AHRA International Conference 2023 Situated Ecologies of Care

Description

Session chair with Cameron McEwan [Northumbria University, Newcastle/UK]: Drawing Attention to the Periphery

A few words of introduction concerning the structure of the session, reflections on the theme and then we will move to the talks. First a note on structure. We have divided the session in two uneven parts with a break inbetween. We have printed some drawings and would encourage you to look at these during the break. We will have three papers and then a discussion. We would like the papers to be delivered in sequence and then we can invite our speakers to the front and it is at that point that we can take some questions, collectively, and reflect on the ideas presented to encourage a dialogue across the papers. I will introduce the first papers in a moment. Then we can repeat this structure and Andreas will introduce the next three papers. Broadly they are organised into a set concerning theories and practices of landscape in the first part; and then a set of papers addressing the question of the peripheral palimpsest, if we can summarise so reductively...

In our call for papers we wanted to draw attention to the periphery, its typologies, spatial structure, ideas, and narratives – whether of love or loathing. Implicit was a shift in emphasis from what is the city, to what is the periphery, what is other than city. We argue that if the last century was a century of cities [Berlin, Mumbai, Beijing], maybe this is a century of peripheries, that which is between the capitals. We want to ask, what are the ideas, projects and modes of representation that might begin to articulate the urban condition today as the city extends into a continuous periphery [with an inflection of Lars Lerup]?

Wrapped by the Anthropocene.

In general, the centre‐periphery relation is usually employed as an organisational tool to study a point [urban core, city centre] and that which surrounds it [nature, region, the periphery] and from which we can identify conditions such as centres of attention, of economy, of population, and of culture, or peripheral places relative to those centres. However, what interests us is less the binary opposition that is suggested by the centre‐periphery relationship, but the lived experience of peripheries is not really so neat. It is sometimes all figure, sometimes all ground, often an entangled randomness. We are interested in the entanglements of peripheral conditions and the way the periphery transgresses situations and encourages transgressions. Peripheries are suburbs, exurbs, fringes, edges, outskirts, sprawl, infrastructure, big boxes, agriculture, geotechnics, old villages, new towns, fields, landfill...

In the time of the Anthropocene, those conditions are radically altered. Scale changes so that we speak less about the regional [city‐periphery] or even a global [north‐south] spatial or social condition. Instead, we speak of a planetary scale. We speak less of distinctions between what is nature and what is urban, but its continuities and inflections. Temporality has altered, so that the deep time of the planet is entangled with labour, earthly material, imagination, the infrastructural space of geotechnics, modes of thinking and making architecture and settlements. The question of human agency alters so that to speak of the human as a centre [Anthropos] seems to neglect the multispecies, human, and non‐human, other than humans, with whom we share collective life as articulated by Elke yesterday. These conditions are most demonstrably articulated in urban peripheries, or the in‐between spaces of cities.
The centre‐periphery interplay is fraught with contradictions, indifferences, and ambivalences, and not least the aura of coloniality, which needs to be deconstructed. Yet there is an allure to addressing the periphery as shadowland, frontier, or the in‐between, a place apart from whatever is “centre,” a transgressive place.

In parallel with our theoretical reflections, we invited papers that use drawing as a critical tool for thinking through some of the issues we raised in the call for papers. We are interested in how to represent the periphery, how to draw the periphery, and hence the call has this word play on drawing attention to the periphery and drawing to find out. Drawing is a device for thinking through issues, for speculating, analysing, and for provoking further reflection. It is a disciplinary tool for critical thinking on the pressures and the urgencies of the day [Anthropocene, urbanisation, spatial justice], and a design methodology that we might begin to help define a collective task, alternative narratives, practices, and new futures.

So we will see an expanded idea of what “drawing attention to the periphery” means in these next presentations.

Panel session comprises:
Cameron McEwan [NU] and Andreas Lechner [TU Graz] [Chairs]
Lorens Holm [Dundee Geddes Institute for Urban Research]
Sandra Bartoli [Büros Für Konstruktivismus]
Shaun Young [Northumbria Uinversity]
Laura Szyman [RMIT]
Petra Eckhard and Daniel Gethmann [TU Graz]

Period	23 Oct 2023 → 26 Oct 2023
Event type	Conference
Location	Portsmout, United KingdomShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International