Competition with Store Front / New-York
Guest Curator / Eva Franch
Concept – Juror / François Roche
http://www.think-space.org/competitions/ecological-borders/
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Submission / End of June
This competition calls for a radical reimagination of the current relationship between humans and the built environment through the establishment of new architectural protocols of coexistence in the search of a new Partial-Total Ecology: “YUmen[eco]tec-pharming”.
In the past architecture has always operated as a mediator between humans and the built environment, within an anthropocentric ideological framework with a deterministic approach. This competition seeks to escape this direct relationship and asks for submissions able to produce new socio-ecological scenarios able to reimagine our current ideas and preconceptions, in relation to notions of equilibrium and sustainability within Western Culture.
Going beyond notions of moral ecology or fake sustainability, this competition asks for entries able to envision new architectural scenarios and moments of invention by looking into spaces of residual otherness to reconstitute canonical forms of thinking.
These new socioecological architectural visions will provide a new understanding and a new set of possible relations of humans with the planet.
Each entry must submit a scenario for a new Partial-Total Ecology: “YUmen[eco]tec-pharming” in the form of text, protocols, codes or images that clearly identify three objects of research and projection: subjects, scenario and tools.
I. Subject[s]-Inhabitant[s]: Co-species/Co-substances
In order to avoid direct anthropocentrism [that in essence is impossible to bypass], the competition asks to have as the subjects of inhabitation of these new scenarios a minimum of two different species [including human] and two different by-products [i.e. excrements] in relation to these species.
II. Site-Scenario: Relations-Processes
Each submission will have to identify/create a site condition suitable for the development of the projected Partial-Total Ecology: “YUmen[eco]tec-pharming”. Due to nature of the competition, based on relations and processes, the site is to be understood as a space of conflict, transaction and relations. The site will be identified through its own sharing protocols, evolutionary dynamics and transitory transactions. The project might be developed within spaces that go beyond current acceptable notions of correctness including disgusting, monstrous or repulsive. With a similar approach, notions of life or death, success or failure might be equally treated as value creators.
III. Tools: Chemical-Technical-Visceral
From the machinistic, passing by the chemical to the visceral, some of the processes that the entrant might consider in elaboration of this new Partial-Total Ecology are: screwed, chewed, shat, sweated, swallowed, vomited, pined, secreted, woven, knitted, extruded, staggered, scattered, coagulated, aggregated, welded, pinched, braided, spidernetted, bonsaied, crystallised, calcified, excreted, expanded, branched, pulped, smeared, coagulated, excavated, assembled and disassembled, bended, blended, and their machine picked, spiked, pinched, caressed, embraced, sliced, cut, laminated and loved [list in formation]
More information on: http://www.think-space.org/competitions/ecological-borders