that exist within (and that can become part of) architectural phenomenology
- the basics in affordance theory and the theories concerning objecthood and/or object relations as means to fuel and reflect upon a material practice and/or artistic research in the field of architecture
- the basics in performance and performance studies that make body & space morphologies: ways of making, looking at, discussing and seeing/understanding qualia and perception in the working of architecture
- the basics in disability studies and neurodiversity studies as the necessary activist movements working and re-defining the human condition from “all the world’s a stage” (Shakespeare) towards for all the human spectrum with its diverse behavior dwelling in a more-than-human world
- the basics of performativity, language and speech acts as the tools that can add value to the making and a work – but that not necessarily must seek to replace the issues at stake in a work or a thing
- the foundational preparations for an advanced haptic visual and experimental artistic research leading to a material practice and/or architectural phenomenology
Skills in:
- finding, developing and/or embracing initiatives for the making of an inspired, explorative, and imaginative artistic research
- manufacturing physical and/or visual (or otherwise sensible/perceptible) works and gaining a unique expertise in the craft(s) deployed in the making of these artifacts
- conducting this artistic research with the desire to make or pursue a material practice containing, or inviting for, reflections in phenomenology of architecture / architectural phenomenology
- deploying complementary ways of working and means of creative investigations that make, demonstrate, or narrate a dialogue between the works inherent qualities and how this connects to (or can become) issues, phenomena and/or subjects in the world
- maintaining a personal diary of the making that can be worked into documents of the making aiming at a third-party readability
- approaching environments, situations, and discussions phenomenological and applying and recognizing performativity in speech and action as productive means from which to provoke and receive social employed knowing in trans-disciplinary teams
General competence in:
- developing distinct initiatives and choosing the craft in which to act or work them to partake in the discourse on the phenomenology of architecture
- approaching and acting on impulse with all sorts of material, objects, environments and/or events and gaining valuable experience, artefacts and/or documents from this
- conceiving of and presenting/communicating unique architectural content/research through a haptic visual material and the phenomena or conditions contained and experienced in it
- understanding the mechanisms and rhetoric of systems of oppression, learned behavior, eugenics and stigma that are un-productive and unsustainable (in the field of architecture as well as in the systems we call architecture)
- developing and/or pursuing life-long initiatives for a material practice in architectural phenomenology that is independent of, and/or adaptable to, any kind of professional commission
- not knowing a thing, but having the passion, dedication, endurance, and imagination to wanting to get to know it
The working week goes from Wednesday to Monday. Tuesdays are reserved for the studies in the elective courses. Mondays are silent working days (meaning no teaching is provided and you work independently) while the studio meets for every Wednesday and Thursday from 9:30 to 17.00 for lectures, screenings, reviews, and worktable talks. Friday from 13:00 – 15:00 is reserved for Studio Commons (student driven events or discussions etc).
We have five public mid-term reviews and prepare at the end of the semester a work display for the AHO WORKS Exhibition. The exhibition allows for the students to display their complete works (all objects and artefacts – found or made) together with a book and/or film or video containing a written and/or otherwise illustrated experience of their making and that what the making had connected to. An external sensor team will study the exhibition and books and/or video/films and then give feedback and critique on the individual work but also on the studio as a whole.
The Body & Space Morphologies diploma thesis candidates are integrated in the studio and work in the same space. We recommend the master course students to attend the diploma mid-term reviews (between four or five during the semester).
Excursion:
We plan two trips to the Lista-peninsula in Southern Norway:
- a 4-days-long workshop and fieldtrip in the first week of February
- and a Lista-Event-Week during the regular excursion week (week 9).
Attendance & participation in your individual studio work:
20 weeks full-time study. The work must be conducted and performed in the studio (or at LISTA) - the working material is present at any time.
Presence & participation in the collective studio discussion:
You are expected to be present at: weekly talks, lectures, and studio discussions, frequent work reviews, workshop in book making, final exhibition and at final review with invited guests-critics.
Course literature will be available in Leganto.
| Form of assessment | Grouping | Grading scale | Comment |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portfolio assessment (Vurderingsmappe) | - | Pass / fail | The course is assessed on the basis of: -Semester project Individual studio work on your own selected project developed throughout the course and critically reflected / presented on a final deliverable. This entails practical and theoretical exercises, visual and verbal project presentations, and the making of a final exhibition. -Process book with a text/essay. For each of the reviews, assignments are announced and students hand in visual and textual works which is complementary to the actual physical work made available and presented in the reviews. The final exhibition includes visual haptic project material and a final book (including an essay of ca 5-10000 words). |
| Workload activity | Comment |
|---|---|
| Attendance | Participation and attendance in lectures, supervision at the desks in the studio, seminars and workshops is expected. |
| Excursion | Those who do not have the opportunity to participate in an excursion will be given an assignment/a project that replaces this. |