AGE OF WANDER “What is the nature of a 21st century ‘human’?” held in 2014.

This masterclass took place few years ago, but yesterday researching in my archives I found these pictures and decided to dedicate some time to un-dust these and give them a proper post. These are documentations of a 3-day masterclass led by Rachel Armstrong and Arne Hendriks, with my participantion as chef. 

Background

This masterclass raises questions that challenge our preconceptions about the nature of humanity in the 21st century. It investigates what a culture based on humans-as-ecology might be, in contrast to the idea of humans-as-machines that shapes our modern world. Four fundamental pillars of existence are explored during the masterclass namely: the body, technology, environment and community. Participants will be recruited from across the sciences and the humanities and work in groups to produce an alpha prototype of what it means to be an ‘ecological’ human. Their ideas and output of the masterclass will take the form of a real-estate1 brochure, where the value systems of ‘ecological’ humanity are expressed through the language of identity, land and desire that embodies the idea of a new production platform that underpins human development. Such an eventuality has radical implications for the way we imagine, work and live in the world in ways that are not bound by the logic of industrialization but are life- promoting, stochastic, may be shaped using existing techniques in agriculture and gardening and as such, are also directly compatible with Nature. Indeed, the outputs of this new production platform are post-natural or, “icological fabrics”2 – that interweave nature, technology and culture – and may form the building blocks of 21st century communities and cities that can be combined in ways that are as rich and diverse in terms of their environmental performance as life itself.

Masterclass

The masterclass will take participants on a journey that may change their view of what it means to be human in the 21st century at a time of ecological crisis by providing them with a set of conceptual tools. These take the form of ecological frameworks that will enable participants to explore and critique the boundaries of their own practices from first principles using a new existence framework. Specifically, each participant will work together in groups, where they encounter a series of challenges that reframe the way we may think about our lives, and ourselves so that we are no longer ‘machine-humans’ but ‘ecological- humans’. Groups will be allocated guides that are dedicated to each of the four specific themes to provide continuity throughout the masterclass should participants decide to switch between projects. Perspectives from invited inspiring speakers will also be proposed, who will share their research and insights into working in ways that may be considered ‘icological’ – where the convergence of design, nature and technology provide new opportunities for making and being.

Fundamental philosophical assumptions about the nature of reality will be raised as well as the nature of the human body, how this may be extended through assemblage-based technology and what kinds of practices constitute a meaningful ecological existence with our environment. These forms of human expression will then be interwoven into a notion of a community using architectural tactics that deal with spatial programs to shape the idea of a place from which new images of future humans may appear. Underpinning these transformations is the ‘assemblage’, which currently exists as a philosophical proposition outlined by Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari3.

Assemblages are groupings of empowered materials, which differ from the matter from which machines are composed, as they exist at far from equilibrium states. Assemblages can therefore be considered as a technology, which possesses a degree of autonomy that can be shaped using ‘lifelike’ strategies that are drawn from the emerging field of natural computing. In this masterclass the assemblage is regarded as a real operating system that underpins an alternative technological platform than machines. Participants will be invited to respond to the series of talks, presentations and discussions they will encounter during the masterclass by producing a real- estate brochure themed on one of four possible sites: 8 billion city, a starship, Venice beach or a suburban home, which raise new possibilities for living. Each of these projects invites participants to live and colonize them as ecological humans by articulating their own new understanding of the body, environment, technology and community. The final brochures are aimed to be disseminated further, to reach new audiences and bring more people into the discussion about how we may positively and creatively bring about radical modes of thought and support new technological platforms to shape human development. The positioning these brochures is also hoped to reveal how a new relationship with Nature can influence our value systems, economy, notions of landownership and power structures. Indeed, we anticipate that the outcomes of these discussions may help inspire new research into alternative platforms for human development that have different impacts on our ecological systems than our modern, industrial technologies.

1 “Real-estate” refers to the modern system for valuing land, which is based on 2D geometrically ascribed property plots. The term is used in the context of this masterclass as a provocation to rewrite the rules of the relationship between humans and environment in the 21st century, which will be based on discussions about land, property, nonhuman communities and soil fertility as a means of opening up new dialogues about existing power structures in cities and ways that existing power inequalities may be addressed. The final document of the mastercllass may therefore be considered an ironic comment on modern cities, which we hope will invite further discussion.

2 “Icological” is derived from the notion of ‘instrumented ecology’, which differs from post-natural by being propositional about the kinds of fabrics produced by the entanglement of natural and artificial systems, rather than adopting a term that defines a system by what it is ‘not’.
3 Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. 1979. Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (Athlone Contemporary European Thinkers). London: The Athlone Press.