Urbanism After Mass Media – March 16

Talk with Etienne

Overview of the anthropocene

How do we define a new era if the geologic stratification has yet to occur?

When can we say the anthropocene began? 1784 [invention of steam engine], beginning of agriculture, or end of second World War [use of atomic bomb], 1945 [the great acceleration]

Seth Dennison lecture on TCAUP Lectures

E.T. – Mineralization, biology and geology cannot be separated

Mineralization – dragging minerals from below the earth, bringing them to the surface, and making “things”

Manuel de Landa – the arms race of mineralization

The City Limit

Referencing Timothy Mitchell’s text

How do we know if we are inside or outside the city?

Metabolism – in the most literal sense

Alfred Latka [sp?] “Fire and Memory” [book], any energy production that is beyond the 1:1 ration can be called ‘culture’

That which is unnatural is anything that exceeds the metabolic

Workingman’s Death [movie clip]

Sulfur extraction out of edge of volcano

Extraction tourism = the city in reverse

The path, wooden container, and processes [from movie clip] are the only infrastructure needed

contingent obligations vs. logical necessities [de Landa]

May 1 1886 [May Day] national general strike for eight hour work day

Neo-Industrial

post-industrial, what does that mean? 

“How are histories inscribed in spatial products? And how can we make the object ‘speak’ them? […] this meaning of architecture is a tuning in to a complicated reciprocal relationship between forces and forms.” – Eyal Weizman, Political Plastic

Aesthetics of the anthropocene in the neo-industrial context [E.T. Research]

“The Climate of History” [book], disproportionate cause of pollution, while environmental effects are leveled globally.

What is the city but a bunch of things which have been extracted?

Unequal exposure to environmental risks and benefits [ref. Inundation Jakarta]

Make distinction between “urban” and “city,” Everything is urban. [M.C.]

Trying to understand scale, magnitude [Kant], 

When we become the ‘mountain’ [scale beyond our understanding]…what is our experience of scale when it is embedded in our everyday objects

How does the body embed itself back into the environment?

How is the body habituated to space, how do we become comfortable at a particular scale? [E.T.]

Scale is dispersed in commodities [E.T.]

Anonymous as the modern-day communard

THE INTERNET IS NOT KILLING THE METROPOLIS

Do cell phones dream of civil war? [essay]

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