10 Oct 2008

This is Tomorrow?: Urban Utopia - Dystopia - Heterotopia

This is the third in a cross-disciplinary lecture series hosted by the MIT Visual Arts Program that includes speakers from art, architecture, urbanism and related research fields from around the world. These speakers will pose questions in order to start a discussion about imagining tomorrow's urban 'everyday life'- a topic that calls for a discourse beyond just formal disciplines. The series is free and open to the public. Mondays 7 – 9 p.m.

How does a series of anxiety-producing events and incidents play out in urban situations in the course of the perpetration of 'terror' that claims not only bodies but biographies as well? Can it be said that the discourse about 'terrorism' also makes claims on those same bodies and biographies? How can we read images and media narratives about this topic from the city of Delhi?

What is the relationship between cartography and art, between science and politics? How does this influence the use and manipulation of maps as a propaganda tool?

MIT Visual Arts Program
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Department of Architecture
Joan Jonas Performance Hall
265 Massachusetts Avenue
Bldg N51-337, 3rd floor
Cambridge, MA 02139

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Series Schedule

September 29: 'Imagining Communities'
Ute Meta Bauer, Director MIT Visual Arts Program; Yvonne P. Doderer, architect and urban researcher, MIT Visiting Professor in Visual Arts; Jesko Fezer, architect, collaborator with the Institute of Applied Urbanism in Berlin, Germany, and coeditor of AnArchitektur.

October 6: 'Urban Utopia?'
Peter Marcuse, Professor of Urban Planning, Columbia University; Pia Maria Ahlback, Lecturer and Researcher in Comparative literature at Åbo Akademi University, Finland.

October 20: 'The Right to the City'
Shuddhabrata Sengupta, member of Raqs Media Collective and Sarai.net, New Delhi, India, co-curator of manifesta7, Bolzano, Italy; Philippe Rekacewicz, geographer and cartographer for Le Monde Diplomatique, France.

October 27: 'What City? Whose City?'
Regina Bittner, curator and coordinator of the Bauhaus Kolleg at the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation, Germany; Stefano Boeri, Editor-in-Chief of Abitare, Milan, Italy, teaches at the Milan Polytechnic and is a visiting professor at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University, USA; Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, curator, Italy and editor of 'The (Un)Common Place: Art, Public Space and Urban Aesthetics in Europe.'

November 3: 'Mobile Life, Ghost Towns'
Lukas Feireiss, curator, and editor of 'Architecture of Change: Sustainability and Humanity in the Built Environment'; AbdouMaliq Simone, Professor in the Department of Sociology, Goldsmith University of London, UK.

November 17: 'Remote Habitats'
Lucy Orta, Studio-Orta, Paris, France and Professor for Art, Fashion and the Environment, London College of Fashion, UK; Nicholas Makris Professor of Engineering and Director of the MIT Laboratory of Undersea Remote Sensing; Armin Linke, photographer and film maker, Milan, Italy and guest professor at the HFG Karlruhe, Germany.

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Directions
The MIT Visual Arts Program is located adjacent to the MIT Museum. Enter through the grey door on Front Street and take the elevator to the third floor. Exit to your left and go down the ramp. The Joan Jonas Performance Hall is located on the right.

By Public Transportation
Take the Red Line to Central Square. Walk four blocks along Massachusetts Avenue towards Boston and the Charles River, or take the #1 bus to the Front Street stop.