54/ Ecologies of Architecture II: The Affective Turn, PhD Seminar MMXV

ABE 008

Advanced Architectural Theory Research Seminars

Ecologies of Architecture II: The Affective Turn

Course data

• Course Code: ABE 008
• Name of Course: Advanced Architectural Theory Research Seminars
• Course Type: Advanced courses on a range of topics involving architectural/urban theory, philosophy, cultural analysis and science
• Number of Participants: 10-12 participants
• Course Load: Active period: 28 hours contact (seminar) plus 28 hours self-study (preparation)
• Credits (Graduate School credits): 4 GS credits
• Course Dates and Times: Spring 2015, Mondays 14:30-18:00 (see detailed schedule below)
• Coordinator: Dr.ir. Heidi Sohn (Theory Section)
• Lecturer: Dr.ir. Andrej Radman (Theory Section)
• Teching Assistant: ir. Stavros Kousoulas (Theory Section)
• E-mail Lecturer: a.radman@tudelft.nl

About the Lecturer

Andrej Radman has been teaching design studios and theory courses at TU Delft Faculty of Architecture and The Built Environment since 2004. In 2008 he was appointed Assistant Professor of Architecture and joined the teaching and research staff of the Delft School of Design (DSD). As a graduate of the Zagreb School of Architecture in Croatia, Radman received a Master's Degree with Honours and a Doctoral Degree from Delft University of Technology. His current research focuses on new materialism in general and radical empiricism in particular. Radman is a member of the National Committee on Deleuze Scholarship, and production editor and member of the editorial board of the peer-reviewed architecture theory journal Footprint. He is also a licensed architect with a string of awards from national competitions, including the Croatian Association of Architects annual award for housing architecture in Croatia in 2002.

Course Description

Advanced Research Seminars

The Theory Section (formerly DSD) of the Architecture Department is offering a new doctoral seminar, entitled ‘Advanced Architecture Theory Research Seminars’, to PhD candidates and advanced researchers affiliated with the Graduate School whose research topics relate to architectural and urban theory, philosophy, and contemporary concerns of spatial, social. cultural and scientific relevance to the disciplines of design. The course is framed within a fortnightly seminar structure in which participants will engage in guided readings and group-discussions on the thematic of each individual session. Ultimately the aim is to generate an intense research environment in which all participants will not only gain knowledge on a specific topic, but will also develop a set of useful methodological and research skills. The course was launched in Spring 2014 with the pilot seminar ‘Ecologies of Architecture’ under the guidance of Andrej Radman (Theory Section). ‘Ecologies of Architecture II’ will be devoted to the Affective Turn.

Ecologies of Architecture II (Spring 2015)

Advanced Research Seminar ‘The Affective Turn’

Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free;

their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions,

and ignorance of the causes by which they are determined. (B. Spinoza)

Bodies are not defined by their genus or species, by their organs and functions,

but by what they can do, by the affects of which they are capable

– in passion as well as in action. (G. Deleuze)

Introduction: Radical Empiricism

The New Materialism in general, and the Affective Turn in particular, seem to be gaining momentum to such an extent that even some of the scholars of this affiliation urge caution. As it happens, many a logocentric thinker has been unjustly turned into a straw person. However, as far as the discipline of architecture is concerned, this otherwise healthy dose of scepticism is not only premature but also counterproductive. Somewhat paradoxically, architecture has historically undergone a gradual disassociation from the material realm and become an ultimate white-collar profession. The consequent withdrawal from reality ("into itself") has been seen either as (bad) escapism or as a (good) strategy of resistance. The urge to ward off the givens and to continue to contemplate alternatives is most worthy. Especially in the light of the recent tendency to jump on the band wagon of ¥€$ (is more) "pragmatic yet utopian [sic] third way." Architects seem desperate in their effort to catch up with the media. The spearhead of critical theory in architecture Michael Hays laments how the most theoretically aware contemporary architects have unfortunately rejected what he sees as the most important operative concept of the theory of architecture at the moment of its re-foundation in the 1970s, namely autonomy. But idealist bracketing comes at a price. Architects might end up painting themselves into a corner of impotence by depriving themselves of the means to intervene which, after all, has always been the main trait of (any) materialism. As Eugene Holland admits, "any postmodern Marxism worthy of the name will want to abandon teleology and adopt contingency and emergence as better paradigms for understanding history." The best strategy of resistance seems to lie not in opposition but in (strategic) affirmation.

PhD Seminar: The Affective Turn

To embrace radical empiricism is to see cognition as belonging to the same world as that of its ‘objects’. There is no need to postulate the existence of a more fundamental realm (transcendental ‘skyhooks’). Natura naturans (naturing nature/creator) and natura naturata (natured nature/created) are inseparable. There is no ultimate foundation, but the immanence of powers, relations, and bodily compositions. The first step to break out of the pernicious self-reflexive loop is to acknowledge that - with or without us - matter does matter. This is the crux of the Affective Turn. This is how the architect Farshid Moussavi contemplates its implications in architecture: “Affect, according to Deleuze, is distinct from affection. Affection, such as feeling, emotion or mood, relates to the status of the body caused by the encounter. Since affection has to be enveloped by the human body, it is subject to personal, biographical or social mediation (we do not know what meaning is being created in each individual). An affect, on the other hand, is a matter of intensity.” Affections are endogenous, whereas affect is impersonal or pre-individual and unmediated (exogenous), and can therefore generate different affections in different people. For this reason architects need to focus on affect (affordance), rather than meaning. This is not because meanings are irrelevant, rather because they are not produced by architects but by individuals themselves. They are private. Paradoxically, feelings (affections, not affects) are states produced by thought, while thoughts are produced by affects. Again, this view is popularly rendered by the radical empiricist William James: “crying makes us sad.” Architects, therefore, produce nothing but affordances or the way of affecting. They distribute the sensible. A parallel with music is helpful. While we might be exposed to the same piece of music, it will inevitably reach each of us in different ways. Similarly, architecture affects without determining any meanings a priori. It neither demands nor precludes any consensus. Indeed, if we ever stopped to consider how much of our life is controlled by intentionality and how much by affect, and how much they influence important decisions, we would certainly pay far more attention to the affective phenomena.

Schedule

February 16, 2015 / 14:30-18:00 / 1+.Oost.860

Session 1: Introduction

Seigworth, Gregg: Affective Turn (2007)

March 02, 2015 / 14:30-18:00 / 1+.Oost.860

Session 2: Ethics

Deleuze: Spinoza and 3Ethics (1993)

March 16, 2015 / 14:30-18:00 / 1+.Oost.860

Session 3: Politics

Massumi: Autonomy of Affect (1995)

March 30, 2015 / 14:30-18:00 / 1+.Oost.860

Session 4: Energetics

DeLanda: Nonorganic Life (1992)

April 20, 2015 / 14:30-18:00 / 1+.Oost.860

Session 5: Immanence

Meillassoux: Subtraction & Contraction (2007)

May 11, 2015 / 14:30-18:00 / 1+.Oost.860

Session 6: Aesthetics

Protevi: New Transcendental Aesthetic (2010)

June 01, 2015 / 14:30-18:00 / 1+.Oost.860

Session 7: Pedagogy

Colebrook: Leading Out / On (2008)

June 15, 2015 / 14:30-18:00 / 1+.Oost.860

Session 8: Conclusion

Guattari: Architectural Enunciation (1989)

Learning Objectives

In a desperate attempt to catch up with forms of contemporary image culture, architects tend to forget where their strength lies. To speak of culture as forms of life, as Scott Lash argues, is to break with earlier notions of culture as representation, as reflection. It is to break with judgement for experience, with epistemology for ontology, and finally to break with a certain type of cognition for living. While accepting multiple scales of reality the Ecologies of Architecture opposes the alleged primacy of the ‘physical’ world discovered by physics. By contrast, it posits that what we have to perceive and cope with is the world considered as the environment. The emphasis is on the encounter, where experience is seen as an emergence which returns the body to a process field of exteriority. The ultimate goal of the Ecologies of Architecture is to debunk hylomorphism - where form is imposed upon inert matter from without and where the architect is seen as a god-given, inspired creator and genius – and to promote the alternative morphogenetic approach that is at once more humble and ambitious. Action and perception are inseparable at the ‘mesoscale’ which is commensurate with life. In other words, if the objects of knowledge are separated from the objects of existence, we end up with a duality of mental and physical objects that leads to an ontologically indirect perception. By contrast, the premise of the Ecologies of Architecture is that perceptual systems resonate to information. This ‘direct realism’ is grounded on the premise that, from the outset, real experience is a relation of potential structure – distribution of the sensible - rather than a formless chaotic swirl onto which structure must be imposed by cognitive process. The world is seen as an ongoing open process of mattering, where meaning and form are acquired in the actualisation of different agential virtualities. Following Deleuze's argument, it is possible to assert that the genetic principles of sensation are thus at the same time the principles of composition of the work of art(efact).

At the conclusion of each seminar / course the participants will have:

•   gained knowledge and understanding on the specific thematic and context of each seminar (content-based)

•   associated the contents of the seminar to his or her own research topic, expressing this relationship in concrete, relevant ways (argument-based)

•   developed skills relevant to carrying out advanced research: from following intensive readings and discussing them in a peer work-group, to preparing an academic research paper for publication (method-based)

Teaching Method

This course will follow a seminar structure and advanced research methods. Depending on the individual seminar leaders, the seminar will follow a series of formats, but generally will be based on fortnightly research output presentations, followed by a discussion on sources, references and bibliographies, which will involve the creation of an information nexus for the seminar discussions. The ultimate goal of each seminar is to assist the participants to develop reasoned and convincing argument, as well as to develop scholarly research papers for publication.

Required Reading

Colebrook, Claire, “Leading Out, Leading On” in Nomadic Education: Variations on a theme by Deleuze and Guattari, ed. Inna Semetsky (Rotterdam: Sense, 2008), pp. 35-43.

DeLanda, Manuel, “Nonorganic Life” in Incorporations, ed. Jonathan Crary and Sanford Kwinter (New York: Zone 6, 1992), pp. 129-167.

Deleuze, Gilles “Spinoza and the Three 'Ethics'“ in Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, [1993] 1997), pp. 138-151.

Guattari, Félix: “Architectural Enunciation” in Schizoanalytic Cartographies, trans. Andrew Goffey (London: Bloomsbury, [1989] 2103), pp. 231-239.

Massumi, Brian, “Autonomy of Affect” in Cultural Critique, No. 31, The Politics of Systems and Environments, Part II. (Autumn, 1995), pp. 83-109.

Meillassoux, Quentin, “Subtraction and Contraction: Deleuze, Immanence, and Matter and Memory“ in Collapse 3, ed. Robin Mackay (Falmouth: Urbanomic, 2007), pp. 63-107.

Protevi, John, “Deleuze, Jonas, and Thompson: Toward a new Transcendental Aesthetic and a New Question of Panpsychism“ (Montreal: SPEP, 2010), <http://protevi.com/john/research.html> (accessed November 25, 2014).

Seigworth, Gregory J. and Melissa Greg, “An Inventory of Shimmers” in The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Greg and Gregory J. Seigworth (Durham and London: Duke UP, 2010), pp, 1–9(25).

Recommended Reading

Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari, “Chapter 7: Percepts, Concepts, Affects” in What is Philosophy?, trans. Graham Burchell and Hugh Tomilson (New York: Columbia University Press, [1991] 1994), pp, 163-199.

Deleuze, Gilles, “Chapter Six: Spinoza and us” in Spinoza, Practical Philosophy, trans. Robert Hurley (San Francisco: City Lights Books, [1970] 1988), pp. 122-130.

Deleuze, Gilles, “Chapter Two: On the difference between the ethics and a morality” in Spinoza, Practical Philosophy, trans. Robert Hurley (San Francisco: City Lights Books, [1970] 1988), pp. 17-29.

Deleuze, Gilles, “On the Superiority of Anglo-American Literature (Part II)” in Dialogues (New York: Columbia UP, [1977] 1987), pp. 51-76.

Deleuze, Gilles, “Preface to the English language Edition” in Dialogues, trans. Hugh Tomilson and Barbara Habberjam (New York: Columbia UP, [1977] 1987), pp. vii-x.

Deleuze, Gilles, Transcripts “on Spinoza’s Concept of Affect” (1978-81), Cours Vincennes, (accessed November 25, 2014).

Holmes, Brian, “Guattari’s Schizoanalytic Cartographies: or, the Pathic Core at the Heart of Cybernetics” (2009), Continental Drift, (accessed November 25, 2014).

Massumi, Brian, “1. The Inmost End” in The Power at the End of the Economy (Durham and London: Duke UP, 2015), pp. 1-17.

Massumi, Brian, “Introduction: Like a Thought” in A Shock to Thought: Expressionism After Deleuze and Guattari, ed. Brian Massumi (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. xiii-xxxix.

Moussavi, Farshid, “The Function of Form” in The Function of Form, ed. Farshid Moussavi and Daniel López (Barcelona: Actar, 2009), pp. 7-36.

Spinoza, Benedict de, “The Ethics” in The Ethics and On the Improvement of the Understanding, trans. R. H. M. Elwes (Stilwel: Digireads.com, [1677] 2008), pp. 5-136.