Emerging Spatial Exchanges PhD Symposium 2021
Date: Monday 17 May 2021
Time: 9:30 -17:45 (BST)
Location: 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.
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.
The symposium programme will be confirmed shortly.
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.
The Landscape 