Postgraduate Research Community

Emerging Spatial Exchanges

FLAS PhD Symposium 2021

Monday 17 May 2021, 9:30-17:45 (BST)

Online via Zoom

The Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences (FLAS) PhD Symposium 2021, hosted by University of Greenwich with support of the Advanced Urban (AU) research group, seeks to explore conceptions of spatial exchange, as interrelated and shaped by digital, ecological, material and social practices.

By challenging static conceptualisations of space and the fragmentation of disciplines, this symposium will explore interdisciplinary intersections and fluidity of spatial investigations. In 2021, our awareness and practices of spatial exchange continue to adapt to the social and environmental phenomena emerging within the Covid-19 pandemic. Through investigating environments, communities, curatorial practises, digital technologies, the movement of material matter and ecological thinking, we intend to establish a provocative conversation on new spatial conditions. The symposium is delivered through collaboration with Kingston University.

Programme:

  

09:30                    

Welcome and Introduction from Advanced Urban
09:45

Panel 1: Environmental & Material Exchange

  • 09:50 | Elin Eyborg Lund (University College London) | Attending Spaces: Movement Performances as Activators in the Architectural Process
  • 10:05 | Angeliki Sakellariou (University of Westminster) |Notating Performative Interventions and Urban Transformations
  • 10:20 | Panel Discussion

10:45 – 10:55

Break
10:55

Panel 2: Digital & Environmental Exchange

  • 11:00 | Pietro Pezzani (Kingston University) | Perception and Configuration in Digital Space: Genealogies and Politics of Clustering Algorithms as Operators of Visibility in Planning and Governance
  • 11:15 | Johanna Just (ETH Zürich) | Extractive Ecologies: An Earthly Writing of Space, Collaborative Adventures in Constructed Landscapes of the Upper Rhine Plain
  • 11:30 | Emma Colthurst (University of Greenwich) | London’s Urban Markets and the Ecological Turn: Adaptability, Agency and Inequity
  • 11:45 | Panel Discussion
12:15 – 13:00Lunch
13:00 – 13:50

Keynote Presentation: Jane Mah Hutton, University of Waterloo Canada

Reciprocal Landscapes: Stories of Material Movements

13:55

Panel 3: Digital & Material Exchange

  • 14:00 | Tatiana Isaeva (University of Greenwich) | From Net to Art: The Conceptualisation of Cyberspace within Net Art Practices (2004 - 2021)
  • 14:15 | Francesca Gaunt (University of Greenwich) | Disrupting the Private: An Exploration into Visibility of Domestic Spaces of Erotic Webcam Performers
  • 14:30 | Panel Discussion
14:55 – 15:10Break
15:10

Panel 4: Environmental & Material Exchange

  • 15:15 | Julien Clin (Kingston University) | Of Roots & Concrete: Heimat in the Metamodern City
  • 15:30 | Edwin Gilson (University of Surrey) | (Un)bounded Spaces: Place and Planet in Anthropocene Literary Studies
  • 15:45 | Aslihan Caroupapoullé (Kingston University) | Between Heritage and Development: The Case of Belper
  • 16:00 | Panel Discussion
16:35 – 16.45Break
16:45 – 17:45Concluding Round Table

Guest Speaker:

Jane Mah Hutton, Landscape Architect, University of Waterloo, Canada

Jane Mah Hutton is a landscape architect, teaching at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture. Her research focuses on the expanded relationships of the act of building – from material flows to labour movements. Recent publications include Reciprocal Landscapes: Stories of Material Movements, Landscript 5: Material Culture, and Wood Urbanism: From the Molecular to the Territorial, co-edited with Daniel Ibanez and Kiel Moe.

Emerging Spatial Exchanges is centred around three interconnected themes: Digital Exchange, Environmental Exchange and Material Exchange.

Digital Exchange examines ways of adapting to digital space though curatorial and architectural practises. The current pandemic brings complications into traditional curatorial practices, industrial design and architecture planning, however the development in technology and the rapid spread of interconnected networks, both embedded and digital, suggest ways that new digital exchanges can occur. Through online exhibitions, digital platforms and multimedia technologies, new relations materialise within the architecture of virtual representation.

Material Exchange is explored through the physical and social exchange of matter, scaling between corresponding geographies or planets, to the human driven exchange of living and non-living matter (as food, clothes, technology, etc). The fluidity and movement of material matter is co-produced and changed through the people, landscapes, digital technologies and cultural practices it intersects. Ongoing human practices of rapid consumption, production and extraction have irrevocably changed local and global material exchange dynamics, that are increasingly visible in the midst of the climate emergency.

Environmental Exchange examines interaction within and between physical, social, economic and political environments. Multispecies coexistence and adaptability within enivronments can explore relations, inequities and the multiplicities of flows (material, social, economic). Through conceptualising the vast and fluid relations of life, as explored in new ecological thinking, spatial and temporal frameworks reconsider interaction, from ecosystems to the implementation of digital environments. In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, the importance of coexistence, care, and reciprocal relations has become apparent.

Advanced Urban (AU) Research Group:

Advanced Urban is an invitation and provocation by media theorist Maria Korolkova and landscape architect and urban researcher Ed Wall that explores the urban nature of emerging design, cultural, infrastructural and media processes. AU are concerned with urbanisations that transform our worlds from intimately small to planetary scales. Tackling multiscalar future ecologies and temporalities, AU addresses critical urban questions through multidisciplinary collaboration, co-curation and togetherness.

All welcome to attend.

Book here:  https://emerging-spatial-exchanges.eventbrite.co.uk

Call for Abstracts