Earthbound Lecture Series: Transcalarities Niebla the Cat and Other Forms of Material Dissidence
For the last twenty years, Andrés Jaque and the Office for Political Innovation have explored architecture as the entanglement of environments, bodies and material systems. Though a hybrid practice, in the intersection of research, design and activism; projects including PHANTOM, Mies As Rendered Society, Superpowers of Ten, Sales Oddity, Pornified Homes, Sex and the So-Called city, COSMO MoMA PS1 or Escaravox explore architecture as bodied politics and material dissidence. Unlikely actors of architectural discussions – such as Victoria Amazonica gigantic water lilies, tagged-as-Brazilian sex workers Raphael and Bamban, Berlusconi, 432 Park Avenue, ultra clear glass, grindr, fracking, Kim Kardasian’s Lanvin shitless tuxedo, NO2, Niebla the Cat, Mies’ basement and Bloomberg’s Clean Heat Project – are convened to reconstruct Architecture’s recent history. Overall these projects mobilize the capacity of transscalarity to subvert the specific forms of politics seemingly banal architectural devices play.
Andrés Jaque is an architect, writer and curator internationally known as one of the initiators of interscalar and transmedium approaches to urban and territorial studies. His work explores architecture as the entanglement of life, bodies, technologies, and environments. He is the founder of the Office for Political Innovation (New York/Madrid).
